PC Steam Deck OLED officially announced, update: "A beautiful display upgrade - and so much more" (Digital Foundry review)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Officially announced.

 

Steam Deck™

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Steam Deck™ is the most powerful, full-featured gaming handheld in the world.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

So, no performance improvement?

[best3444]

@stepee

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

So, no performance improvement?

 

No - we're a ways away from that.

[Jason]

[AbsolutSurgen]

Available Nov. 16th -- apparently not available in Canada.

[Keyser_Soze]

I wish they'd offer a trade in. I'd take the upgrade but I don't want to go through the hassle of getting rid of my current one.

[stepee]

I need to know if it’s 120hz vrr  - I wouldn’t replace my ally as my main handheld pc because it’s too far back power wise - but as my streamer?

[AbsolutSurgen]

3 minutes ago, stepee said:

I need to know if it’s 120hz vrr  - I wouldn’t replace my ally as my main handheld pc because it’s too far back power wise - but as my streamer?

It's only 90Hz.

[ThreePi]

4 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I wish they'd offer a trade in. I'd take the upgrade but I don't want to go through the hassle of getting rid of my current one.

 

Kinda same here. Maybe if someone here wants one I can make a deal.

[Paperclyp]

I think I’m gonna wait until the second iteration of hardware. 

[HardAct]

21 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Officially announced.

 

Steam Deck™

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Steam Deck™ is the most powerful, full-featured gaming handheld in the world.

 

NOT THE MOST POWERFUL HANDHELD ! {says this under first pic: Steam Deck™ is the most powerful, full-featured gaming handheld in the world.}

   But........

  Dammit Jim, I WANT ONE. I didn't really care to upgrade the switch when the Oled was released because I rarely play it, but the Steam deck gets a fair amount of use! I play the ROD Ally more though so probably gonna wait to upgrade until the Ally has an Oled screen!

[HardAct]

7 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I wish they'd offer a trade in. I'd take the upgrade but I don't want to go through the hassle of getting rid of my current one.

This would be great and I'd jump on that today!

[stepee]

I don’t see the reserve for $5 thing and it says it’s not available in my country - are there store issues or is it that on Nov 16th that we put in $5 for the preorder?

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, stepee said:

I don’t see the reserve for $5 thing and it says it’s not available in my country - are there store issues or is it that on Nov 16th?

I saw the same.  I assumed it was because I was in Canada -- maybe I was wrong.

[AbsolutSurgen]

@stepeeI was wrong:

[HardAct]

So it's an Oled 7.4" vs LCD 7" why the larger screen too, wouldn't that mean they had to completely remake the units to accept this new screen? The Bigger battery is nice and it's on 6nm vs 7mn on mine. What's the benefit there? COOLING? it's not faster AT ALL but completely redesigned to hold a .4" bigger screen? Seems odd, and it's WiFi 6 too I guess. Limited edition? Why? Just seems odd that it'll have all this in the way of change but no performance boost other than longer battery and I still want one!

 

Will Attempt to Preorder one anyways while I ponder why I feel I have to have this....lol

[stepee]

Ok so they aren’t doing the reserve thing? It’s confusing because there is that shot up there showing it (though greyed out)

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, HardAct said:

So it's an Oled 7.4" vs LCD 7" why the larger screen too, wouldn't that mean they had to completely remake the units to accept this new screen? The Bigger battery is nice and it's on 6nm vs 7mn on mine. What's the benefit there? COOLING? it's not faster AT ALL but completely redesigned to hold a .4" bigger screen? Seems odd, and it's WiFi 6 too I guess. Limited edition? Why? Just seems odd that it'll have all this in the way of change but no performance boost other than longer battery and I still want one!

6nm should lower production costs (smaller die) -- also lowers power draw which gives it better battery performance.

Case dimensions look the same.

It's not a limited edition, just a minor hardware update.

[Spork3245]

Make sure you get the 1tb for the EXCLUSIVE START UP MOVIE

[AbsolutSurgen]

[HardAct]

11 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

6nm should lower production costs (smaller die) -- also lowers power draw which gives it better battery performance.

Case dimensions look the same.

It's not a limited edition, just a minor hardware update.

