Why I chose the Steam Deck

the steam deck OLED is the best portable I've had the RG Ally and the legion go for long enough to say that I don't want them anymore in fact they're both gone I either traded them sold them or they've been returned the steam deck olet is the only handheld gaming device that I need and it's the only one I'm using and it's the only one that I'm keeping and if you're trying to decide between all of these I think this will be the best for you too so in this video I'm going deep into the steam deck OLED I'm comparing it between all the different popular Dev deves comparing it to the original steam deck and most importantly telling you why I chose this over all the other portable systems out there so first let's take a tour of the steam deck OLED the first thing you'll notice is the orange and the translucent design so I got really lucky so I was able to get one of the limited edition models unfortunately this version is gone and I don't think it'll ever come back but I love the Frosted transparent shell and I love these orange accents all throughout the design um it's really really hard for me to go back and look at the original steam deck now just in terms of the design I hate to say that um especially since that this version isn't available anymore so as you can see here it's the same design it's the same shape it's the same build it's the same plastic mold but I guess like the color does make a good amount of difference so that's what it looks like in the back this is what it looks like from the top and then there's just some additional styling details on the bottom where you get the orange screws but if you do have the original steam deck there are tons of third-party shells that can be had the next thing that's immediately apparent is the weight it's so much lighter than the original steam deck and definitely lighter than the RG Ali and obviously definitely way lighter than the legion go and when it comes to a portable gaming console that is probably one of the most important attributes of it being able to hold this for a long time taking this on the the trip it's not going to weigh down on you I've been able to game with this for hours and hours at night and I've had no problems holding on to this thing until the battery died this is by far the most comfortable portable gaming device I have ever used I love the grips on the left and the right it it really makes for an ergonomic experience the button placement the trackpad the shoulder buttons and even the back paddles are right where they should be and these are really stiff so you're not pressing them accidentally the only time you're pressing these are if you want to so that's a good thing about if you choose to map these buttons my only gripe though is the d-pad and the face buttons are shoved all the way up to the top corner so it's a little bit unnatural and a little bit uncomfortable compared to like if I was using like a regular gaming controller or something see as you can see here this is the Rog raikiri Pro my thumbs just naturally fall right into the sticks the pad even and the face B buttons same with the PlayStation 5 controller this is still one of the most ergonomic and most comfortable controllers I've ever used and this is coming from more of an Xbox fan but we're not talking about the PlayStation controller today but I just want to show how your hands just naturally rest on a regular controller compared to something like the steam deck where my thumbs are forced to be positioned a little bit closer to my index finger it's not a deal breaker or anything but just a mild inconvenience when it comes to the ergonomics Okay so let's talk about the screen and that's one of the main reasons you may want to upgrade from the original steam deck so the resolution is still 1280 by 800 so you're not getting a bump up to 1080p like you are with the RG LI or 1440p plus with the legion go but because of the performance that you're able to get out of this I couldn't have asked for anything more than 720p I think they made the right decision so on other devices yes you can lower the res resolution but then you end up with like gross dithering because you're not running the panel at its native resolution I I have noticed that there's a lack of sharpness in some of the games that I play but honestly having OLED really makes up for it it is a gorgeous display rumor is they contracted Samsung to manufacture these panels for valve so you're getting perfect blacks amazing Shadow detail and deep rich colors and the best part is it supports HDR and HDR pops on the screen the colors are nice and vibrant I can immediately tell that it's a high bit panel and it's it's got to be running at least dcip 3 I didn't install Windows on this device so I can't run it through my regular calibration but on i' I've looked at so many displays I have an idea of how they perform and this will perform like one of the better ones out there so one thing I do want to point out though is the pixel array is a little bit unique um the way it's designed so I found a really interesting Reddit post I just Googled it in research for this video because I definitely noticed it but so this is what the regular steam deck look like you know which is standard you got your standard RGB but then this is what the steam deck OLED looks like so if you zoom in you can see that there is a larger Blue Area followed by a smaller green area and a even smaller red area so it is susceptible to some color fringing I have noticed in some situations the original steam deck could look a little bit sharper and I'm guessing it's because of the pixel array but like you really got to be pixel peeping you have to be looking out for it at the end of the day I don't want to take anything away from this OLED screen it is definitely way better than any other portable display I've ever seen I would say even including the Nintendo switch the thing is once you play a game in HDR that supports it really well it's almost impossible to go back to a non-gaming HDR display the HDR highlights really get bright too I couldn't run my measurements on them but the highlights are really strong enough to give you that HDR pop that really can immerse you once the game supports it well and I even compared it side by side to my Samsung G9 monitor in HDR and they look very very similar When comparing the colors the contrast and the HDR pop so though this is a small screen the overall quality of this panel made makes gaming on the steam deck OLED feel like a premium experience it gets fairly bright too so you can even game Outdoors it's not as bright as something like an iPhone 15 Pro but it's good enough for outdoor usage and it also has a matte coding and maybe I should spend some time talking about that depending on the skew you get it may either come with a glossy or a matte coating there's a lot of debate about which one's better I definitely prefer glossy screens because the displays look perceivably better on on those panels but this isn't an egregious matte coating though things still look pretty crisp and colorful I mean but I bet it would have looked better if it was glossy if any anyone has a glossy steam deck OLED and happen to look at both of them side by side please let me know in the comments which one you prefer now let's talk about what it's like to game on this it is fantastic just using it feels like a better experience than any of the windows-based portable gaming systems I've ever