[News] Steam Deck OLED review: Includes specs on new screen and other improvements

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzmod to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 306 points – The Steam Deck OLED improves much more than its screen
polygon.com

This is the best coverage of the new Deck that I've seen yet.

Upgraded:

  • 7.4" OLED HDR screen with a 90hz refresh rate and 600 nits brightness(with 1000 nits peak brightness), (old screen 7" LCD with 60hz refresh and 400 nits brightness). Touchscreen accuracy and responsiveness is reportedly improved.

  • Longer battery life. Improvements to software and hardware are supposed to increase the battery life by 30-50%. New battery is 50wh vs original 40. Original decks will see some of this improvement thanks to software/bios updates, but not as much as the new Decks. The new Deck charges faster as well, charge from 20 to 80% battery in 45 min.

  • 6E wifi module for improved wifi speed.

  • Dedicated bluetooth module, allowing better audio quality over bluetooth and the option to wake the steam deck from a bluetooth controller. Will also support more controllers at once for multiplayer.

  • Faster RAM, 6400 MT/s vs 5500 MT/s on original.

  • More repairable. The screws are now torx, and all thread into metal screw holes. Should prevent stripped screws that were the most common issues with SSD replacements.

  • New carrying case, for the 1TB model, there's an insert case inside the full size case. The insert can be pulled out and used as a slim carrying case when you don't need full protection.

  • Weighs 5% less.

Prices:

$649 - 1TB OLED

$529 - 512GB OLED

$399 - 256GB LCD

For a limited time, Valve will sell a special edition 1TB OLED with a translucent shell for $679, only in the US and Canada. Expected to sell out quickly.

Note: I'm updating this as I get more information, so the written out info will change as I learn more.

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I don't need a new Steam Deck I don't need a new Steam Deck I don't need a new Steam Deck I don't need a new Steam Deck

I am feeling the same. Some really neat upgrades, but nothing major like an extra USB port that actually warrants an upgrade (for me and the way I use mine, anyways). We will see if I get one on sale.

I am feeling you. I spent for the high end partially for the screen and it was hard to play on the balcony but maybe thats because I did not have oled :)

it was hard to play on the balcony

OLED should be better but I believe it'll draw a lot of power at peak brightness so playtime is quite limited without a (huge)powerbank

see. I thought oled darks were better so you would not need as much brightness due to better contrast???

When the OLED Switch came out, I ordered one as soon as they became available. It was my first handheld, and the advice at the time was that you didn’t need it if you already had one, but if you didn’t the OLED was the one to get. I enjoyed the switch, and ended up buying a deck not long after that.

I’m going to treat this update to the same advice that they made for the switch. Since I already have one, and since the internals are essentially the same, it doesn’t make sense to update after less than a year, and it’s not worth the hassle of trying to sell the old one.

Original switch screen was rubbish, to put it mildly. While original Steam deck screen is in fact quite decent. It gets bright enough for indoor usage, has large viewing angle, color is ok. I can happily play my original steam deck for another one or two years. I only play on my original switch with it plugged in to a TV.

Fair point. I never tried the original switch. I only bought one once the OLED came out and everyone was raving about it, despite the fact that Nintendo didn’t give it the full 2.0 treatment. I had packed away my pc for a move and just never got around to unpacking it, and wanted something to play on. When I saw it had games like Diablo and Disco as well as Mario Cart, I decided to pull the trigger.

I ended up liking it enough that I went out and got the deck to try to work through my games backlog. Because of steam sales, I have dozens of games I’ve played for less than a couple of hours and some I’ve never even opened.

Of course, right after buying it I ended up buying Stray, BG3, and a couple of others, and still haven’t made progress on my backlog…

Attention> the $399/256GB is the same old model with no improvement, only cheaper price. Just to be clear.

That's an excellent point, I updated my summary to show that. Sorry for any confusion.

On one hand this is super cool.

