Nintendo OLED Switch gets (carefully) torn apart, revealing internal changes

Nintendo
(Image credit: Nintendo)

The curious folks over at iFixit have done what they do best, with the new Nintendo OLED Switch being the latest gadget to lay across their teardown operating table.

Delicately taking the new handheld console apart has revealed a few internal tweaks compared to that of the original Switch. The most prominent of these is a smaller cooling assembly (following the trend set by the newer PlayStation 5 model). While it might seem an odd design change at first glance, it’s more than likely that Nintendo’s engineers have improved the cooling efficiency, or realised that the original cooling system was overkill. 

Other changes of note include a bit of space-saving by way of a single PCB, which now contains the SD card reader, headphone jack, and cartridge reader, all on a single board. Lastly, the console’s interconnect cables are now taped to the top of a metal shield. It might not sound like much, but the site reckons this could potentially help with wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity issues, which sounds like a sensible measure to us.

Overall, iFixit has awarded a repairability score of seven out of 10 to Nintendo’s latest console, which is one less than its predecessor, but still above the five points awarded to the new iPhone 13.

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Esat Dedezade
Freelance contributor