used the sense of input latency seems incred incredibly low lower than the steam deck original 2 it's one of the few portable systems that feels as fast and as fluid as a gaming console someday I need to find a way to test input latency but if I was to bet on it I would say that the steam deck OLED has lower latency than any of the other portable gaming systems I've used except maybe the Nintendo switch I already mentioned how comfortable this device is the steam de olet is super duper comfortable I can game with this for 3 4 hours hours and not put it down usually the battery dies before I'm ready to be done with this there are tons of different options to where you could go in there and you can spend hours playing around with all of these different settings you can enable these back grip buttons which I will for some games just so I could keep my thumbs on the stick at all times it just it'll take some muscle memory you can adjust a different sensitivity of everything and another thing that I've been using too is using the track pad I've been using it a lot more just to help navigate throughout the environment and also do some aiming too and what I what I what I started doing too is just practicing aiming with this the trackpad is incredibly accurate so I've been playing around with this to try to get as good of an experience as I would get on mouse and keyboard and the steam deck OLED well actually I would say the steam deck in general is the only device that's giving me the tools I need to really really make this gaming experience my own if you're into that then that's awesome if you're not into that these controls are still the best in the business I would say oh and you know and another cool thing about this versus any of the other windows devices is the standby mode you could this can be off for days weeks at a time the moment you see it and you pick it up the battery life is just about right where you left it because the standby battery is so good and you just press that power button and you're immediately gaming again right from where you left off so that makes this a much better experience for on the-go type gaming that that's another reason why I don't have those other devices anymore all right guys so next we got a talk performance so let's start off with Horizon zero dawn it's a little bit complicated this time around just because they're very different devices but anyway so I have the r Ally with the Z1 with the Z1 extreme I also have the legion go and the steam deck so I ran these all at 1080 p i essentially just plugged these devices into a external Monitor and just ran my testing that way just so I could get Apple's to Apple scores so when using the max performance setting on both the legion go and on the RG Ally turbo mode is what they call it on the RG Ally I got 46 FPS on the regular Z1 I only got 28 FPS and yeah guys I ran that several times those scores are legit the Z1 chip is not a high performing part at least when it's push to its limits with 25 watts the legion go got 43 FPS the steam deck is getting 30 FPS I just threw that number in there because the steam deck maxes out at only 15 watts so you're not running the steam deck at 25 watts so what I ended up doing next which is the more realistic way of how I use my portable devices is I keep it unplugged and I leave it at the performance setting which is at 15 watts and then that's when you start to see some very interesting results so all of a sudden the Alli Z1 didn't really take too much of a hit in terms of the FPS so we're down from 28 fps to 25 FPS the Z1 extreme of the RG Li is a 30 FPS I guess I didn't run the legion go so I don't know what the scores are for that but expect something similar to the RG Alli Z1 extreme and look at that guys this the steam deck at its native 15 watts is essentially getting the same FPS as a Z1 extreme so when I look at some of these numbers is when I decided you know the way I'm going to be using my steam deck or any of the portable gaming devices the steam deck just seems like it makes more sense to me so let's look at Guardians of the Galaxy which is a bit more graphically demanding and when we're in turbo mode the RG Ally Z1 is getting 35 FPS the Alli Z1 extreme is getting 48 fps the legion go is getting 49 FPS so yes that was a win for the legion go in this particular title and the steam deck gets 35 FPS but remember the steam deck doesn't actually have a 25 watt setting I'm just showing what you're going to get on the steam deck no matter what if you're plugged in or not plugged in ETC so if you go down to the performance setting 15 watts which is what matches all of them you'll see that the RG Ally Z1 is getting 31 FPS the RG Ally Z1 extreme is getting 40 FPS and the steam deck is getting 35 FPS so so that's between a 12 and a 14% difference is fairly significant for more graphically intense titles so that is something to keep in mind so let's look at shadow of the Tomb Raider still a very useful test because it really stresses the CPU the GPU and and the memory so the RG Ally Z1 is getting 25 FPS RG Ally Z1 extreme is getting 32 FPS the legion go is getting 35 FPS so yes guys another win for the legion go for the legion Fanboys out there so now let's look at the 15 watt setting which is just performance of the RG Ally and then now you're getting 23 FPS on the Z1 25 FPS on the Z1 extreme and 25 FPS on the steam deck so identical scores essentially in this title so those are just three games that I tested but just in general just gaming once I start gaming and getting into it it doesn't really bother me and remember the RG Ally and the legion go have higher native resolutions with the steam deck I'm playing I'm playing at at the at the regular 800p and when I'm doing that I'm getting Sim ilar or better frames than what the RG Ally is doing at 1080P and like I said guys for the purposes of what I want a portable gaming system for that is perfectly acceptable for me and on top of that the battery life is substantially better on the steam deck OLED it's about double from what I've tested I've had cyberpunk running on all three of these systems all three of them running the same resolution on the RG Ally was slightly different it was like 720p instead of 800p like the rest of them because it's a different aspect ratio and after 51 minutes the r Ally died granted I was using the turbo setting and again at that 51 Mark the legion go was at like 36% and the steam deck OLED was at 61% and I and you know and I was and and that was at a higher brightness on that OLED screen and running at HDR so to me that's it that that's the reason why after I ran that test I just got rid of all those other devices and I just said all right I am keeping the steam deck OLED and that is the portable device that's going to take me into 2024 and Beyond so I am going to leave it here I want to do a deeper dive and maybe a tips and tricks like I did with the RG Ally on the steam deck because there is so much other stuff I didn't get to so if you guys want to see that leave a comment leave a like Etc I'll see you guys at the next one don't forget to subscribe thanks a lot guys bye

Channel: consumertechwarehouse

Views: 15,662

Keywords: steam deck, valve, steam powered, rog ally, legion go, lenovo, asus, z1 extreme, ryzen z1, best portable gaming, best handheld, steam deck oled limited edition, gaming 2023, Steam deck oled, Steamdeck

Id: dWPgyhpZkoM

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023