On the other hand, I already have a Steam Deck goddammit

That's the whole point. They had to walk a thin line between making an attractive upgrade and pissing off the existing users. If they had made the deck more powerful, the old ones would suddenly have been obsolete. I think they did a good job of that. And no, I'm not buying the new one either.

If they had made the deck more powerful, the old ones would suddenly have been obsolete.

I'm pretty sure it has more to do with current chip technology not actually changing that much in the, what, 2 years since the deck first released?

Also obsolete is a pretty strong word for what - if it had stronger internals - would likely end up being more expensive than current models.

I think it's two things.

Firstly, the landscape hasn't changed that much as you said. People will say the Z1 Extreme/7840U is available and while that's a lot more powerful, the difference isn't night and day to what the Deck's APU offers at lower wattages. I wouldn't be surprised to see another custom APU made in cooperation with AMD. The Z1 Extreme is basically an 7840U, a chip made for notebooks, and usually not gaming notebooks. Sure, even the GPU it comes with is faster than what's in the Deck, but I don't think CPU/GPU power is balanced well for gaming. With a custom chip design, they'd be able to strip away unnecessary pieces of the silicon, like excess PCIe lanes and probably some other stuff, resulting in a smaller die, which then results in less power draw.

Secondly, there's compatibility. Developers often include a graphics preset specifically for Steam Deck in their games nowadays, and having two hardware configurations with a huge gap in performance would mean they'd have to include two. Sure, people in this community are mostly fine with setting their own graphics preferences, but I'd imagine there are many people out there who just want to start playing as soon as the game has downloaded.

Yeah, it's just a big enough upgrade to be a little envious, but not feeling like I got ripped off.

The way I'm looking at it, I'm still very satisfied with my current deck and this upgrade shouldn't change that. But still, damn, OLED...

1 more...
1 more...

I'm just hoping once the new screen goes up on ifixit that it's compatible with older models. That way I don't have to buy a whole new deck if I want the screen, I can just upgrade my launch model.

It's officially not compatible. gamers nexus video

I am sure it can be done, as people also solder other memory onto steam decks

Damn, I'll have to watch that when I get off work. Hopefully there's a simple fix, like a ribbon cable adapter or something

I wouldn’t count on it. They’re different sizes

Yes but they accomplished that by reducing the size of the bezels, like what Nintendo did with the OLED switch. The screen unit itself has the same footprint as the old one

If it has the same footprint why would they need to make the bezels smaller? The screen is 7.4". I think the old one is 7.0". If we can replace the whole front and the glass then we should be able to upgrade.

The glass and the screen itself are one cohesive piece. What I'm trying to say is that the glass on the new screen is the same size as the previous screen, and the glass is how the screen is adhered to the front of the case so as long as there's nothing crazy going on on the back side and it uses the same connector it should be interchangeable. That's my hope anyway.

That would be sweet, hopefully the larger battery as well.

I really want a Deck but I'm not sure how much I'll play it :/

What's funny for me is I have two gaming PCs and yet I play more games on the deck. It's just easier for me to pop into games for an hour or so and suspend it when I'm done. So far I've beaten the Trails In The Sky trilogy (with each game taking me about 3-4 months to beat) and it's been such a wonderful experience on the deck.

Same here. I built a new PC recently but I still play mainly on the deck. Sitting in front of the PC all day at work is enough.

I really want a deck and would use it hours every day, but I can barely afford food.

It's funny because I was at a point where I wasn't playing games at all really, not on my big PC, phone, or anywhere.

I had pre-ordered the steam deck for my wife, and she used it a bit but when TotK came out that took all her attention playing on switch.

I had poked around on the deck, played a few games, but didn't love using a controller instead of mouse and keyboard.

Then we had a gig where we had to sit in a car for 8 hours, and she convinced me to try playing horizon ZD. I had never played it, but I ended up really liking it. And the convenience of having it on the deck was great! I ended up playing it all the time, and beating it, and now I'm emulating BotW, playing it for the first time, and enjoying it.

