









There are many, many unanswered questions surrounding the Nintendo Switch (aka. Project NX) after its brief unveiling this morning . The biggest? We still don't know the actual dimensions of the system—which includes a tablet screen and detachable Joy-Con controllers. In the absence of official information, we've analyzed high-quality images of the system distributed by Nvidia to estimate those dimensions. That analysis shows the Nintendo Switch has a roughly 6.5" screen and individual controllers slightly smaller than those on the NES.

Our photographic analysis of the Switch's dimensions hinges on a single visual reference point: the analog sticks on the controllers. On the Wii U, Xbox One, and PS4, the top surface of the analog stick measures 17 to 18 mm in diameter at the widest point. That seems to be a comfortable sweet spot that all the console manufacturers have converged upon. It's possible the Switch has thrown this convention out the window and sports a much smaller or larger analog pad, but we doubt it.

With that educated guess in hand, we can count out how many analog sticks fit across the provided images of the Switch on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The tablet display in the image, for example, is about 8.3 analog sticks wide by 4.68 analog sticks tall. That translates to a 145 x 82 mm (5.7 x 3.2") screen, which would measure about 167 mm (or 6.56") diagonally.

Here are the results of the same analysis process for various other configurations of the Switch. All measurements are taken at longest points and don't include cutouts for rounded edges. For the individual controllers, the slight bulge of the shoulder buttons was not included:

Joy-Con controller (individual): ~106.4mm x 34.3 (4.19 x 1.35")

Joined dual Joy-Con controller (no screen): ~157.5 x 115.8 mm (6.2 x 4.56")

Tablet (w/out controllers): ~184.1 x 106.4 mm (5.83" x 4.19")

Full system (tablet w/ two controllers): ~253.4 x 106.4 mm (9.98 x 4.19")

For some context:

NES controller: ~123 x 53 mm (4.85 x 2.09") [Update: These dimensions were originally listed incorrectly]

Xbox One controller: ~180.3 x 175.3 mm (7.1 x 6.9")

iPad Air: ~240 x 169.5 mm (9.4 x 6.76")

Granted, this method of size estimation comes with some confounding issues involving perspective and precise pixel counting on the images (i.e. measuring where the product ends and the background begins). Using the same process on the two different Switch perspectives offered by Nvidia, for instance, gives slightly different heights for the Joy-Con controller (4.19" vs. 4.56").

Still, in the absence of official information from Nintendo, we feel this is a workable first-order approximation of the Switch's overall size. Now you can measure out your own facsimiles and try to picture holding the mysterious console in your hands this March.