 

Thought I saw it say limited edition which I thought was weird, but anyway. here's the Verge's review

 

Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster - The Verge

WWW.THEVERGE.COM

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Valve has pulled a Nintendo, and we’re here for it.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

19 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I think I’m gonna wait until the second iteration of hardware. 

 

That's at least "two or three years" away according to Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang:

 

From today's Bloomberg article:

 

Quote

 

Next up, Yang said his team will work on a Steam Deck 2, which will feature a "next-generation" power upgrade but won't be available for at least two or three years. Unlike with many past experiments, Valve appears to be committed to the device for the long term.

 

"A lot of folks at the company are excited about this product," Yang said. "We are very invested in the Steam Deck."

 

 

[HardAct]

9 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

    Screen is noticeably bigger in that pic, interesting! OK I WANT ONE!! maybe sell my 512gig unit. Smark man just dismisses the "SHINY NEW" thing and waits for an performance update with an Oled! I've never really been to smart when it comes to these type things. Thus why I have a Switch, Steam deck and an Ally that in all fairness do not get the play time that that kind of money should justify but I digress.

 

They need to put in Hall Effect sticks too then it's a supreme version by far IMHO that is. I put them in mine and did the soldering so the trackpads work and they really do make a great upgrade for anyone willing to do a little bit of tinkering. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Steam Deck OLED review: a beautiful display upgrade - and so much more

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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The Digital Foundry review verdict on Valve's mid-generation Steam Deck refresh.

 

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Let's be clear, the brand new Steam Deck OLED isn't just the original machine with a brand new display. Excluding the outer shell, it's essentially a top to bottom revamp of the entire machine and perhaps the most extensive mid-generation 'console refresh' I've seen. But let's give that beautiful new display its due: it's bigger, brighter, runs at 90Hz and in combination with enhancements to SteamOS, you get full HDR support too. Boot up Ori and the Will of the Wisps for some class-leading HDR and you quickly realise that Valve has delivered home cinema display fidelity to a handheld games machine. It's simply stunning.

 

Side-by-side with the original Deck, the handheld itself looks much the same as the first generation offering but as soon as you power up the unit, you'll see an extraordinary, night and day improvement over the standard model. Valve cites a million to one contrast ratio (par for the course with OLED) along with a 110 percent P3 wide colour gamut and a 90Hz refresh rate. In terms of peak brightness with HDR highlights, the display hits 1000 nits - a huge improvement over the lacklustre 400 nits in the original LCD. The display itself is larger too: 7.4 inches up against the 7-inch screen of the launch machine, which essentially translates into smaller bezels.

 

 

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The rest of the Steam Deck remains much the same as the original, except that it's cooler, quieter and lighter. There's only a 30g difference between Steam OLED and the launch model, but weirdly, it's very easy to tell the difference and to appreciate it while playing. Acoustics are far less intrusive owing to a larger fan (which can spin less quickly to displace the same amount of heat) along with the introduction of a 6nm process shrink on the custom AMD Van Gogh processor. This chip's more efficient than its 7nm predecessor, meaning reduced power draw and less heat. The end result is that while the new Deck isn't quite in Switch territory in terms of its audio profile, it's noticeably less loud than the launch Steam Deck.

 

The revised processor is also paired up with 6400MT/s memory, a step up from the 5500MT/s modules found in the original Deck. While Valve says that the performance target of the new Deck is unchanged from the old one, I actually found that the revised model is around two percent to nine percent faster than the original, depending on content. More memory bandwidth (and lower latency, according to Valve) is very, very helpful for AMD APUs and it may well be the case that the extra efficiency on the new processor also extracts a little more performance from the chip, bearing in mind that overall TDP remains at 15W, just like the original.

 

 

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Valve's Steam Deck refresh sees the engineers touch just about every element of the machine, with a keen eye on improving the user experience every time. The most noticeable aspect of this comes from battery life. The HDR screen is actually more efficient than its LCD predecessor, and we've already discussed the benefits of the new 6nm processor. However, nuking battery life issues from orbit is achieved via a bigger battery - 50WHr in the new Deck vs 40WHr in the old one.

