- This is the brand new Steam Deck OLED.
Now, I have a few questions.
First and foremost, what exactly is new?
Because it looks pretty similar on the outside.
Does this have the performance
to keep up in 2024 and beyond?
And ultimately,
is it worth the upgrade over the original Steam Deck?
At first glance,
the Steam Deck OLED looks almost the exact same
as the original Steam Deck,
but the differences go far deeper than just skin deep.
That's pretty deep if you're deeper than skin deep,
some might say that's real deep.
- No, God, please, no!
- Immediately you'll notice the difference in the displays.
So both of them are 1280 by 800.
However, the OLED, as the name implies,
is a far nicer OLED panel.
Not only does it get way brighter,
600 nits in standard definition
and a 1000 nits for games that support HDR,
but on top of that,
the color and especially the contrast and viewing angles,
I mean it is a night and day difference.
On top of that, the Steam Deck OLED
does support a 90 hertz refresh rate,
which I didn't think was gonna be a huge deal,
but I'm surprised at how many games
I've actually been able to push above 60 FPS,
unlike the original Steam Deck
where I kind of left things sort of at 30 or 60
most of the time.
These days the Steam Deck is terrific,
but this screen always has felt
like a real cost cutting move
to get this thing out the door.
And I'm glad that Valve spent the time and the money
to have a custom display made
specifically for the Steam Deck OLED.
It makes a huge difference.
Now, beyond just the screen,
pretty much every other element of the Steam Deck
has been updated,
especially when you look
at the actual internals of these Steam Decks.
What we've got here
is a substantially different internal layout.
So on top we have the original Steam Deck,
which was a very competent device,
but the OLED is improved in pretty much every way.
So starting out with from the screen,
because it's not only that higher quality display,
but because it's an OLED, it actually means it's thinner,
which means that while the actual physical dimensions
of these two Steam Decks are very similar,
they were able to pack a lot more in the OLED.
Starting out with actually we've got the battery.
So they went from a 40 watt hour to a 50 watt hour battery.
So right from the jump we have 20% larger capacity.
They've also shrunk the chip.
So the original steam deck had a seven nanometer processor
where this has a six nanometer chip.
It's not a huge difference,
but it means it's a little bit smaller
and importantly a little bit more efficient.
Between that and the new display,
you should expect it to pull a couple fewer watts
while you're gaming,
and that combined with the larger battery,
according to Valve,
will give you between 30 to 50% more battery life.
It's an interesting choice because when you compare this
to like some of the Windows handhelds
that have the much more powerful Ryzen Z1 Extreme.
Those have a lot more sort of theoretical performance
and far worse battery life
because they're much more power hungry chips.
It feels like Valve were very much conservative
with the Steam Deck OLED because it is a difference.
It's certainly going to give you more battery life
and I've noticed that as well,
but you guys seeing a lot more performance.
I actually personally think that's a pretty reasonable trade
because they've also paired that with a lot of other things
to make this a more refined experience.
The Steam Deck OLED feels like the last couple of years
they've pretty much entirely been focused
on making a fully upgrade Steam Deck
and the amount of little tweaks and tuned things,
and like the stuff that they've done here to improve it
is truly impressive.
I mean, no, does it make the LCD completely irrelevant?
Absolutely not.
But there is not a single thing I can say
looking at this Steam Deck OLED compared to the original,
which is not an improvement,
look, literally, everything is different,
everything has been tweaked and tuned in,
even if it's a tiny little difference of like, dumb,
but look, they like color matched the ribbon cables.
It went from white and blue to black.
Does that matter at all? No.
Does it show that someone a Valve
really cared about every little element of this thing?
Yes, it does.
And when you compare that
with what Sony did with the PS5 Slim,
which if you haven't caught that video,
would highly recommend it
because essentially the PS5 Slim
has also done a sort of similar transformation
going from a seven to a six nanometer processor
and they've kinda shrink things down,
but every element of that PS5 Slim
is cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper.
This is technically more expensive but only by a few bucks.
