Steam Deck OLED — In-Depth Review

the king is back baby yes that's right valve sent me the new steam deck OLED and it's better in virtually every way the new display is gorgeous the battery life is incredible the controls have been improved and even the speakers are better I've got to say this might be the best midgen refresh I've ever seen but the real question is whether or not it's worth your hard-earned money perhaps you're thinking about an upgrade or perhaps you're thinking about getting a steam deck for the first time and you're trying to decide whether you want the LCD version or the OLED so I'm going to break it all down for you because there are a lot of little improvements and some really really big improvements but it's not a small thing to take the steam deck you already own sell it for less than you bought it for and then spend even more money on a new steam deck so I totally understand that and I want to help you make a decision for yourself first let me introduce the contenders I'll be talking about here of course this one is the steam deck OLED review unit but also I have two steam deck LCDs one is the review unit I received back on the steam decks launch in February of 201 22 that one has my custom steam deck FTD buttons from deck buttons.com and the other is a steam deck that I bought about 6 months after launch so it did have a few revisions including a better fan and slightly better menu buttons and for this one it has the custom pink d-pad also from deck buttons.com I had already installed these buttons well before this video but I thought I'd leave them in there as a way to distinguish which steam deck is which whenever you see them on screen so let's get right into things actually starting with the design of the steam deck valve made a lot of really subtle changes and they all seem to contribute to a single new Motif and they even changed the software to match this new Motif and I'm calling it the stealth fighter look naturally the OLED screen lends itself to the color black and valve lean into this with the design of the steam deck OLED but in really subtle ways first are the analog sticks which are now fully deep black the analog sticks have practical improvements to them and we'll get to that later but the color itself didn't have to be black and they did choose black here but also the accents on the buttons instead of being a full white they're more of like a mid-tone gray so the accents really just kind of melt away and they're barely there speaking of Barely There the bezels are much smaller but also both the bezels and any black bars you may encounter all just sort of Melt Away given the fact that it's an OLED screen and the blacks just disappear subsequently valve has paired all of this with a software update that makes the entire steam UI a lot darker if you're on the preview Channel you can see it for yourself but here's a side by side of the older version of the OS and a newer version of the OS and you can see the older version had more blues and now those Blues have been turned deeper and darker and they're more Navy if not all the way black pair all of this with the fact that the screen now gets dimmer than it did before which is Amazing by the way because the LCD version of the theme deck was already the champion in terms of dimness on PC handhelds so Al together with the blacker analog sticks the less pronounced accents on the buttons the buz that melt away the UI being darker itself and the screen being dimmer all of this is why I say it has a stealth fighter look it's obviously quite subtle but it does seem intentional the only contrast to this stealth fighter look is the new power button which is actually orange so that's a significant contrast there and then there's the power LED that's right next to the power button that led is similar to the previous led the only difference is that it is now an RGB LED so it actually turns green when it's fully charged and then the final thing in terms of design is the size and weight of the steam deck OLED this steam deck OLED is about 30 G lighter than the steam deck LCD which honestly isn't very much in actual numbers but it is noticeably lighter when you're holding it in your hands now even though the steam deck OLED is a little bit lighter the dimensions are completely the same and you know what that means it means that the dbrand kill switch still fits even the stick covers even though the analog sticks are a little bit different and that means you can always have a kickstand with you and that kickstand can store SD cards you can also if you don't want to use the kickstand you can also use their Mount and with that you can attach a battery pack or an external hard drive so that's pretty cool and of course if you are upgrading to an OLED and you're passing down the LCD to like your kid or something then the kill switch is a no-brainer to make sure that your steam deck is protected from any Falls or anything like that you can still get a kill switch using my link dbrand.com fand deck so definitely check it out because the kill switch is Slim it's going to protect your steam deck and it's extremely versatile you can get it with a skin and a screen protector so you'll get everything that you need don't forget check that out at dbrand.com fandeck thank you dbrand for sponsoring this video next let's talk about controls because a lot of small improvements have been made to the steam deck in terms of controls but one thing I did notice was the d-pad I tried two moves in Street Fighter 3 that were giving me trouble compared to the steam deck LCDs d-pad first is a fireball canceled in into the Super for Ryu that is just a fireball immediately followed by another Fireball movement the other move I did is a crouching medium kick into a fireball and both of these are pretty simple movements but there're a good indication of whether or not you can not only do a fireball but do a fireball as part of a combo in any case I had better luck doing these moves on the LCD steam deck than on the OLED steam deck to be honest I'm kind of