Now I've gone full crazy, I'm emulating a couple dozen games, got a bunch of others installed and waiting. I upgraded my SSD to 2tb, replaced my fan, and am eyeballing that clear back with RGB.

My advice, if you can afford it, get it and just see what you think. You might like it!

Or, if you don't like it, you can resell it. The value of these things seems to stay reasonably high. Though I imagine we might see a drop in price with the flood of LCD models about to hit the market.

Funny. I had bought one for my ex when we were together and played it a little. I really enjoyed playing games and messing with it. I had plans to do some emulation on it too.

But now she's gone and the Deck was a gift so it is too.

I want one but i just don't game much and i would never actually sell it. Lol

Same. Go halfs with me and we can share it.

IGN review video said

Screen is HDR certified and 1000 nits.

Others are bigger fan, lower temperature (5 to 10 degree C diff)

For battery, Cyberpunk 2077 runs 1 hr more than LCD one.

It's peak 1000 nits with HDR. The base full-panel max is 600 nits. Still, it's a big jump over the 400 on the previous LCD model.

I mean... this at the bare minimum deserve to be called an "Upgrade" with the capital U. Steam-Deck-OLED-vs-Steam-Deck-F1-22-comparison-

Link article

God I want it but all I play lately is Stardew Valley

167h of Stardew on the Deck here so far and probably wouldn't even play it if Deck didn't make playing games so comfy.

I've seen people get 8-10 hours out of the battery playing Stardew on the standard deck, so you could maybe squeeze up to 15 hours out of it on the new Deck. What more can you ask for?

It's so nice being able to have mods on the steam deck though. I had stardew valley on my switch, and while I enjoyed it, I missed so many of the quality of life mods. Now I can have my cake and eat it too lol

Wonder if they’ll release the OLED screen as it’s own part so previous owners can upgrade themselves.

I’ve no interest in the third party 1200p screen since I don’t need the hardware to struggle even more more resolution but a 90hz refresh rate would be great

I've read it's a different connector from mobo (?) To screen, so the OLED will not be backwards compatible.

I hope they continue making oem replacement parts for when I need to replace something on my original.

Hmmm. Disappointing.

They’ve seemed rather committed to replaceable parts. I think they’ll keep supporting it. Guess I’ll have to keep hoping a third party higher refresh rate screen comes out sometime. Im sure higher capacity batteries will eventually too

It says 6nm vs 7nm APU on the store page. Is this a new APU?

It's supposedly considered the same APU according to the different leaks we've seen. The 6nm is supposed to increase power efficiency but that's it.

It's also potentially slightly faster but never slower. According to Valve anyways.

The speed boost is from the faster RAM, which is a pretty big bottleneck in many cases. Up to 11% faster. In many cases not faster though, just depends on the game and settings.

Gotta check whether iFixit already did a teardown on this. Repairability is improved, but I'm wondering by how much, especially when it comes to screen and battery replacement.

Reading more details on the repairability, they've changed the screws to torx and they all thread into metal thread now. Should prevent screw stripping. They also say internal components are easier to access, but that might just be with the new heat shield design that was already present in recent Steam Decks.

According to LTT, Valve went a bit easier on the battery glue this time. So that will be easier to replace.

However according to Dave2D, the dimensions are slightly bigger so the new 50 Wh battery won't fit in older Decks.

Didn't Valve release their own teardown of the Deck before its release?

It seems silly, but that inner case is what's really making me feel the FOMO, traveling with the current case is such a hassle. I hope they sell the case alone for current deck owners

The tomtoc travel case is great and is already available.

Ooo, thanks for the recommendation, that does appear to be what I'm looking for! Although I'm still hesitating as some reviews do say that you can still click the joysticks through the case which isn't ideal :/

I was in the same boat. Note that you can click on the joysticks with the original case too if you try hard enough.

