Steam Deck OLED: A Stunning HDR Upgrade... But There's So Much More

let's get straight to it then E valve is delivering a new steam deck it's shipping soon I've got a review unit here and well it's excellent it really is it's just astonishingly good on the face of it it looks like a standard deck right but Power it up and everything changes you see valve has taken on board the criticism it received for its debut offering which was already an astonishingly good handheld let's be honest and uh well it's addressed basically every major criticism and that starts with a big display upgrade in fact in terms of image quality this is the best I've seen on any handheld easily and yes it is OLED but it's not just OLED it's HDR to at 90 HZ no less proper OLED per pixel HDR it's fantastic I mean fire up ay and the will of the Wisps just as one example I realized that pointing a camera at an OLED screen to film it in the full knowledge that vast suedes of the audience are probably going to be watching this on an LCD well it's kind of nuts right but look this screen is simply stunning it's like a miniaturized home Cinema setup if you will in the palm of your hand so I'd like to have produced a much larger video for this but international shipping meant I received the unit after Us outlets did and I really wanted to do my best to be here day one with the good news because this really is a fantastic product across the board it's not just about the screen either steam deck already had class leading battery life for PC handhelds but valve is claiming anything from 30 to 50% more stamina now they're also saying that it's lighter and it's cooler and well it is on all of those counts there's also a new Wi-Fi 6 e module for faster downloads though I found you really need an extremely fast internet connection to tell the difference but hey access to the 6 GHz Spectrum can only be a good thing right what valve is not claiming are any kind of performance improvements over the standard deck but actually in my testing you get some of that too owing to faster LP ddr5 memory modules in the new model so those are the headlines but there's so much more to talk about here but let's skip ahead and look at the new deck lineup the range has been completely refreshed essentially offering more storage and yeah the unit I was sent from valve comes with a 1 tbte SSD but here's how the overall lineup looks okay so the base $399 price point Remains the Same and you get an LCD screen there uh not the new OLED one it's worth stressing that this is a first generation steam deck lacking all of the refinements and improvements I'm going to be talking about in this video still a good deal though obviously better than the previous $400 offering uh storage is upgraded from 64 gigs of emmc flash to a 256 6 GB SSD uh $549 takes you into OLED territory with all the trimmings paired with a 512 gig SSD previously the high-end option meanwhile $650 gets you the one terabyte Deck with the OLED screen and premium anti-glare etched glass all good stuff what this does mean is that first gen decks are getting a price cut then and you can see how that pans out here while St last I'd imagine these are attractive price drops that put clear water between LCD and OLED decks but I suspect that after watching this video and probably a bunch of others you'll be wanting the new model anyway so let's kick off by looking at the star of the show The OLED display while the deck is the same size as the first generation iteration the screen is actually 7.4 in up against the 7 in of the original meaning smaller bezels being being OLED you get pure blacks and vastly improved dynamic range a 110% P3 wide color gamut and 600 nits Peak brightness in SDR rising to 1,000 nit highlights with HDR content a display refresh rate rises from 60 HZ to 90 HZ but it is configurable in fact valve has rationalized the refresh rate and frame rate cap Sliders in Steam OS to a single slider where you specify your frame rate cap and then the deck itself adjusts the refresh rate of the display to give the most consistent experience at your chosen frame rate HDR has always been a bit of a configurability nightmare in Windows but with steam deck valve tells us that it just works the most work you need to do is to enable it in the settings on some games and yeah I can verify that's the case in my testing HDR display is actually more efficient than the LCD screen in the first gen deck which is one of the reasons why steam deck OLED has better battery life than the original but it's actually a wide array of improvements in the deck that contribute to this Improvement first of all valve has upgraded the battery the 40w hour battery gives way to a 50w hour replacement in the OLED model so notionally you have a 25% Improvement to battery life straight out of the gate the new steam deck also has a 6 nanometer version of the Vango Apu so expect some efficiency savings there too so to what extent can valve's efficiency claims be backed up now here's the thing I'm always a bit hesitant about battery life