We'll get into the pricing a little bit,
but it's clear that like
there was some real love and attention
that went into this
that certain other console makers
could probably take some notes on.
Valve is not claiming any performance uplifts
going from the Steam Deck to the Steam Deck OLED.
However, the OLED does have faster memory.
So going from 55 to 6,400 mega transfers a second,
and with these AMD APU, which are incredibly memory hungry,
that actually should make a noticeable difference.
I mean nothing crazy,
but maybe a couple extra frames per second
going to this new OLED,
which when you combine that with the cooler quieter fan,
the better battery life, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, it just does make it a slightly faster
and better overall refinement experience.
Better overall refinement experience, that's the quote.
You can put my name on it.
Now when it comes to actually buying a Steam Deck OLED,
a question I think a lot of people are gonna have
is that if you already have a Steam Deck,
is it worth the upgrade?
Now this is by all accounts
a classic mid-cycle, slim style refresh
and I think for most people
your existing Steam Deck is great,
but if you've got the disposable capital,
it actually is a pretty solid update
even over the original Steam Deck.
Yes, of course,
it is not gonna be a significantly more powerful console,
but that screen,
and even like little details
like I'm sitting here
just like scrolling around on a webpage,
and the preciseness I can get
with the touch pads and whatnot,
like there are so many little updates across the board,
not only, of course, counting the better Wi-Fi,
and the better battery life, and the screen and whatnot.
It's actually not a completely crazy thing
to trade your old Steam Deck in and buy an OLED,
but I wanna be clear,
no one has to do that or really should do it,
but it's a lot better
than going from like a PS5 to PS5 Slim,
which makes sense for literally no one.
Where things get a little bit more complicated
is if you don't already have a Steam Deck
and are looking to buy one
because there are actually now
five Steam Decks to choose from.
So going on the Valve site here,
first of all you'll see the three options.
So the LCD, which comes in at 399 with a 256 gig SSD,
but keep in mind that this is completely unchanged,
this is the original steam that they're continuing to sell.
On top of that, you've got the 512 gig OLED model,
which is 549.
And you can go up to the one terabyte OLED for 649,
and that also, which is the model I have here,
has the anti-glare display.
Now between the three of these,
I would actually lean a little bit more
toward the 512 gig OLED.
It's nice, of course, to have the one terabyte of capacity,
but I'm not a huge fan of the anti-glare coating.
That anti-glare coating to me
makes the screen a little bit less sharp,
and also kind of mutes some of the colors.
I think this looks phenomenal as is,
but I guarantee you that if I had the OLED
with the glossy panel in front of me,
I would think it would look even better.
A matter of personal taste,
but to me the 549 model is where it's at.
Or if you want the more budget alternative,
getting a 64 gig steam deck, either new or used refurbished,
and putting a little bit of money into the upgrades
gives you almost the same experience,
you know, it's not quite as nice,
but a very similar experience for less than 350 bucks,
look that is crazy to me.
My number one question about the Steam Deck OLED
is performance related.
When the Steam Deck first came out, it was quite powerful,
but that was a couple of years ago
and the goalposts have certainly moved.
And I'll say in my own personal experience
with the Steam Deck,
there's certainly some AAA titles
that are starting to push the envelope
on what the Steam Deck can really run comfortably.
There's a lot of settings
that you have to turn down farther and farther,
so does the Steam Deck OLED fix this?
Well, in short answer, no.
While that memory is slightly faster,
if a game ran poorly on the Steam Deck
is gonna run poorly on the Steam Deck OLED.
Now that's not always true.
So take Baldur's Gate for example,
not only has the game seen a number of patches
as well as Steam OS,
but also the performance is just so much better.
Like originally, I was struggling to hit 30 FPS.
Now on this Steam Deck,
I've been operating it with a 45 FPS cap
and it holds fairly well.
You can see in these outdoor areas
we are dipping into the 30s,
but for most of the game,
I can't actually lock it at 45 FPS.
45 Hertz works well for a lot of games
that are a little bit more demanding
because it is half of 90 hertz.
