Valve's New Steam Deck OLED is Genius, Here's Why

I've had my steam deck OLED for a few weeks and initially I didn't even really want it but when the pre-orders went live I just went straight for the limited edition model I love the way that there's that transparent shell on there I'm a big nerd when it comes to that stuff but I digress now that I've had the steam deck OLED in my hands for a few weeks I've started to see the contrast between that and the LCD model and I've started to formulate whether or not this is something that I would recommend to somebody that is either coming from the LCD model to the OLED or just going straight to the OLED and getting into the steam deck ecosystem that's there but I'm just going to save you some time is this worth the upgrade yes there are a lot of changes with the pricing structure of the steam Deck with the launch of the OLED version for instance they're going to go ahead and get rid of the 64 GB model as well as the 512 GB model they're going to sell it at a discounted rate or a price drop while supplies last they're going to keep the 256 LCD model as the new entry model so that's going to be $399 whereas the 512 GB OLED model and the 1 TB OLED model those are going to replace the top tier models so you have that those being $549 USD and $649 USD respectively one of the beautiful things that valve did with the steam deck OLED is that it's the exact same dimensions as the steam deck LCD that means that any sort of accessories or anything that you had for the original steam deck work perfectly fine for the steam deck OLED like today's sponsor satisfi they have a stealth grip case that you can go ahead and get that protects not only your steam deck but also everything around it including the pads in the back and the thumb sticks themselves along with a hard shell cover for the front and it also comes with a screen protector to protect that beautiful screen that's there there's going to be links in the description below that you can go ahead and follow to see for yourself but thanks to satisfy for sponsoring this video with the steam deck OLED limited edition it's going to go ahead and come in this case all you have to do is just un velcro that and just pop this open and from there you're going to get your steam deck which is readily available with this case though I love the fact that you can actually go ahead and remove the inside of it to kind of give you a small thinner uh case that's much lighter obviously you're going to lose the space for the AC adapter to go ahead and go with you if you're traveling but this is a nice to have in comparison to other things it kind of reminds me a little bit of the case from tomt which uh looks like this and you can go ahead and fit your steam deck there without any problems at all you don't have to worry about anything this is actually a little bit more sturdier than this case from valve without the external component if you're just using the insides of this to go ahead and take your steam deck around I would probably recommend going with this you're still going to sacrifice the space for your AC adapter but it's a nice to have and it works really really well now on top of everything that's here you are also going to get an AC adapter that comes in a nice little pouch like this if you're upgrading from the LCD D version of the steam deck to the OLED this wire on this AC adapter is extremely long in comparison and obviously you know if you're playing in bed or on the couch or whatever it may be it is nice to have because you're going to be able to have a little bit more mobility in comparison to the old AC adapter but all in all you can still switch to and from as I've been doing with the AC adapters that are out there for the regular steam deck and the steam deck when it comes to the iio of the steam deck OLED it's pretty much exactly as it was with the steam deck LCD so if you're familiar with that that then you'll know more or less what to expect but if it's your first time around dealing with a steam deck over here you have your volume rocker or your volume buttons then your 3.5 mm Jack your exhaust vent is right over here and your USB C port and power button you also have your left and right uh shoulder buttons and triggers and on the back side you have four programmable back paddles that you can go ahead and program to whatever it is that you want as well as your intake for your uh heat dissipation on the bottom you have a micro SD card slot but it's really on the front that there's a lot of ACC action that comes into play so you have your d-pad you have your analog sticks and you also have your face buttons that are very similar to uh the face buttons that are on an Xbox controller so if you're used to that this is going to feel right at home for you then you have your start and select buttons and over here you have your steam menu that lets you allow all sorts of things if you want to go ahead and go into desktop mode you just go into power and then switch to desktop mode and it'll take you into uh Linux desktop I'll talk a little bit more about that later on and then there's your quick access menu if this is your first time going into a steam deck or the Steam OS here's pretty much everything that you need to go ahead and worry about when it comes to adjusting settings for the most part if you don't want to mess with any of this stuff you don't have to but it is a nice to have so you can adjust the the settings in terms of