tests in General on these PC handhelds because the experience varies so drastically even in the same game uh depending on what settings resolution and frame rate targets you set and it stands to reason that if game frame rates change drastically so do the demands on the processor and therefore the battery life uh so consider this just a basic test then in like for likee circumstances cyberpunk 2077 outside of V's apartment looking out into night City medium settings balanced FSR 2 upscaling to 720p with frame rate unlocked so the S so being push to its limits essentially we're at 23 wats on the LCD launch model this Rises to 26.1 so a bit of maths here factoring in the larger battery of the OLED model gives us 2 hours 12 minutes of gaming versus the 1H hour 32 on the LCD machine it's about 42% of extra game time I mean this is pretty big right I also carried out the same test in the same area with a frame rate pegged to 30 frames per second seriously introducing frame rate caps is a very smart thing to do on PC handhelds on the OLED model power draw drops to 18.8 wats versus 21.9 Watts on the LCD launch machine that gives us 2 hours 40 minutes of gaming on the new deck up against 1 hour 50 minutes on the LCD machine this time a cc 45% Improvement on a challenging game this is really impressive but what if I were to tell you that there were performance improvements with a new deck as well valve says that the OLED machine gives developers the same performance Target as the original deck but at the same time it also says that the 5500 megat transfers per second LP ddr5 has been upgraded to 6,400 megat transfers per second an 11% Improvement in bandwidth so 88 gtes per second of theoretical throughput increases to around 98 GB per second and let's just say that AMD apus love extra bandwidth so you've been looking at a Marvel's Spider-Man Benchmark here playing out and by my Reckoning that extra bandwidth is offering up 7.4% of extra performance by improving memory performance one of the key bottle de in the processor is reduced meeing marginally higher frame rates and it's not a oneoff either a plag to ream is pretty heavy on memory bandwidth and Across The Benchmark sequence here the OLED model offers an 8.3% performance advantage over my launch LCD machine in fora Horizon 5 at high settings with forx msaa the new machine has a 5.6% boost over the old so content determines how much faster the OLED machine is I guess uh but I couldn't find any scenario where the OLED machine is the same speed or slower than the LCD in thought so I also noticed a touch less stutter but this could just be runto run variance and yes some parts of Any Given game will Thrive more on memory bandwidth than others but thinking about it a more efficient Apu with the same 15 watt TDP limit could mean that we're actually seeing a performance gain of some description from both the faster memory modules and the more efficient chip even so in cyberpunk 2077 the canned Benchmark only offers up a 2.4 percentage Point Advantage Across The Benchmark but once we switch over to the more CPU heavy City streaming results this opens up to an 8.9% performance boost on the OLED model and again yeah there does seem to be less stutter overall so look a 2.4% performance boost up to an 88.9% boost not exactly game-changing as such is it truth is it's an extra 2 to three frames per second generally when you're looking at sub 60fps gaming but what this does mean is that you have a little more leeway in successfully hitting your chosen frame rate target generally it's a nice bonus in a machine that's packed with nice bonuses I mean the list of these nice bonuses is actually pretty immense in vowing less power the machine is obviously cooler but valve has included a larger fan in the revised deck which basically means it can spin slower to achieve the same thermal throughput as the old one not that it needs to when the Apu itself is producing less heat in the first place bottom line here is that while far from a switch-like experience under load in terms of Acoustics the nude deck is a lot quieter than my launch model it's also lighter which leads me on to something kind of weird according to valve the new deck is 30 G or 5% lighter than the old one should be an irrelevance in the hand but it's not I can actually feel the difference and I definitely prefer it I mean I'm looking at the list of improvements here and valve has gone above and beyond in what is effectively steam deex equivalent to a mid generation console refresh you get louder speakers better Bass the deck already had best-in-class audio in my opinion uh improved haptics 180 HZ touchscreen polling rate revamped Bluetooth improved thumb stick textures and geometry charging is also faster now with a supplied power supply able to charge the machine from 20% to 80% in around 45 minutes there's an increased commitment to repairability too valve has made it easier to open up the deck and switch to machine screws on the rear cover with metal bosses a more durable setup compared to the large model