Introduction
Valve has significantly improved the Steam Deck with the release of the Steam Deck OLED. This portable device is a major upgrade over the original unit, featuring better performance, a better battery, a quieter fan, along with an excellent OLED display. As a console gamer, the Steam Deck OLED combines all these improvements to become my favorite device for playing PC games.
Price of Steam Deck OLED
The Steam Deck OLED sent by Valve to Mashable costs $549. The device comes with the following specifications: AMD Sephiroth processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD storage, and a 7.4-inch 1280 × 800 pixel HDR OLED display.
If you want to upgrade the storage to 1TB, it will cost you $649. By comparison, the original Steam Deck with 256GB of storage is priced at $399.
What I Love About the Steam Deck OLED
The display is fantastic: The new screen on the Steam Deck OLED is one of the most significant improvements. Simply put, it’s stunning. Valve did not carry over the same screen specifications from the previous model to the OLED display, but rather made enhancements across the board. The screen size of 7.4 inches is a slight boost from the previous dimensions (7 inches) while maintaining the same resolution of 800 pixels. More importantly, the refresh rate has been increased from 60Hz in the original model to 90Hz, allowing for gaming at up to 90 frames per second for supported games.
Even though I didn’t have an LCD Steam Deck model nearby for direct comparison, the advantages of OLED displays over LCDs are well known now. On an OLED display, each individual pixel can be lit separately, whereas LCD screens have a single backlight behind everything. This produces deeper blacks and better contrast, creating a more beautiful image on OLED screens, especially in games that support HDR technology. It may not be a revolutionary improvement, but it is a noticeable one.
It would have been nice to see the resolution increase with the larger screen, but even at 800 pixels, I didn’t notice any blurry or jagged games—unless I intentionally reduced the settings for performance enhancement. Overall, Valve has provided an excellent screen in the Steam Deck OLED.
Fun Playing on PC Without the Hassle
Let me provide some helpful context about myself: I do not enjoy gaming on PC. I have never had a capable gaming PC that I wasn’t reviewing for work because the initial cost of building a decent one can be incredibly high. There’s also a lot of routine maintenance that needs to be done regarding gradually upgrading parts, updating drivers, and troubleshooting why something isn’t working the way it should.
All of these complaints may seem silly to those who have been gaming on PCs for a long time. But when you’ve been on consoles your entire life, all of this adds extra hassle that I don’t want to deal with. The great thing about the Steam Deck (whether LCD or OLED) is that it pretty much minimizes all of that.
The OLED model runs on SteamOS, a custom version of Linux that turns the Steam library and store, along with its social features, into something that works better with a traditional game controller or touchscreen rather than a mouse and keyboard. It’s a beautiful user interface, but more importantly, it makes this device feel like a console rather than a computer. Everything is neatly organized in one place, with a single store, one library, and one friends list.
Also,
There’s really no need to worry about the Steam Deck OLED’s ability to run a specific game because each game features a small code indicating its compatibility: playable (meaning it works, but may be unstable) or not supported at all. If the game is marked as “playable,” you know you’ll be fine without needing to download a demo or do much research. And if it’s “verified,” that’s even better.
Slightly Better Performance
The Steam Deck OLED shares the same CPU and GPU as the original model, which means this isn’t necessarily like the case of the PS4 Pro where you get massive gains in some games just by having an OLED screen instead of an LCD. Generally, if a game runs well on the Steam Deck LCD, it will run well on the OLED as well. The RAM count of 16GB is also identical between the two devices, but there is one important point: the Steam Deck OLED has a higher memory bandwidth than the LCD model.
What does that mean exactly? Generally, the OLED version should be a bit faster than the original model. As for how that affects gaming, Digital Foundry’s tests found that you could expect around two to five additional frames in AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Marvel’s Spider-Man. These games don’t consistently run at 60 frames per second, but they can consistently run in the 30 to 40 frames per second range, which is quite impressive for a handheld device.
It’s a small difference but worth noting. The larger and more appreciable difference is that Valve has included a slower, quieter fan. In my testing, I encountered no instances where the Steam Deck OLED became noisy or too hot. Given that I’ve heard the opposite about the LCD model, that’s a significant win not heavily marketed by Valve.
What I Don’t Like About the Steam Deck OLED
It’s not the full PC gaming experience: this may not matter to you at all depending on your personal situation. Simply put, it’s a good PC gaming experience, but it’s not a premium one.
What I mean by that is a powerful PC will run modern AAA games at least at 60 frames per second, and at resolutions far better than 800 pixels. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that there’s a handheld device capable of handling Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3 at relatively playable frame rates, but for someone interested in performance, I don’t really care to play games that range anywhere from 30 frames per second to 45 frames per second.
But you might not care about this because you don’t mind frame rates much, or (like me) you have a current-gen console or a desktop PC that can run these games better than the Steam Deck OLED. Personally, the Steam Deck OLED is my device for playing “indie games and big-budget older games,” but if I had no other means to play modern AAA games, I might be a little frustrated with how they run on the Steam Deck.
There’s also the issue of not all games being fully supported or, in some cases, playable on the Steam Deck. You can’t play every Steam game on this device, which is understandable, but it’s still frustrating. The list of verified or playable games is growing every day, so it’s not a huge deal. However, if you want a true PC gaming experience, you’re better off building a PC.
What
It’s “Acceptable” on the Steam Deck OLED
You need to perform a hack to run games not available on Steam: If you want to play PC games from any market other than Steam on this device, you will need to manually install Windows. This requires technical knowledge that you definitely don’t have, making it harder than you might expect to play games from the Epic Games Store or Xbox Game Pass on the Steam Deck.
I don’t think this is a drawback of the Steam Deck OLED because it can actually be overcome with some effort. As I mentioned earlier, SteamOS also does a good job of protecting the user from some of the problems that come with working on computers. This comes at a cost, but if you don’t want to deal with hacking the Steam Deck, you can simply get a Lenovo Legion Go.
Battery Life of Steam Deck OLED
The last improvement worth mentioning is that Valve increased the capacity of the Steam Deck OLED battery to 50 watt-hours, compared to the 40 watt-hour battery. Valve estimates that you can play for between 3 and 12 hours with this new battery, but I have to be honest: I have no idea how you could get around 12 hours from the Steam Deck OLED.
This doesn’t mean the battery is ironically bad or anything like that. Playing a variety of 2D and 3D games for the past 20 years, the average was about three and a half hours on a full charge. You could get more by lowering the screen brightness or refresh rate (or simply playing less demanding games). But on the default settings, this is not a particularly long-lasting device.
Final Conclusions
The fan is surprisingly quiet most of the time. Image: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
After hearing about how great the Steam Deck has been from friends over the past 18 months, finally getting the Steam Deck OLED in my hands makes it all make sense. Without any hesitation, this is a fantastic portable gaming device that can impressively handle a lot of what you throw at it. The performance profile of this device doesn’t differ much from the LCD model, but there are many small improvements that make it feel like a worthy upgrade.
Better battery and screen, along with a quieter fan, make the Steam Deck OLED my personal pick for the best gaming laptop.
Source: https://mashable.com/article/steam-deck-oled-review
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