feeling like maybe the d-pad just has to be broken in I'm not sure so that's something that I'll keep you updated on as time goes on the bumper buttons were improved as well the bumpers on the steam deck OLED have a little bit more of a click to them and they're not quite as mushy as the ones on the steam deck LCDs now for the menu buttons at the bottom the steam button and the quick access button those are drastically improved even though they still sit flush with the steam deck itself you can feel a very tangible click to them as opposed to the steam deck LCDs even the ones where it was improved where it still felt quite mushy now you can really feel when you're pressing these buttons I also want to talk about the analog sticks I've already told you that they're darker but the texture is a little bit different too it's a little bit grippier it's more rubbery I would say the LCD steam deck analog sticks also had this problem where they would get like whiter over time I think a lot of people attributed this to it picking up dust but I don't think it's so much dust as it is just the way it ages with heavy use valve also reported that the touch detection got better on the analog sticks and I can confirm that that's true here I am in a game called lovely Planet remix where I am using the gyro to aim but I'm also using flick stick to aim and you can see that when I'm using the OLED I can still move my aim with the gyro even if my finger is just barely on the thumb stick grip and I am less able to do that on the steam deck LCD by the way the hap dicks are also better you notice this immediately when you're using the trackpad to enter in your Wi-Fi password to enter your password you're going to have to use the virtual keyboard and yeah it just feels significantly improved now in game these haptics are going to be a lot more nuanced but I did take a suggestion from my friend mosquito who asked me to try Left for Dead 2 because apparently that game specifically has some really good use cases for haptics where for example you're firing your weapon and the haptics are supposed to match the weapon itself now I'll be honest at first I didn't really notice the difference I had to play them back to back to really notice the difference but on the deck OLED you actually feel the recoil pattern of the weapon you're using and you can feel those individual Pricks as they happen now as for the trackpads themselves alongside the touch screen valve has stated that these are improved with things like increased polling rates and I can confirm that they are in fact more responsive you can especially feel it for both when you uncap the frame rate on the steam decks and just go crazy with them so I tried Zach tronic solitire collection for the touchcreen and it just felt a lot more responsive as I was saying I also tried this on the desktop and I could see that my touch just were responding more quickly this is something that is going to be hard for me to capture with the gear that I have but it was very noticeable when you tested them side by side so altogether these are some really good improvements for the controls the d-pad the bumpers the Steam and quick access buttons the analog sticks the haptics the trackpads and the touchscreen all in all that's really comprehensive and I'm impressed with what they did for the controls but more impressive probably is the improved audio this theme deck already had at worst one of the top to audio systems when it comes to PC handhelds you're either going to favor the Rog Ally or you're going to favor the steam deck one thing for sure is that the r Ally got much louder than the steam deck did the steam deck LCD but the steam deck OLED now gets louder as [Music] well [Music] ain't nothing like aone get me [Music] before we move on from audio I do want to point out that the Bluetooth has been upgraded here so has the Wi-Fi but specifically for the audio Bluetooth has been upgraded and it is much much better so back when Hi-Fi Rush came out I had to buy some wired headphones because that's the only way I was going to be able to play Hi-Fi Rush on the steam deck the wireless earbuds were not working for me there was too much latency same goes for a game called spin Rhythm XD now I can play either of these games comfortably using bluetooth earbuds there is still latency but those games are now playable for me likewise of course the Wi-Fi has been upgraded and I've seen the Improvement on my steam deck when I'm downloading games specifically for me personally that was a big time saer because I had to download a lot of games to get this review going if you're someone that's complained about the downloads speeds before well this should be a big Improvement one last thing when it comes to connectivity is that valve said you should now be able to wake the steam deck using a Bluetooth controller at least when the steam deck is docked I tried this with various controllers including dual sense DualShock Xbox controller and I just going to get it to work now this may be something that gets ironed out by the time the steam deck olet is officially released and in people's hands but for me I couldn't get it to work all right next up is one of the biggest things to talk about of course the display but a lot has been said said about the display already so I will tell you that it looks lovely the blacks are excellent on here as you can see from like any splash screen some of the steam menu stuff and then there are high contrast games that really really shine on this screen stuff like Ori and the blind Forest as well as really saturated games like lovely Planet you can really distinguish between the two screens with games like this so yeah it looks great one thing I should add when talking about both of these displays is that you can adjust the display colors and that kind of presented a challenge for me in terms of how I'm going to show you guys the screen so this theme deck OLED actually comes with the display set to srgb rather than native personally I prefer native but again I needed to pick how I was going