The Firm also says that you don't need to take the back off now to replace the main display which is obviously very helpful a lot of thought has gone into all of this stuff and it all combines to make the new steam deck the best handheld out there Bar None I mean adding an OLED screen to the deck could have been a premium addition to the existing range but not only did valve revamp its entire stack it added that OLED display to all but the entry level model and it's not just an OLED screen it has that full support for high dynamic range too you can feel the commitment and the hunger in this product for it to be the best it can possibly be and that extends to the software side of things too where valve tells us that over 300 revisions to Steam OS have shipped steam deck just gets better over time whether it's down to developers favoring the machine and optimizing for it or valve pouring in more effort into its proton compatibility layer uh which often outperforms Windows Believe It or Not For example uh 9 months ago Oliver took a look at a range of 2022 Heavy Hitters running on Steam deck and we could barely get a plil recm running at a stable 30 frames per second 720p resolution upscaled from 360p lowest settings you know the score these days the game just runs better 720p with balanced upscaling we're still on low settings but there's a significant quality improvement a resolution Improvement and performance is much the same if not a touch better Oliver noted some pretty terrible stutter in this Marketplace scene and yet I able to run this at a flat 30 FPS now with no issue there something else that's kind of nuts too that I'm just adding here as a kind of PS now I love playing control on my steam deck console equivalent settings with a display refresh rate of 40 htz was My Chosen setup on the launch deck however booting the game on the OLED model actually brought up the dx11 dx12 launcher which doesn't usually happen and I was kind of amazed to see that rate racing support has been added to control running under Steam OS I guess it's a preview feature currently in the OLED version of Steam OS capping to 30 FPS upscaling from 540p got me into the Realms of playability with rt Reflections there but in dense higher geometry areas there were clearly struggles but valve is looking at things in the longer term obviously today's steam deck might be pretty poor when it comes to raate tracing performance but the Windows PC handhelds of today use higher performance processors that do manage it they do run better and in a sense I see this as valve laying the groundwork for the steam deck of tomorrow oh and in my press briefing I did ask about Steam OS support for Windows handhelds and I was assured that the commitment is still there it's just that steam deck OLED was their priority and yeah performance on the most Cutting Edge PC titles is pretty much the only drawback the steam deck has right now there are some games that just flat out won't run particularly well on the hardware you can power your way past some of the limitations on those windows handhelds with the more capable processors but the experience of the operating system and the terrible battery life means they only have limited utility for the more mainstream gamer a steam deck outpaces a lot of them in terms of quality of life and functionality and this model simply extends its lead still further I mean the screen it's just epic stuff just on its own before you factoring in all of the other enhancements that have been made and yeah as long as you're aware of the performance limitations on the latest games you cannot go wrong with this new steam deck and here actually that amazing screen well I'd say that actually gives a new lease of life to older games too even without HDR support OLED is a game changer for the portable gaming experience just can't stress that enough so I guess this really is just a quick look at the new steam deck but based on what I've seen so far this is the most expansive and transformative mid generation console refresh I have seen and valve's description of this as the definitive version of the first generation steam deck isn't just bang on the money it makes me think of how good a Next Generation steam deck's going to be but I guess that's fanciful thinking for now as we reach the end of this particular video so yes if you enjoyed it please do like subscribe share uh bell ringing for those into those notional uh instant notifications but the DF supporter program is all together more important it's a way to back the team in what we do talk to us directly get Early Access and bonus materials and indeed to join our amazing Community oh and of course there's high quality video downloads of everything we do and indeed everything we have done for almost 7 years now that's all for me for now 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Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 532,156

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Id: Z1KLj06fn2s

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023