Everything Valve Has Upgraded to the New OLED Steam Deck
This week, gamers were in for a pleasant surprise: the announcement of Valve’s new Steam Deck OLED . Besides the same great software system as the OG Steam Deck , the new Steam Deck OLED offers some minimal (but also important) upgrades to Valve’s handheld device. Here are the main findings.
Steam Deck OLED Display Specifications
The biggest difference between the Steam Deck OLED model and the LCD is, unsurprisingly, the display. The new Steam Deck OLED display offers the same 1280 x 800 resolution as the original, but it’s powered by an HDR OLED panel that delivers brighter colors and deeper blacks than the optically coupled LCD in the original.
In addition, Valve has slightly expanded the Steam Deck’s OLED panel, increasing its diagonal from a 7-inch display to a 7.4-inch display. It’s not a huge difference, but it does give gamers a little more screen real estate without affecting the console’s overall form factor.
Here are the full specs that Valve has proposed for the Steam Deck OLED:
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Display: 7.4″ HDR OLED display with 1280 x 800 resolution, 90Hz refresh rate and 1000 nits HDR peak brightness (600 nits typical)
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Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD or 1TB NVMe SSD (depending on model selected)
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Chip: 6nm APU
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Communication: Wi-Fi 6E.
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Battery life: 50Wh battery; 3-12 hours of gameplay (depending on content)
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Size: 298 mm x 117 mm x 49 mm
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Weight: 640 grams
What else has changed?
It’s not just the display: the Steam Deck’s OLED display has also received other tweaks and updates that should help deliver a more efficient gaming experience.
First, the company says the new 6nm APU is more efficient, and upgraded memory should help improve latency and power management (of course, we won’t know how the improved specs will translate to real-world use until we actually get our hands on hands on topic).
The increased thermal module should also help solve the console’s heat distribution problem. The original Steam Deck tends to heat up very quickly, especially if you’re playing a more resource-intensive game like Starfield or Red Dead Redemption 2 . The company has improved the charging speed of the OLED model, promising that you can charge it from 20% to 80% in 45 minutes.
Valve also increased the OLED display’s refresh rate from 60Hz to 90Hz and upgraded peak brightness to 1,000 nits for HDR content, making the screen more readable in bright light. (The original only reached 400 nits.) The touchscreen is also improved by increasing the polling rate. Updated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support should also mean less latency when connecting controllers and other peripherals, and Valve says you should see an increase in loading speeds as well. This last point sounds like a nice upgrade over the original, as the Steam Deck’s LCD often takes hours to load games that would only take 20-30 minutes on my PC.
There are also plenty of minor changes, including the fact that the new model is slightly lighter (29 grams difference in weight). One downside: Valve won’t be making a 256GB OLED version of the Steam Deck—Steam Deck now starts at 512GB, meaning the entry-level model costs more than before.
Buy Steam Deck OLED… or Steam Deck LCD at a discount?
While the Steam Deck OLED is undoubtedly Valve’s preferred version of the portable console going forward, the company is still selling the Steam Deck LCD – at least until supplies run out. Steam even now offers the old system at a discount. If price is your most important factor, you can save $150 over the cost of an OLED Steam Deck by choosing the LCD model.
Steam Deck OLED will officially release on November 16th. The 512GB version will be available for $549, while the 1TB version will be available for $649. If you live in the US or Canada, you’ll also have the option to purchase the 1TB Limited Edition model for $679.