to Showcase both screens so I just decided to have both of them set to their default vibrancy and their default temperature that means that everything that you're seeing can actually get even more vibrant but yeah I just wanted to let you know so you can sort of calibrate your expectations when you're looking at these clips but also that 90 HZ refresh rate adds a lot here it's important to note that with a lot of Indies you can go 90 FPS and still have 50% more battery life than you would on the steam deck LCD so do not worry about leaving it at 90 FPS in those instances I highly recommend it I played games like lovely planet and Spelunky 2 at either the 90 FPS or just leaving the frame rate uncapped and it was extremely responsive and that really contributed to better feeling gameplay again especially in those firstperson shooters and precision Platformers where you really want to be able to make adjustments as quickly as possible I would say it's a great feeling screen and if you're someone that does value those High frame rates then this is going to come in handy for you for those of you that are asking about how dim the displays can get I'll show you side by side but the steam deck OLED does get dimmer as you would expect than the steam deck LCD just like the audio this is one of those things that's surprising because steam deck already had the crown when it came to low light display so yeah the OLED is as gorgeous as you would expect the HDR works wonderfully 90 HZ refresh rate is a Big W and it gets even dimmer than before so yeah this is a big win for the screen it's now easily the best screen on a PC handheld and I would argue that this screen is even better than the switch OLED screen which is definitely an impressive feat to say the least so the display is the number one marketing point for the steam deck OLED but the number two marketing point should be the battery life for this midgen refresh Val focused on power efficiency rather than trying to focus on power to make a steam deck Pro by focusing on power efficiency rather than power they did something that other PC handheld manufacturers just can't do for one reason or another it's safe to assume that other PC handheld manufacturers do not have access to this Apu possibly this is in part due to valve's role in either making this Apu happen or bringing this Apu to Market in a successful product either way other PC handheld manufacturers are locked out and so the steam deck is the only device on the market that can excel at this power envelope and now with the steam deck OLED it's gotten even better with 50% more battery life to give you some real world examples I was playing World of Goo on both machines at the same time and they both had close to the same amount of battery life left the steam deck OLED had a little less battery life with 62% remaining it was running at 90 FPS and it has 6 hours and 19 minutes remaining on the World of Goo Ste deck LCD had a little bit of a higher percentage with 68% battery life it was running at 60 FPS and it had 4 hours and 37 minutes remaining and if we're talking about a high-end game like cyberpunk and the batter is full on both devices you go from having 1 and 1/2 hours total on the steam deck LCD to about 2 and a/4 hours on the steam deck OLED both of those would be running the steam deck preset balanced FSR no frame cap 15w TDP and let me give you one more real life example I'm going to go back to a low spec game this time Spelunky 2 if you run that on the steam deck OLED at 90 FPS you have full battery life you're going to get over 6 and 1/2 hours of battery life that is compared to about 4 and 1/2 hours on the steam deck LCD so overall this is a big Improvement both on the low end and on the high end but you really really really feel it on the low end if you're playing low spec games like Spelunky 2 Celeste Hades dead cells vampire survivors you're going to get an extra 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours out of G like these and that's going to go a long way if you're on a train ride or on a flight now as far as software goes there's not a lot new here valve said that they added the ability to wake the steam Deck with a controller using Bluetooth I was unable to make that happen additionally on the software side of things my Nerd NES podcast co-host did have some problems bringing an SD card from their steam deck LCD to their steam deck OLED I think in the final version of the software you shouldn't have that issue I didn't have that issue when I trans transferred from a steam deck LCD that was on the preview channel to the steam deck OLED so I'm wondering if that may be a factor I also want to note that on both steam decks they are combining the refresh rate and the frame limiter sliders into one slider so whenever you change that frame limiter it is going to change the refresh rate to something that is more appropriate for that frame limit I say all of that to say when you do change the frame rate now it may have that black flash that you saw on screen when you would change the refresh rate that's always something that's bothered me just a a little bit and when I saw that they combined the two sliders I was hoping that they had found a way around this they have not yet so I just wanted to let you know and the last thing I want to cover with regard to software is TDP now this is going to be a bit of a nuanced topic so I'm not going to go in depth here in fact Carrie aka the fox will have an in-depth discussion of this topic on one of his videos so watch out for that but in essence the TDP management behavior on the steam deck OLED differs a little bit from the TDP management behavior on the steam deck LCD for most people it's not going to be noticeable but if you relied on TDP limits for how you played your games well you may have to adjust what those TDP limits are if you're coming from a steam deck LCD and moving up to a steam deck OLED all in all the software remains pretty much the same any changes that I've seen are things that will be folded into both models of the