brightness audio your microphone functionality your Wi-Fi airplane mode and so on and so forth and then here in the performance is where a lot of people like to start tweaking with things so you can uh see the performance layer or overlay the here and that pretty much gives you or changes the amount of information that you get while you're playing a game whether it's frames GPU battery consumption so on and so forth you also get this uh projected battery life which fluctuates depending on what the game is demanding in terms of power so if you're playing something that's a 2d title or uh something that's like a side scoler a pixel game that isn't really too intensive in terms of processing that's when you're going to see that six to seven maybe eight hours of of battery life or projected battery life that you would uh see on here if you're playing a AAA title like balder's gate or um Tales of a rise or something like that that's where you're going to see that 2ish maybe 3ish hours of battery life and it also depends in terms of like how uh much graphical Fidelity there is or like how far you want to push the GPU and the CPU on this thing obviously you can adjust the uh frame rate as well is limit the Hertz refresh rate on this you can disable uh the frame limit overall you can allow tearing uh half half rate shading still doesn't look as good as I would like there's also a TDP limit so you can limit the amount of power that your uh TDP or the amount of wattage that your TDP has set to then there is uh adjusting the uh GPU clock frequency as well as any sort of upscaling uh so a lot of people they've heard of dlss uh that's essentially deep learning super sampling and it you can do the same thing with amd's equivalent of uh FSR and it does a pretty good job but the thing is that because it's 1,00 by 800 pixels it's something that I you don't really see too much benefit uh obviously that can change if you connect or dock this and you're projecting it onto a television then you can kind of you know upscale it to 1080 I don't recommend doing 4K for anything that is 3D 2D maybe you might be able to get away with it same thing with 1440 but 1080 is more than enough when it comes to the grand scheme of things if you install Dey loader it's going to be uh popping up right here on the bottom and from here you can go ahead and adjust the different things that are readily available for you there are a lot of changes into the internal components between the Steam deck OLED and the steam deck LCD but I'll go ahead and I'll put the specifications on screen right now but the biggest things at least in my opinion that make a contrast between the two models are the fact that the a& Apu is much more efficient which means that we're going to have less heat to worry about less fan noise less battery consumption and so on and so forth there's also the fact that it's an OLED screen so you're going to have less pixels that are going to be turning on which means that it's just going to be overall more energy efficient the haptics have been improved the touch screen pulling rate has been improved which means that it's much more sensitive and much more accurate in terms of doing any sort of touch inputs the battery is larger the Wi-Fi chip is faster and overall it's just a better experience in terms of having a less PC like experience and more of a handheld console like experience now all of these things are great on paper but what does that really culminate to in a real world experience is this something that is worth your investment worth your time and overall worth your money in terms of physical features the thumb sticks have been improved they're much more grippy and they just feel better overall in contrast to the original steam deck the original center of the analog stick on the original steam deck felt very plasticky and the ring or at least the outer rim of the analog stick felt grippy I mean it felt okay but it definitely feels lackluster in comparison to the OLED uh analog stick it just it's an overall Improvement the outside ring of it it feels much more grippy and the center has this rubber pad to it over time the one thing that I'm worried about is that over time this is going to wear down I mean when it comes to playing on a PS5 dual sense or an Xbox series controller or even the joycons from Nintendo over time those rubber pads on the analog scks they wear down so how easy is it going to be to change this on the steam deck from valve and is it going to be something that you don't have to take apart the steam deck in order to get it fixed there are some people that are out there that they just want to buy the steam deck they want to play on it they don't want to take it apart and that's totally understandable is this going to be easy to replace in the future only time will tell but it is something to think about and consider whenever you're talking about the contrast between the joysticks I do have to go ahead and mention how good that d-pad is in terms of improvement from the original the original d-pad on the steam deck wasn't that great and it left a lot to be desired at least for me but when it comes to the steam deck OLED there's a little bit more of a pivot in the center there's a little bit more of a dimple in the center so it makes it easier to actually go ahead and play some of the 2D titles that you would really pretty much use a d-pad to play whether it's a fighting game whether it's a 2d Metroid Vania or sides scroller