It comes in two colors
Finally, two months after the launch of the Switch OLED itself, Nintendo is allowing the purchase of the OLED dock, piecemeal, without the requirement of the system. This was actually teased out five months ago, and folks have been waiting ever since.
You can grab the white model here, and the black model here. There is no functional difference between the two, and both of them are priced at $69.99 each. Nintendo doesn’t do a very good job of selling the OLED dock on their official site, but the key difference is that it adds a LAN port (which you can also buy separately for the existing dock). As someone who owns one, I can safely say that $70 is incredibly pricey given that you can soft mod in LAN support for cheaper. A refurbished old dock is $39.99 on the Nintendo store, a new one is $59.99, and secondhand docks are significantly cheaper, even limited edition ones (likeĀ Fortnite or Pokemon)Ā on occasion.
That said, the company also seems to provide some form of firmware updates for the OLED dock, as confirmed in update 13.0.0, which dropped on September 14. It also goes out of its way to state that old Switch docks and the Switch Lite cannot utilize this functionality.
Note that if you do spring for this solo OLED dock route, you will need to use your own AC adapter and HDMI cable, as they are not included. Another reminder: Nintendo has stated that this will “not be sold at retail,” so this seems to be the only route, if you were holding out. The secondhand market and Nintendo’s official store seem to be the only options here.
Oh and one last thing: yes, old Switch units do work with this new OLED dock.
Published: Dec 8, 2021 08:00 am