steam deck moving forward now whether or not this is a good thing depends on where you're coming from if you're coming from switch or other console environments then then something like the steam deck even with the OLED model will be a step down in terms of ease of use but if you're coming from PC or PC handhelds then I would say that this is a step up in terms of ease of use just as it always was all right so I want to talk about my final thoughts and whether or not this is worth the upgrade for you now I can't talk about that without talking about the price I'm going to limit this discussion to the three models that are going to be widely available for some time that is the 256 LCD at $399 the 512 GB OLED at $549 and the 1 TB OLED at $649 now if you are not upgrading and you're just buying a steam deck and you're trying to decide between the 256 LCD and a 512 OLED I would say that spending the extra 250 to get the OLED variant is absolutely worth it now of course if you're in a situation where you can afford $400 but you cannot afford $550 then that decision has already been made for you right go ahead and get that 256 LCD it is still a wonderful system system but if you are able to afford that $250 increase then that 512 GB OLED is going to be worth it to you not simply for the upgraded display I would say all of the other things are just as important here because you get much better battery life much better wi-fi and Bluetooth you get 90fps you get better speakers and you get improved controls I would say all of those things put together are well worth that extra expense now between the 512 GB OLED and the 1 TB OLED I do not think you need to go for the 1 TB OLED there are really just two factors that you're going to want to think about number one is the storage size and whether or not you're willing to upgrade it if you get a 512 GB and you're willing to upgrade it especially if you're going to upgrade it to 2 terabytes anyway then no big deal but the bigger factor I would say is the screen itself the 1 tbte has the anti-glare etched glass display and I'm a fan of this especially as a content creator that needs to record in really bright settings but there are many folks who have simple philosophy when it comes to OLED the glossier the better if you are one of those people I don't see anything wrong with getting the 512 GB OLED you can always replace the hard drive yourself if you're enterprising enough and here's where some people may note that you get a nicer case with the one terabyte version and that is true but I'm going to say that this liner that comes with the new carrying case is not my favorite first of all it's not pretty when you remove the liner there's just velcro all over the place second of all I think think it's durable enough but it's not something I would want to test I can click in the analog sticks when I push in on this case and it doesn't feel incredibly durable this is one of those things where if you did want a slim case I would actually recommend the slim cases from tomt I thought that this liner would make the Tom talk slim case obsolete but I can say with certainty that it hasn't so that's just one thing to keep in mind so that was if you're in the market for a new steam deck which is a little bit easier to recommend right if you're in the market for steam deck steam deck OLED all the way so long as you can afford it but now if you're thinking about upgrading is it worth it to upgrade from the steam deck LCD to the steam deck OLED and I've seen a lot of people say that they wish that valve had a trade in program that would obviously be wonderful but given that there is no trade and program I've come to kind of think of this with two major bullet points two things I want to say the first thing I want to say is that if you do choose to upgrade from the LCD to the OLED variant of the steam deck I do not believe you would have buyer remorse I think all of the upgrades here are impressive and really worthwhile and you're probably going to get the bang for your buck just from battery life assuming you're someone that finds yourself in scenarios where you want to avoid plugging the steam deck in now I do want to offer one caveat to what I just said the steam deck was originally supposed to launch in Q4 of 2021 and here we have the steam deck OLED in Q4 of 2023 if the pattern continues then we may see the steam deck to as soon as Q4 of 2025 so if you find yourself having buyers or Morse for the steam deck LCD because the steam deck OLED came out less than 2 years later well you may find yourself having that same buyer remorse if you buy the steam deck OLED now and then valve puts up a steam deck 2 for purchase 2 years from now and that's just a factor you're going to have to consider for yourself and decide which side you lean on but the second thing I want to say is that it's okay to wait if you think you want to upgrade you don't have to do it now you don't need a steam deck OLED Before Christmas yeah steam deck LCD prices are going to go down in the resell Market but honestly I think that as soon as valve announced the steam deck OLED that already happened I don't think it's going to go down much further starting in January for example so if you're unsure just wait right like wait until after Christmas see if you have some more money in your pockets and then decide whether or not you want the steam deck OLED even if valve does release the steam deck 2 in Q4 of 2025 valve has designed this system to be a long-term system even now the steam deck LCD is one of the best gaming machines you can buy for the money at $399 so even though I can't tell you what's best to do in your situation I can leave you with those two points number one the steam deck OLED is absolutely worth it and number two it's okay to wait to buy it it's still going to be there in January February and so on I hope that helps that gang out [Music] goodbye

Channel: Fan The Deck

Views: 135,014

Keywords: PC Gaming, Steam Deck, Steam

Id: isPi9hOIEW4

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 16 2023