whatever it may be it just feels much more comfortable and the Retro titles that are out there as well if you're emulating on this thing feel awesome whenever I'm playing on any PC handheld not just the steam deck but also the r Ally and the legion go I'm typically attached to a wall outlet because the battery on all of these things are pretty atrocious regardless of how you look at it now with the steam deck OLED valve has gone ahead and said that we're going to get 30 to 50% more battery life in contrast to the original steam deck LCD I was excited because normally whenever I do game on the steam deck it's either on the couch or in bed or whatever it may be and whenever even when I travel even when I take my steam Deck with me whenever I'm traveling out and about it's something that I always have to ensure is connected to a wall or an outlet or whatever it may be so this is something that I find uh pretty intriguing I was enticed I wanted to go ahead and see how it was now in my decky loader video I talked about some of the plugins that are there I did find something that came from Steam de HQ and from there you can find a bunch of recommended settings to get the best battery or the best performance in terms of like frames wattage and all this and that I've used that that to kind of dictate whether or not I should use these settings or whatever it may be to get the best experience whenever I'm playing a game now for the most part that 30 to 50% that valve has gone ahead and said we would experience I have experienced myself in terms of playing games overall and I've enjoyed it because I can play more games that I've wanted to play on the go without having to worry about any sort of you know running out of battery or whatever it may be it's just something that is nice at least for me and it makes the experience in terms of handheld gaming much better when it comes to emulation you don't really have to worry about battery consumption at all I mean we all know that those older titles they don't take too much battery as is so it makes things very easy to use one of my biggest gripes with the original steam deck was its screen for a lot of people they kind of said hey no I can adjust the settings I can use decky loader to get everything going and use vibrant deck which is currently broken right now but when it comes down to it the screen the panels that were on the original LCD models were just not good they were just bad they did really bad job in terms of representing the colors so I went and kind of preferred the Rog allies screen because it was just much more vibrant it colored way more of the color spectrum and when it came down to the steam deck OLED they fixed that and my goodness is it so freaking good not only is it an improved screen in terms of refresh rate because you're going from 60 HZ to a 90 HZ refresh rate but the colors that are represented are just so much better I honestly have nothing bad to say about this screen it color it covers everything that I wanted in terms of color and it just does a phenomenal job once I get a game running that does hit that 90 HZ refresh rate it's seamless it's smooth and I absolutely adore it obviously there are larger titles looking at balers Gate 3 and other games that have been recently coming out that are AAA titles that are a little bit more taxing that make it difficult to hit hit you know 60 maybe even 90 Herz but having that extra refresh rate going on does make it a little bit seamless and uh kind of helps when it comes to actually handling and dealing with the lower frames the one thing that I do wish that this screen had was vrr support now I know that you know Beggars can't be choosers and that we got 90 HZ on an OLED which is absolutely awesome but I wish that we had VR support for playing games that are sub 60fps to just have that smoother SC less experience while gaming on the go obviously I'm happy with what we have I'm happy with the colors that are represented I'm happy with the Herz refresh rate I'm happy overall that it's there I kind of wish that there was a bump up in resolution but I understand why valve decided to go ahead and keep that resolution there and keep the aspect ratio the way that it is especially when you're dealing with an APU that all B it is 6 nmet is still better but I I digress when it comes to the screen I'm happy with what we have I just I wish that we had that vrr support depending on which model you get you might get the premium anti-glare Edge screen which comes with a 1 tbte model or you might get just a regular OLED screen that comes with a 512 GB model I don't have the 512 GB model I only have the one terab model I mean I buy these off of my own dime anyways but I wanted to go ahead and test that whole anti-glare screen and compare it to something so I did compare it to the LCD model that I do have and I did also compare this to another OLED panel that I have in a handheld and that's the Nintendo switch OLED I know that it's kind of two different companies so it's really hard to compare and contrast the two but what I really wanted to see is how that premium anti-glare etched screen compares to just a regular OLED screen without any sort of anti-glare anything on that what I ended up doing was going to the window that's just outside of the frame of the shot and opened up the window lending as much light as possible and saw whether or not this was going to make a big impact now realistically speaking we're not going to be