 

Even without the extra enhancements, you're looking at 25 percent more battery then, but the extra efficiencies elsewhere add a subtle multiplier effect that gets you anything from 30 percent to 50 percent more game time, according to Valve. I chose a static scene in Cyberpunk 2077 to get an idea of how everything compares in a like-for-like scenario and ended up with anything from a circa 42 to 45 percent boost to battery life.

 

 

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Valve's list of additional improvements is too long to list here but the highlights include a WiFi 6E upgrade for a notional 3x improvement to download times, faster charging times, faster resume times from standby, a 180Hz polling rate on the new touchscreen, a new Bluetooth 5.3 module with a dedicated antenna allowing for WiFi and BT to be used simultaneously, while haptics and the trackpad are also improved. Steam Deck's already best-in-class audio is now louder with more bass, with the thumbsticks also receiving subtle improvements. Valve also cites improved repairability with more durable screws with metal bosses, while the display can be swapped out without having to remove the rear of the unit.

 

All told then, Steam Deck OLED is substantially improved across the board and its arrival also shakes up the range of available options. There's still a $399 entry point, but it's basically a first-gen Deck with a 256GB SSD - an appreciable improvement over the older model with 64GB of eMMC flash but lacking all of the refinements brought about by the OLED model. $549 gets you the new hardware with a 512GB SSD, while $649 endows you with 1TB of storage instead.

 

 

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Criticisms? Well, I'd have liked to have seen another USB-C port and prospective users also need to accept that we're a long way off from a new Steam Deck arriving - and there's no doubt that some of the more demanding games don't run great with the existing performance level. That said, you'll never be short of titles that do play exceptionally well - and the OLED screen is an excellent reason to revisit some of your library titles. Batman Arkham Knight was my first port of call and I did not come away disappointed.

 

With competing Windows handhelds delivering more power at the expense of a good user experience and decent battery life, what was arguably the best PC portable money can buy is now much, much better. Valve describes Steam Deck OLED as the definitive first generation model and it's hard to disagree, but that does a disservice to the firm's overall achievements in the handheld space since the original launched in early 2022.

 

 

 

[stepee]

3 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

That's at least "two or three years" away according to Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang:

 

From today's Bloomberg article:

 

 

 

Valve says making an OLED Steam Deck would be more work than people assume | VGC

WWW.VIDEOGAMESCHRONICLE.COM

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The company "understands the limitations" of the current screen…

 

idk we will see how long it really is :P

[stepee]

I remember ROG wasn’t super obvious that it was a vrr screen at first..has anyone actually confirmed either way besides it not mentioning?

[Biggie]

46 minutes ago, best3444 said:

@stepee

 

I was thinking the exact same thing lol

[AbsolutSurgen]

5 minutes ago, stepee said:

I remember ROG wasn’t super obvious that it was a vrr screen at first..has anyone actually confirmed either way besides it not mentioning?

Eurogamer said it didn't have VRR in the article above.

[HardAct]

I HAD TOTALLY forgotten about the large black border around the SD, so I now see how they were able to put a .4" larger screen in without a total redesign of the chassis. Actually after looking at the pic comparison the SD could theredicolly have an 8" oled with no black borders?? 

 

Honestly I just want all this in a ROG ALLY 2.0 It's much better at PC gaming and plays game pass games. Give me an Ally with a 7.5" oled, Hall Effect sticks, longer battery, faster wifi, a second USB-C port and a performance boost for $799.99-849.99 and I'll be a very happy gamer. They Oled SD though sounds tempting but it's not going to make me use it more other than maybe the first week or so. Having The ROG Ally along side the SD it's night and day the amount of things you can use it for being a FULL version windows handheld is pretty great. Could be better and I suspect these are exactly what the folks at ASUS are thinking. I REALLY do wish these handheld companies would consider at the very least the better Hall Effect sticks as there dot easily replaceable like say a Nswitch's thus making it in my eyes a no brainer!! I guess the added cost of say 15 bucks is to much? 

 

The internal storage in mute in my opinion as you can add a 2TB microSD so saving at least some money there. 2TB micros are dirt cheap these days for even the EVOs.

[stepee]

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

Eurogamer said it didn't have VRR in the article above.

