The Steam Deck OLED is Wild - 2 Months Later.

[Music] so I think if you told us all a few months ago that valve would have dropped a steam deck refresh you'd probably have a tough time convincing people like I remember when the first steam Deck reviews came out a lot of people were hesitant to buy one it was not a polished experience it was buggy but there was a lot of potential for its future valve usually never stir up any sort of hype machine they give you an honest introduction of what to expect and what they're deliv and the thing you can count on from valve has always been their commitment to support their products like still it wasn't going to be easy like it was unproven at this point they were going to have to fight all these battles before it could survive stage one iron out the manufacturing and supply chain hiccups put a ton of work into improving gaming on Linux and then continue to do so all while optimizing the steam deck and that was her goal two years ago ever since then this platform has been tuned updated and refined where uh initially this felt like their beta this stepping stone to uh finally getting us today which is the steam deck OLED it's got a redesign custom 6 NM AMD Apu 16 gigs of upgraded lower latency Ram a larger thousand nit HDR 90 HZ OLED display bigger 50w hour battery improved thermals higher quality haptics redesigned tactile buttons and thumb sticks upgraded 180 HZ touch pulling rate Wi-Fi 6E support a 30 G weight reduction same expandable storage better Bluetooth connectivity an upgraded DSP chip for improved sound quality all while being easier to repair and the prices stayed exactly the same with more storage I know it all looks like a lot like the upgrades sound crazy but I think we should take a step back a bit calm down and look at this objectively the thing is this OLED model has a lot of uh quirks and useful features that I haven't really seen on many handhelds part of the reason why this video has taken a bit longer than usual I've had a lot of thoughts after going back and forth between the LCD model and this newer model about whether or not I would personally upgrade for my existing steam deck or if as a firsttime buyer which would be the better option uh so before I tell you exactly what I personally ended up going with I want to let you in on a little secret uh valve does not send me these I buy these with my own money I will let you know if that ever does happen but I originally bought the 64 GB version of the LCD steam deck because I really wasn't sure if I was going to like the steam deck and I wanted to save the money so in a similar boat with the steam deck OLED I wasn't fully sure if I was going to justify this as an upgrade I really don't like upgrading Tech if it's still working fine especially if it's still relatively new uh so I waited for it to arrive before I made my decision so first thing and easily the biggest one for me when I took it out of the box is this new OLED display you know they kept it at that 800p resolution which was probably the biggest complaint about the steam deck any rival handhelds have had these way nicer higher res resolution colorful displays and that's what valved aim to fix the color accuracy is much better out of the box now you get those Inky blacks that infinite contrast and the image separation compared to the LCD panel is another area where it excels in offering a more Punchy and 3D looking image so even though valve did not increase the resolution of the display the upgrade that OLED brought to the table is enough to increase the perceived Clarity to your eyes it just looks like a less hazy clear experience without needing to drive any more pixels than before and remember with any sort of revision or second generation product you don't want to push too hard in one area or you end up crippling another we see this all the time in a bunch of other handhelds so by keeping the 800p display you're not going to take that hit in performance or on battery life and by shrinking the bezels a bit that allowed them to keep the same form factor and the display goes from 7 in to 7.4 in which is pretty awesome the screen has all the benefits of oled's visuals the panel is also so 90 HZ now apparently you can drive this up to 120 HZ if you have a Boe display but that's another story so by increasing the refresh rate all of a sudden that makes the steam deck feel even more fluid like the animations Indie titles that can take advantage of the frame rate benefit greatly and it feels faster while not necessarily getting a hardware upgrade now the one interesting thing that I found initially kind of a downside with the OLED model is the standby time I found that the battery life seems to be draining a bit faster with the OLED model when they're in that sleep State when you actually power it off so that could be a variety of reasons I'm not entirely sure I haven't fully tested this to the extreme yet but if I have both of these charged to 100% and leave them both sleeping on my desk I've come back to notice the OLED seems to be losing like 5 to 10% more than the LCD model it might have something to do with the new Bluetooth module that lets you wake the OLED from sleep with a controller now or the faster resume time I'm not 100% sure but other than that that's really the only noticeable downside with battery life on this newer model I've really been trying to jump into the battery to see if the efficiency gains are actually noticeable uh and they are like enough that I feel like I don't need to think about killing it as often but of course this greatly depends on the types of games you're playing valve is saying anywhere from 30 to 50% gains which is translated to more like a couple hours in Indie titles like if a game would get six before it's getting seven maybe eight now and those heavy titles are pretty mixed too like I'd say 45 minutes more on average it varies a lot so the screen also gets way brighter now up to 1,000 nits in HDR which when you combine OLED HDR and the higher refresh rate on the go it feels pretty amazing HDR has always been a tough hurdle with Linux so the fact that it just works now is flawlessly as it does is a Showcase of how outstanding the work that the community the KDE team and valve have done on the software side not even mentioning the additional benefits you get from using a display like this versus a traditional LCD panel the viewing angles were immediately noticeably better like also the response time is killer for anything a bit more reliant on timing also Pro tip if you are going to be playing a game that's a bit more intensive to run you could set the deck display to 45 HZ and take advantage of frame doubling you're not rendering any additional frames when you're locked at 45 but you're displaying that frame twice so you get that extra level of smoothness with the battery life gains valve is now including a longer charging cable in the box and I've noticed the OLED model is pulling about 40 2 Watts at Peak which is like twice the power draw compared to the LCD model which is great so you get that fast charging capability now I actually mainly use these ugreen nexo Pro 100 watt Chargers if I'm on the go uh just a nice upgrade over the standard valve charger if you are traveling with multiple devices it's smaller because these Gallum nitride charging chips allow for way more energy density and then it also supports Samsung's super fast charging 2.0 so you can literally charge three devices up to 100 watts of dedicated power to a single port so it's great if