Switch 2 HDR Calibration app - HDR Optimized Settings

Like Xbox, Playstation and PC: finally Switch 2 now also provides an official system-level HDR Calibration app with the same goal of all the others: 1 time setup HDR for your display on system level so for the (supported) games to automatically apply the settings they find there.

It can be accessed from Display settings -> Adjust HDR

In the first screen you see above, there over 250 steps or clicks from the downmost position to increase for matching your display TV luminance, which it would be a gigantic task for me to measure for each step (at least at the moment).

So my recommendation here (for all displays) is to turn off you room lights and then just increase the steps by clicking the Up arrow until the right logo totally disappears...then give an extra click Up and you're good to go to the next section.

If you have issues in not seeing the left logo make sure you're using HGIG before calibration.

Here there is what seems like a system-level Paper White slider.

By default it seems too bright for most TVs, so my suggestion is to bring the slider to leftmost position and then do +7 Clicks to the right which will end up to around 250 nits Paper White which should be universally good for most TVs and room conditions (at around 1.000 nits Peak)

If you have an LG OLED and want absolute accuracy, you can set it to:

• +8 Clicks = 200 nits (for most LG OLEDs at 800 nits Peak)

• +6 Clicks = 200 nits (for G2/C4 at 1.000 nits Peak)

• +5 Clicks = 275 nits (for G3/G4/C5 at 1.500 nits Peak)

• +6 Clicks = 300 nits (for G5 at 2.400 nits Peak)

As you can see the Paper White increase value for each click will change based on what Peak HDR Luminance was set in the first section, which is extremely counter intuitive and unnecessary by Nintendo but that's the way it is, so I had to recalculate each click increase based on the different Peak HDR Luminance setting achieved in the first section for the different LG models in this case.

Paper White usually aims to regulate in-game UI and overall exposure so I wouldn't go past 300 nits on any TV as it may just be too bright.

And that's it, you've now calibrated your Switch 2 for HDR at system level :)

Now, I would also add some notes about the HDR experience in general on Switch 2 so far:

• Switch 2 LCD display is pretty bad in HDR as it only maxes out at 450 nits peak luminance which is definitely not enough for proper HDR rendition. Luckily you can disable HDR on the LCD panel but keep HDR when docked to an external Display. I highly recommend doing that

• Even if the system-level HDR calibration is properly setup, most Nintendo first-party titles (like Zelda, Mario and others) have very raised black levels when played in HDR at the moment. This is NOT a fault of the system-level HDR calibration app but it's all on Nintendo in-game HDR implementation side. This because with third-party native HDR games like Cyberpunk 2077 and others HDR behaves exactly like it is implemented on Playstation and Xbox, so this also means that third-party titles which does leverage system-level HDR calibration will also look as good or at least the same as the other consoles. Hopefully in the near future Nintendo will finally catch up with 2025 gaming standards also for HDR in their games as well

Enjoy!

-P