I guess you can't have both: small and uber protective. I settled with small and good protection. 😊

Dedicated bluetooth module, allowing better audio quality over bluetooth and the option to wake the steam deck from a bluetooth controller. Will also support more controllers at once for multiplayer.

Anyone know what version? It would nice if it would support LE audio since that should help with latency significantly. Not that there are many client devices that support it yet, but Pipewire at least has some initial support.

EDIT: Appears to be BT 5.3. Not a 100% guarantee of LE audio support, but that's promising.

Does anyone know if this is going to be a replacement or a sibling to the current model?

The now lowest end model (256 GB) still is the old model, so it's a sibling.

Ahah! I knew the sales were pointing to some sort of new version incoming.

While it seems that the new startup movie is exclusive to the 1TB OLED model, is that model's exclusive keyboard theme the same as the prior 512GB Steam Deck (DEX-85) or a new one?

Just give me usb4

Multiple usb4

I wish. Theres gotta be spare pcie lanes on that chip to make it work somehow.

That would have to wait for a SD2 as it would need a completely new APU. I think this is the best refresh we could hope for without major changes that would warrant a new version. One thing I wish they'd been able to do is get VRR on the screen. The fact they didn't means there must be some technical limitation.

Sustained brightness is 600 nits, 1000 nits is peak brightness for HDR content. Still an improvement of course.

I'm wondering whether the charging circuitry is largely the same except for the quicker charging to 80 %. I'd love to be able to use some higher-powered USB-C hubs with PD passthrough, where currently a hub using 15 watts leaves 30 watts for the deck, and using a higher wattage charger won't change that because the Deck only requests 45 watts (15 V @ 3 A). Would be great if the new Deck could do, say, 60 watts (20 V @ 3 A), because leaving just 30 watts to the Deck is right on the edge under full load with an external display, meaning it has to fallback to battery momentarily, which isn't great.

Another nice thing to have would be a low-power standby/download mode, for which they'd probably have to tweak the hardware a bit. I don't use my Deck too often (great device, but it only fills specific gaps in my gaming needs), and every time I pick it up it starts downloading quite a few game updates.

The OLED model is tempting, but I don't use the Deck enough to justify upgrading I think.

A bit sad for these guys who made a display upgrade for the original Deck released a few weeks ago (the 1920x1200 one), as most people who really care about display quality will probably just upgrade to the OLED model instead. The higher resolution seems rather pointless (the Deck doesn't have enough oompfh to run modern games in this resolution), especially compared to a bigger, brighter, higher refresh rate OLED screen.

I cannot use the oled screen, it hurt my eyes. Unfortunately the original steam deck screen also flickers.

Interesting. I think OLED is meant to be more comfortable to the eyes actually.

It is an improvement over the original steam deck screen. But I wish Valve could use some non-PWM screens to protect my eyes better

Hard to get excited about this when Valve still won’t release the deck in my country and it’s now out of date hardware.

Really kinda disappointed with Valve on the deck.

I hope you get one one day, but that really has nothing to do with this.

it’s now out of date hardware

What? It's not the fastest APU around anymore, but it's hardly outdated.

It’s two generations behind the current handheld offerings.

Now if you were going to buy something to last you the next few years would you pick the already old product or the fresh new one with modern components?

It’s outdated.

The software beats the shit out of any other handheld.

Yeah. Unfortunately the hardware doesn't run last gen games as other options but the need to deal with Windows is a nono for me. Also I don't understand why people want to play AAA games on a handheld.

Honestly I use it as a desktop more than I play games on it.

Is it though? It's targetting 5-15W, the other APUs are terrible at lower wattages and only good if they're blasting through energy.

It's lack of availability world wide is unfortunate, but unless Valve agrees to start letting retailers officially carry and sell it I doubt we'll see that change.

There are different ways to buy it I bought it year ago using mailforward from US