you need to charge a phone a tablet a laptop like a 14-in MacBook Pro ug green claims 0 to 86% in an hour of charging there's two USBC ports and one usba a port and the entire thing fits perfectly in the back of this team dick case so uh shout out to you green for being cool enough to sponsor this video and I'll have all their stuff link down below okay so now I want to talk about the actual improvements on the control side of things it looks very minor may not seem like a massive difference but this is an area where I feel like valve has definitely improved the experience the buttons all feel a bit less mushy like they reduce the travel time by a tiny bit especially on these front buttons the thumb sticks also have this concave surface now with a ring that protrudes a bit more so I didn't find myself slipping off compared to the old ones which these little grip caps were a great upgrade uh the trackpads also slightly raised and the haptics feel tighter like whatever haptic motor adjustment that was made to to these is absolutely noticeable now I have heard from a few people that the existing d-pad was always a bit difficult to hit any sort of diagonal movement with like if you're playing fighting games I don't know if it's a placebo effect but I feel like I've had an easier time with the OLED model hitting these moves but the new d-pad feels really similar like not that big of a difference uh the shoulder buttons are way better like this is an area where you really feel a difference between the way looser shoulder buttons on the original steam deck and the weight reduction 30 grams is what valve is saying and it doesn't seem like a lot but it is a pretty big difference when you're sing this thing around a lot I mean obviously this one has a case so it's going to be a little bit heavier but it's enough of a difference where you can feel it they were able to save some space by going with the OLED display which meant for more room for upgraded thermals battery space they even added metal screw boxes for the torque screws so you don't wear them out nearly as much compared to the plastic frame uh you also have great compatibility with the existing steam deck accessories like I believe the the kill switch K should work the J Sox accessories should work and the grip caps little bit tighter but other than that you can even transfer over existing uh ssds if you just want to I think you just need a firmware update and you should be good to go so not doesn't sound like a bunch of crazy upgrades on paper but enough to see a noticeable difference when it comes to like the physical aspects of the steam deck OLED now how do these improvements all translate to the actual gaming experience well uh that's what really hooked me in especially at night the LCD steam deck still works fantastic at night don't get me wrong but since the system is now even more efficient and runs cooler the fans don't happen to ramp up as much and when they do it's more like a breeze of air than a harsh wine plus obviously the lack of back light bleed and the fact that you can dim down the display even further uh which ends up making this like the perfect nighttime gaming device so now I want to address a concern that I see all the time in the comments which is should I get a matte display or should should I get a glossy display uh it's not as big of a deal as you think I've always been an advocate for glossy displays especially on oleds because normally by adding a light diffusion layer you do get less Reflections but you pay for it by muting the colors and fuzzing up the clarity valve is using etched glass in this case which is different from standard matte anti-glare Coatings which uh usually again isn't a top pick for OLED because those Coatings can end up diffusing any fine lines and you can end up reducing the image quality so from what I've seen only comparing a matte OLED to a glossy LCD the differences between etched glass and glossy are pretty minimal other than the way they handle Reflections like at no point have I felt like you're losing out by not having a glossy display I would actually say the opposite having the diffusion is huge if you do travel a lot with your steam deck and uh face the rougher outdoor lighting conditions the mat will probably be the better choice there are a few cases where I do see a bit less contrast on a matte display in specific lighting scenarios where a glossy display would just end up looking like a mirror anyways so it's not as big of a deal more like personal preference and where you're going to end up using these anyways all right now all that said and done I want to talk about how all these features contribute to Performance it's still not going to be the fastest device out there I think we all know this at this point but this new smaller 6 NM Apu really pulls its weight at being essentially the most efficient chip I've ever used in a handheld the gains are pretty slight like once once in a while you'll see a few FPS in some scenarios everyone's games will be different it does wake and resume games a bit faster the power button now has this wrgb status light it also downloads games way quicker since it supports Wi-Fi 6E and really any game looks absolutely fantastic on this display it's one of those areas where emulation visuals look better Indie Games happen to look better and then of course those big heavier titles can take advantage of OLED like if you play cyberp Punk on this thing uh you can really notice it really anybody com coming from the older existing LCD display will be able to appreciate the OLED display it's like valve took a wish list of the top requested features from the community and actually listened and delivered which is something pretty rare nowadays you know they are a private company that essentially dominates the digital gaming market so it allows them to get away with things that other companies can't and it's great to see them as an ally for pro consumer rights all while dropping these revisions without insane price increases and actual value on the table so the question about whether or not it's worth the upgrade is obviously subjective if you are perfectly happy with your existing LCD deck I would say carry on just because this new OLED model comes out does not necessarily mean that these awesome handhelds are all of the sudden redundant so if you do see a feature on this that you feel like would be a substantial upgrade to you uh I'd say you'd probably be happy with the upgrade and if you are on a tighter budget maybe unsure about steam decks like I was it's a killer time to jump on an older LCD deck whether it's refurbished eBay or you could always save up a bit and just jump to the OLED platform but yeah a seriously awesome product just got even better so I'm going to end up hanging on to my existing model and I'll keep this one around for all the existing videos but uh that's pretty much it hope you guys enjoyed the video I have all links to accessories and all the steam deck goodies down below and I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Specter

Views: 64,904

Keywords: steam deck oled, steam deck, steam deck oled emulation, steam deck oled tips, steam deck oled vs steam deck, steam deck oled 2 months later, steam deck oled vs gaming pc, specter, steam deck oled linux, steam deck oled vs rog ally, valve, steam os, best gaming handheld, steam deck oled gameplay, steam deck oled long term review, best budget handheld, steam deck accessories

Id: lsXPj1q3C38

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024