playing with the sun just beaming down on our handheld as is and if you are God speed but at the end of the day I would rather just go ahead and go into a shady corner and just play there versus being out in the bright sunlight if you do find yourself in a brightly lit area where you do need to go ahead and push the screen to the max it can only go to 600 nits which sounds not that much but it's actually pretty awesome in comparison to the original steam deck but if you do play HDR games or games that support HDR you can get all the way up to 1,000 is now there aren't that many games that are out there as far as I can tell but the amount of games that are HDR supported or support HDR are continuously growing as time progresses when I was talking about using the Rog Ally as my main go-to for playing balers gate a lot of people in the comments said that hey you should just go ahead and get your steam deck use steam link and just play on the steam deck itself and just stream the game from your local computer Wi-Fi network whatever it may be and yeah that's right that is something that you could go ahead and and do with the Wi-Fi 6E chip on this handheld it just makes things so much easier so much faster and there's a lot more bandwidth in order to go ahead and get things going and running consistently obviously with Wi-Fi 7 just coming out and being like more of like a major thing there is a lot more consistency in contrast to Wi-Fi 60 but that's a completely different conversation that being said that is an option if you want to go ahead and extend battery life while playing on your local area network in terms of the Wi-Fi 6E chip or the upgraded Wi-Fi chip on the steam deck OLED it really depends and I hate to say this but anything that's Network related is just it really depends if your network at home is Wi-Fi 6E or higher then you will be able to reap the benefits of this new chip I saw anywhere between 100 to 125 megabits per second faster than the regular steam deck but if you don't have a Wi-Fi 6E or higher Wi-Fi network at home then you're really not going to be able to reap the benefits when it comes to the download speeds personally I download everything connected to the steam deck doc anyways but if you're in a pinch or you just don't have a dock by any means then this is something to take into consideration I don't play Too Many online games over Wi-Fi on my steam deck as is I prefer to play a lot of single player experiences so I don't really have to worry too much about my ping or whatever it may be but when I was texting it was pretty fast honestly I was actually kind of surprised when I was comparing the speakers from the OLED to the LCD model it felt like the speakers on the OLED just I don't know were richer in terms of sound but when it came to volume it kind of felt on par so I pulled out the deci meter just to test it out and we'll check it [Music] out as you can see the difference is probably one or two DB on average so I really wouldn't say that they're much louder but they still feel much richer at least to my ears I've tested and gamed on multiple PC gaming handhelds and out of all of them the steam deck still reain Supreme when it comes to comfort the ergonomics of the handheld itself paired on top with how the weight is evenly distributed and everything else that's tied with making sure that you feel comfortable while you're gaming on this handheld is literally unparalleled even with the Rog Ally even with the legion go there's just there's nothing that really quite matches the comfort that comes with your steam Deck with the steam deck OLED I'm happy to say that it is slightly lighter I didn't really notice it at first but then as I started gaming on I was like wow this this does feel lighter this feels like it's less so I went I weight it out you're looking at roughly 30 35 G less weight on the steam dech all somehow they figured out a way to just make it lighter and what that means is that you're going to have less fatigue over gaming over extended periods of time and it's just going to feel much more comfortable to game on there honestly it's a win-win when it comes to the ergonomics of this handheld the desktop mode on the steam deck OLED is exactly what you would expect if you're coming from the steam deck LCD that being said if this is going to be your first steam deck imagine it pretty much turning you into a fully fledged Linux PC now me being a Windows user first experiencing this for the first time I was kind of taken back because I'd never messed with Linux as far as an OS is concerned I've had plenty of Linux based devices in the past but never like a full desktop experience there are plenty of tutorials online showing you the ins and outs and kind of kind of like the basics of understanding how to navigate through the OS but I always recommend using a wireless keyboard or Mouse and an external monitor just to make it easier to go ahead and navigate towards things obviously go with a dock of some kind I prefer the dock from valve it's just officially supported it's constantly getting updates in terms of the firmware but you can always go with a cheaper alternative there are plenty of third party docs that are out there that work just fine the only thing is that if you want a firmware update of some kind if they release it you have to go to the manufacturer's website in order to get that from them but for the most part they just all work seamlessly whenever I'm playing games on