 

Yeah I see now too in the Verge review:

 

”Valve display tech expert Jeremy Selan tells me that variable refresh rate (VRR) “didn’t quite make it into this revision,” so the Steam Deck OLED can still easily run into stutter when games can’t keep up with the refresh rate you select. And while you can now select from an incredible range of frame rates all the way from 10fps to 90fps, some of which divide nicely into the refresh rates Valve’s new screen supports, I’m finding it takes a lot of trial and error to see which games work with which refresh options. 30fps should scale beautifully to 90Hz, but I’m only seeing that work in some titles. Even 60/60 wasn’t perfectly smooth in everything I’ve tried.”

 

Actually reading that idk, that sounds such a huge step back for standard usability vs 120hzvrr on ROG even for streaming, especially with frame gen, it makes everything a pain to set right.

 

Also with it being linux, you only get games working on hdr if they aren’t relying on Windows hdr, which a lot of games do. And obviously no Autohdr. And there are like no hdr apps on linux and Moonlight will obviously need to be updated.

 

I’d be like 5x more pumped if it was the rog ally oled with an hdr/oled screen as the only change.

[best3444]

9 minutes ago, Biggie said:

I was thinking the exact same thing lol

 

Since I gave him a heads up he said he is buying me the oled version for Christmas. 🎄 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, stepee said:

 

Yeah I see now too in the Verge review:

 

”Valve display tech expert Jeremy Selan tells me that variable refresh rate (VRR) “didn’t quite make it into this revision,” so the Steam Deck OLED can still easily run into stutter when games can’t keep up with the refresh rate you select. And while you can now select from an incredible range of frame rates all the way from 10fps to 90fps, some of which divide nicely into the refresh rates Valve’s new screen supports, I’m finding it takes a lot of trial and error to see which games work with which refresh options. 30fps should scale beautifully to 90Hz, but I’m only seeing that work in some titles. Even 60/60 wasn’t perfectly smooth in everything I’ve tried.”

 

Actually reading that idk, that sounds such a huge step back for standard usability vs 120hzvrr on ROG even for streaming, especially with frame gen, it makes everything a pain to set right.

 

Also with it being linux, you only get games working on hdr if they aren’t relying on Windows hdr, which a lot of games do. And obviously no Autohdr. And there are like no hdr apps on linux and Moonlight will obviously need to be updated.

 

I’d be like 5x more pumped if it was the rog ally oled with an hdr/oled screen as the only change.

You're an evil man for posting black text.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Valve says "technology doesn't exist" yet for full Steam Deck 2.0

WWW.EUROGAMER.NET

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Don't expect Steam Deck 2.0 anytime soon, Valve has said, as the technology to launch a handheld with an adequately bee…

 

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Don't expect Steam Deck 2.0 anytime soon, Valve has said, as the technology to launch a handheld with an adequately beefy jump in power just doesn't yet exist.

 

Speaking to Eurogamer ahead of today's Steam Deck OLED announcement, Valve engineers discussed the features it is adding to its shinier new handheld model that were not possible to provide back when the original Steam Deck debuted.

 

The company also said it was working on game projects - plural - right now which were still targeting current Steam Deck hardware performance levels (which remain unchanged in the OLED).

 

 

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"Both the screen and the battery were fairly obvious things we'd have liked to do early on," Valve veteran and Steam Deck product designer Greg Coomer told me, when discussing what the company had most wanted to improve with the launch of Steam Deck OLED.

 

"But the screen, I think it's the biggest example of something we would have shipped in the first-generation model but we weren't able to do so because OLED screens with these characteristics in this size just did not exist.

 

"Back then, we really couldn't engage with a display manufacturer to do exactly what we were after because they didn't really understand the product category, or who would be buying the screen, or why it would matter. Now that picture has changed and we're able to get custom work done."

 

 

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But what couldn't Valve include? Or at least, not include yet? Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said that "even more performance" was the answer - and it was here we entered the territory of what Valve would consider a full Steam Deck 2.0.

 

"Obviously we'd love to get even more performance in the same power envelope, but that technology doesn't exist yet," Aldehayyat said. "That's what I think we'd call a Steam Deck 2.0.

 

"The first Steam Deck was the first moment in time where we felt like there was enough GPU performance in a portable form factor that lets you play all your Steam games. We would love for the trend of perf-per-watt to progress rapidly to do that, but it's not quite there yet."