How Switch 2 HDR Actually Works & How to Make It Look Better

Nintendo's approach is mostly a brightness boost on an SDR image, and a leading specialist says it shows.

When the console was announced, Nintendo made a big deal about HDR support and a matching screen. Now that the latest Zelda game is out, Switch 2 HDR is under the microscope. A well-regarded specialist says the game doesn't handle it correctly, and if you've played it, you probably noticed the HDR looks unremarkable.

According to the specialist, the game starts with the SDR image and approximates HDR using a filmic S-curve. It works out luminance incorrectly, then stretches the result across the HDR range. Highlights get brighter, but you get no extra detail and none of the real dynamic range HDR should offer. It's closer to a dynamic contrast filter on bright objects, and every first-party Nintendo game uses this same method, which sums up Switch 2 HDR today.

Still, SDR-to-HDR conversion isn't automatically bad, and Switch 2 HDR can look great. Metroid Prime 4 uses the same trick with beautiful results, even though it adds no detail. Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and the new Zelda don't look nearly as good.

Proper HDR has two sides. One is brightness, where HDR lets you push brights higher and darks lower than SDR's compressed range. The other is color. Real HDR offers far more of it, so bright highlights keep their full range without losing detail. That's what you'd want from Switch 2 HDR.

There's a way to get more out of Switch 2 HDR, though. Zelda has no motion blur and runs at 60 fps, so camera turns look smeared on flat panels because of persistence. Reducing motion blur fixes that at the cost of brightness. On an LG OLED, enable HDR on the console and turn on dynamic tone mapping, which you'd normally skip but doesn't matter when the HDR is fake. Then switch on black frame insertion.

The extra brightness offsets what black frame insertion takes away, leaving an image as bright as SDR or brighter, with sharper motion.

Give black frame insertion a try. The specialist calls the effect a post-process brightness and saturation filter your TV could apply to any game. Another view is that doing Switch 2 HDR correctly is hard, and SDR-to-HDR conversion is fine if it adds punch to the image. Metroid Prime 4 looks pleasing even though it isn't correct, and an HDR-first workflow is rare, partly because the console's LCD produces miserable HDR.

The output is what counts, and Nintendo's record with Switch 2 HDR is mixed. Mario Kart World brightens areas that shouldn't be bright, like skies and the sun, and reads as a textbook SDR-to-HDR conversion. Kirby Air Riders lifts particles that wouldn't naturally glow. Native HDR probably isn't coming soon, so mapping output with proper HDR principles would help, and Metroid Prime 4 is a far better model than Mario Kart World.

The console's own screen can't do real HDR, which may shape how the company builds support, and nobody knows what its testing looks like. Many developers lack the right hardware and set HDR by eye on poor displays, while those who get it right use solid workflows and multiple screens. If the LCD is the baseline, Switch 2 HDR won't look good.
That points to the biggest problem with HDR today: HDR 400-class LCDs should never have been labeled HDR.

People see a dim image, decide they dislike HDR, and blame the company that sold the display. Unreal's documentation is poor too, so developers get weak results and need someone who understands HDR to step in. Together, these issues explain why Switch 2 HDR is so spotty. Expect the inevitable replies saying Switch 2 HDR works fine on their console.