Should you buy the Steam Deck OLED in 2024?

the steam deck OLED is now 3 months old and in this video we'll review it and see if it's still the best gaming device you can buy in 2024 so back in November I did an unboxing and review of this limited edition steam deck OLED um and you guys really seem to like that video thanks for the support by the way but that video was really just my my first impressions of the device I really didn't get a chance to play much of it so over the past 3 months I've played the crap out of my steam deck OLED I played it a ton so the first thing I want to go back over with this device is the anti-glare uh lighting and the the coating and stuff that you can see now um I didn't really do a good job showing this in the last video um I don't know why I didn't think of doing this but I can just shine it on the lights here and you can kind of get a good idea of how much it is refracting the light across the screen this is a admittedly pretty tiny little feature it doesn't really contribute to much to the device there aren't really that many situations where I'm playing and there's a light directly behind me that's like reflecting all the time and what's weird about it is that it's not like it's an anti-reflective coating you can still see Reflections just fine and let me turn the the scen screen off and you might be able to see what I mean oh there you go you can kind of see it like that like it is refracted like a little bit but you you still see Reflections like it's not like it's like a magic device that destroys Reflections it it it just helps a little it's like it's like a little tiny thing let me pull up a a dark game and I'll show you kind of just how minimal this issue is all right so I'm in ay and the will of the Wisps and I'm in a pretty normal scene in this game I this game is almost I don't know it almost feels like it was made for oleds it has so many like little black hair of the screen available at all times you can just drink in all the OLED moments but here we are and I don't know like you can kind of see maybe this is kind of what they're talking about if I get in the right light you might get yeah right there if I hold it right here you can see there's like a difference between the bezels and the screen itself but you can only really see it when I get in the light like that it actually it's fine I'm looking at it on the camera it looks a little Overexposed cuz it's an HDR that's one of the things that's so nice about this uh about this device here it's an HDR original steam deck is not HDR the really I mean realistically there's only like a few games that really support it uh this being one of them or in the the will of the Wisps but when you have it it is huge and and even without having HDR support in the games uh the brightness level on this screen is just inherently much brighter than the original Ol or original steam deck rather I use my steam deck OLED all the time it is probably my primary gaming device um in combination with my PS5 in fact most of the time I'm using both of them at the same time and we'll get into that too I made a video if you guys remember on streaming your PS5 to the steam deck OLED or the original steam deck doesn't really matter it's a little better it's a little faster on the on the steam deck OLED because of the better wi-fi chip of my experience but you know you're still going to get a great time overall maybe most likely a better time than the PS portal but streaming just really is the thing I do the most um I've been playing the crap out a Persona 3 reload been playing way too much of that and a vast majority of my time especially when I'm grinding out to hardus and most of what I'm doing is just streaming to my PS5 I got on my PS5 so I can play it on my TV when I want to I could have got on PC play it on PC I don't know I'm just partial to enjoy the console experience sometimes and then of course the other thing I do is play actual Steam games steam Library games uh admittedly I haven't been doing too much of that um this game is a good example of why this came out like last week and I tried playing it I'll pull it up here cuz you guys can see the performance I was hoping a simple game like this you know it's a it's it's a Rog white kind of game you know it's really good for doing like one run at a time play for like 45 minutes it's really satisfying in that way but here you can see I'm in my garage I'm just walking around and we are completely destroying the GPU the CPU is sitting at like under 50% usage what is that what what is this I kind of love it what is going on did that happen earlier did I just not notice oh I kind of love that oh man I just wanted to show off the Bad performance I didn't think the game was going to be buggy too that's even better that that just drives the point home this game is not made for steam deck but as you can see it is it is completely destroying the GPU and we are getting 33 FPS in a game that has very attractive appearance but it's not it's not like graphically intensive or anything so it's you just get a lot of experience like this but this is a this has nothing to do with the OLED it's just a steam deck thing you know you get a lot of these games that just aren't really well optimized at the same time though you do get a lot of games that are optimized that you wouldn't think so started playing Elden ring on this thing let me pull that up all right so we're in Elden ring and as you can see gets like 45 50ish FPS and because this screen has vrr it it just feels pretty smooth I mean it doesn't feel like 60 but it's it's closer to 60 than you would imagine than you would expect and obviously you're not going to be able to see that on camera necessarily CU we recorded 30 FPS anyway so it's not going to look that much more smooth to your eyes but trust me it just it just is more smooth it looks great it plays great um and this is infinitely more impressive than Pacific Drive even though it's not like that much higher of a frame rate because this is a AAA level game this is a PS4 game this is and PS5 as well but but you know with the graphic settings I have it's closer to PS4 but it's portable it's incredible let me pull up something that I've been playing recently that actually takes proper advantage of this thing's power power level though all right so here we got got Robo it's this little cat Metroid Vania it's adorable you control a Mech and you you blow things up it's awesome this might actually be in my opinion the best OLED game that's ever been made cuz it's nothing but white and black and it looks so Supreme it is so cool it looks like you just have like this window piercing through your device into this like white world oh man I absolutely love it this not even 90 FPS if you didn't know if you didn't remember this also was a 90 FPS screen just that little bit smoother than 60 although because it's an OLED even 60 this feels so smooth and of course there is one last thing I do all the time the kinds of games I play on this thing let me show you oh man look at this we got super metroid here it looks incredible it looks in my opinion like better than it ever has the only comparable experience is playing on an actual CRT like a really nice like pvm or something that's the only thing I would like