my steam deck OLED though the experience is more or less what I got out of the steam deck LCD yes technically the Apu is 6 nanm and yes it is a better more efficient processor but at the end of the day it's going to be exactly the same I mean it's within margin of error we're talking about one or two frames here and there but it's nothing that is enough for me to say yes this is a generational leap from one to the other I feel like the steam deck OLED overall is more of a refinement of what was already good they pretty much took everything that was there received all of the criticism and I'll be it some of it was harsh but all of the criticism that was there from its original launch refined it and made everything that was here so much better if you're new into PC gaming if this is going to be your first PC gaming handheld then this is probably an awesome first step simply because there's not too much that you have to worry about in terms of changing settings or doing anything crazy to get the best frames or best experience possible most games they have an auto detect feature where it'll detect all of your settings all of your Hardware that's there and adjust everything so that it is the best experience possible given the hardware limitations that are on the steam deck if you want to dive deeper and you want to tweak and you want to adjust settings so that you can get it exactly the way that you want both visually and in terms of performance and in terms of battery then yeah you can go ahead and do that but you don't have to this is probably why the steam deck is one of the larger PC handhelds that are out there because valve did a really good job in terms of figuring out how we can go ahead and deliver a conso like experience on a PC with satisfying not only newcomers to the PC space but also satisfying the long-term users of the PC space see this is really truly where the steam deck shines in comparison to the legion go and the r Ally some people that are new to PC gaming don't want to deal with crazy driver updates they don't want to deal with tweaking all of these different settings that are there and I'll Bey it Windows is great I mean I'm literally recording this on a Windows PC I edit everything on a Windows PC and for my job I work on a Windows PC but when it comes to gaming for people that come from the console world and look at the Nintendo switch and say I want something more and then they go for the steam deck OLED they're going to have a seamless transition for the most part obviously there's some things that they need to learn but the steam deck community and the Steam Community overall is welcoming with open arms there are a lot of people that are out there like oh I've experienced that before let me help you let me go ahead and show you how to go ahead and and get this situated now if you do have a steam deck LCD and you're interested in getting a steam deck OLED that's really where it kind of becomes a depend scenario onto whether or not you should actually get this for yourself because there are a lot of things that are here a lot of improvements that are here in contrast to the steam de LCD but if you're looking for getting the most frames possible on a handheld this is probably not something that you would want to go ahead and go for yes the OLED screen is phenomenal but if you want everything in terms of just performance being the top priority that's where I would recommend the Rog Ally or the legion go but if you want to just go ahead and level up your steam deck experience without improving the performance then this is probably the best route for you sell the steam deck LCD to somebody that doesn't want it or give it to a sibling family member or just a friend that you want to go ahead and give something to especially around this time of year and then go ahead and get the steam deck OLED for yourself the steam deck OLED is larger than the sum of its parts and everything that here with the steam deck OLED just goes ahead and shows that valve really understands what it is that its users want and also provides the best value possible without really truly breaking the bank I for one don't really feel like this is a cash grab I feel that this is much more of a refinement really true to the end of it it's a refinement they've done everything that they could to change and improve and make things better in terms of the overall experience that the steam deck provides now if you want to go ahead and go with more frames you want to get the highest performance possible then I'd recommend either the Rog Ally or the legion go both of these have the Z1 extreme chip set and they just allow for much more power and much more frames but obviously there is a bit of a drawback with the battery but check those out let me know what you guys think in the comments below and until next time guys I'll see you on the next one peace

Channel: Baldly Rudy

Views: 58,890

Keywords: steam deck, pc gaming, handheld gaming, steam deck oled review, steam deck oled, steam deck review, steam deck oled vs. steam deck, steam os, oled steam deck review, steam deck oled should you buy, should you buy a steam deck, steam deck 2, steamdeck oled, steam deck oled vs rog ally, steam deck oled limited edition, steam deck oled vs legion go, steam deck oled mod, steam deck oled vs lcd, steam deck oled performance, steam deck oled unboxing, steam deck oled gameplay

Id: tKEUDdUjjDg

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 12 2023