think of like oh maybe that's a little better than this but but this the fact that this is even comparable I mean I I I used to hate emulators I was like Oh no I got to play on the real Hardware I got to play with my real copies but the steam Tech has like totally changed my mind where it's like oh no it's actually emulators have gotten really good it depends on what you're talking about I mean this is just insane again you're you're seeing this on a camera through a YouTube video you're not going to really pick up like just how impressive this thing looks but it's really just the fact you have these games right like Super Nintendo games that often would use these pure black borders and everything and it just it just the way it pierces through the screen it doesn't look like you're looking at his screen it's just incredible I don't know I could G about it for hours cuz the screen is the main thing it's the steam deck OLED it's like that's the main thing you buy the device for but there are other things there are other things let me let me pull this guy out real quick all right so I have them both pulled up here with slly Cooper um I don't have my settings exactly the same as you can see I have a wide screen hack on my OLED um this is actually Jacob's steam deck so I uh I don't think he has the wide screen for for Sly Cooper specifically uh enabled at the moment but it's it's fine it's the same concept you can see like a similar enough image the couple things you notice immediately about the screen like obviously L it's an LCD so you can see like the black borders around the side don't look actually black the other thing this is actually showing because this is a 4x3 image it's actually stretching to the top edges of the bezel on the LCD model but this isn't even stretching all the way there but you can see that they look almost the same like vertically they're very similar in terms of how big they actually are on the screen even though this technically is cropped in a little bit compared to this guy here and you can definitely see it in the side to side like look how many how small these bezels are here compared to over here it's just it's just massive it's a little difference but it goes a long way it's just again the screen is crazy the other big thing that I immediately noticed about this device oh my God the original steam deck is so heavy I mean it's not like unusable but it's it's like you could you you could hurt someone with this thing it's it's kind of nuts I remember I used to not really play the steam dech in bed like almost at all cuz it's just like you know you're laying on the pillow and you got it held up and it just like after like 10 minutes it just be like making my arms tired call me weak whatever um but the the OLED one like I regularly play for for many many many hours in bed and it's perfectly fine it's just all these little things like I I I keep going back to the screen just cuz it's the most obvious thing to talk about but I noticed like when I was just booting this guy up the sound is a little different it's not worse it's just different than the OLED speakers like the buttons don't feel quite as good the analog sticks here are just they don't feel as nice they kind of are slippery like you slip your thumb off it a lot easier these actually grip a lot better um I I actually I kind of like these thumb sticks how small they are and how I don't know they feel almost kind of more precise to me if they had more grip but it's it's negligable and it's all these little details that make the uh the steam deck OLED just so much superior to the original steam deck but they're so they're both so good I love these things but the next thing I want to go over I want to talk about some uh other additions I've made to my my steam deck Arsenal that you guys might appreciate if you already have a steam deck so let's get into it all right so the number one thing that I have done to my steam deck that actually changes the way I use it and makes it just a slightly better experience is this decky loader PL plugin this is an app that you install in desktop mode you you literally like download it from their site put it on your desktop click it it installs in like 3 seconds and it gives you this like essentially a plug-in store you can you can go up here to the store and you got all these options here for like cool little things and ways you can you can mess around with your steam deck and play with things some of them are really cool some of them are pretty dumb some of them are like half baked some of them are really neat I'll show you my favorite one all right so we got the audio loader here so what this does is it will replace the sound effects on your steam deck so I have them set for the default right now but I got all kinds of them we got Dark Souls got the personas got uh the The Fallout sounds uh my personal favorite is the Xbox 360 nxz Dash sounds let me turn this up so you guys can hear [Music] it isn't that the coolest thing you've ever seen oh my God I just I love it it's it's it's like it it feels Rog but it also like did you hear that one it feels wrong but it it also just like works like shockingly well as a steam deck UI I don't know goes to show that the uh the Xbox 360 nxe dashboard just had the best sound effects but there's more too yeah my other favorite one here is the uh The Fallout one love it love it it's just it's simple it works I don't know you I could play with this for hours this the kind of thing I love to do on my my devices you sit there and just play with silly little things that don't matter well I was going to show you my other favorite one the uh the how long to beat for deck plugin it's not working right now I know welcome to the steam deck experience some update at some point broke it and I guess the guys who made it haven't updated it yet whatever but what this does is it just shows you can see uh in here in this little preview thing it shows you from the website how long to beat how long it takes to beat in a game and it's just it's just nice I don't know I I actually it's so good it's so seamless and it's so like nice looking that it makes me wish it was just built into steam UI by default I think it's like that on on like the Xbox game pass store if you look at that it'll tell you like from how long to beat like how long a game will take but anyways I think that'll do it for this video If already have a steam deck let me know what you're playing on it let me know your favorite games if you have the OLED give me some recommendations I always love seeing a good olette experience in my face so if you got some specific games you guys love out there that you don't think I've checked out you got to let me know about that one if you don't have a steam deck yet did this convince you I hope it did I hope it did the steam deck is the greatest thing on earth I mean I'm just saying I'm just saying so you're missing out but anyways thanks for watching guys and I will see you next time

Channel: Smokin' Silicon

Views: 32,288

Keywords: smokin silicon, smoking silicon, silicon, pc, gaming pc, steam deck, steam deck review, steam deck oled, steam deck oled review, should i buy a steam deck, steam deck 2024

Id: wZj_knQ0pXU

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2024