So you get very nice, smooth frame pacing,
so you can actually can hit 45 FPS,
but for some games, like I'll show you in a minute,
you actually can hit 90 FPS or at least well above 60,
which does show off that fluidity.
Something else I wanna show is the HDR brightness.
So you can see there's a little tab here for Baldur's Gate,
which shows HDR.
If I turn this brightness up,
it hits a ridiculous 1000 nits.
It is so bright, like honestly, I mean, it looks terrific,
but it is brighter than I would want to play
with any kind of regularity,
it is just, oh, I'm on fire now,
this is just so, so bright.
This just goes to show that Valve made a good call
in getting a fully custom OLED display for the Steam Deck
'cause it looks terrific.
Like I would say that this is more impactful
than having a more powerful processor,
and especially if we switch over to a game
that can take advantage of the full 90 hertz,
as I get stuck, you'll really see what this thing can do.
I'll be honest, running Forza Horizon 5 on this
is kind of impressive.
So here I'm running with a mix of medium settings
and FSR turned on,
and I am seeing 70 to 80 FPS,
which really flexes the capability of this display.
Now, sure, it's not going to be the HDR showcase
that Baldur's Gate is.
The HDR does not work in Forza Horizon 5 at the moment,
but even running an SDR at the lower peak brightness,
I'm legitimately impressed, like it looks terrific.
While these examples are,
I would say generally pretty impressive.
I can't deny that there are other titles
that are still going to struggle to run on the Steam Deck.
And when you look at the other competition out there,
the ROG Ally, you've got the Legion Go,
none of do they have roughly double the performance
just raw power with the Z1 Extreme chips.
But on top of that,
they don't have the added overhead of Steam OS.
Look, I love Steam OS, there's a ton of advantages there,
but it's pretty much always running games
through a compatibility layer with Proton.
It's a damn miracle that Proton works at all,
I'll give you that, but there's a little bit of an overhead,
you lose a little bit of your peak performance
because you are doing that translation
and when you have half the performance
of those Windows handhelds,
you're inevitably going to have to make some compromises,
which really got me thinking
what happens if you install Windows on a Steam Deck?
Does that magically give you a performance benefit,
and is it remotely worth it?
Here's the thing,
I actually started working on this video a few weeks ago
before the Steam Deck OLED had even been announced,
so I've got some thoughts.
(upbeat music)
The first thing to know
is that if you install Windows on your Steam Deck,
it requires you to reformat the drive
and completely get rid of Steam OS.
And same thing if you want to switch back to Steam OS,
you gotta reformat and get rid of Windows.
So, as of right now, we've recording this video,
there's no dual boot support for Steam OS and Windows.
Valves say they're working on it,
but they've been, to be fair,
working on it for quite some time.
So first impressions with the Steam Deck running Windows
have been very mixed.
The Windows-y bits are annoying.
Now, this is not really a Steam Deck specific thing,
but dealing with the onscreen keyboard is not good.
And I've had multiple issues with the Steam Deck
where it didn't want to pop up.
I had to, at one point I couldn't log in,
I couldn't get past the lock screen
because the keyboard would not pop up, so I had to restart.
It's really, really finicky.
I'll say that I have these problems
with most Windows handhelds,
but it does seem
like it's a little bit worse on the Steam Deck.
That being said, there are, of course, advantages.
One of which is the compatibility.
So, you're no longer bound to generally just Steam games.
Actually, one of the big things for me
is taking advantage of Game Pass games.
So because I already pay for Game Pass Ultimate,
I can't install those natively on Steam OS,
but I can install those natively on a Windows device.
The problem though, coming back to our janky discussion
is that for some reason out of the box
Windows thinks that the Steam Deck controllers
is a mouse and keyboard,
and so in something like Forza, it doesn't work.
What I will say has been actually really impressive
is playing Baldur's Gate 3.
Now this is a game that I've played fairly extensively
on the Steam Deck running Steam OS,
and I know that while it doesn't run well,
it is playable there,
but this is kind of what I was hoping for.
Even though there are certainly a lot of disadvantages
to running Windows on your Steam Deck,
the advantage is,
well theoretically, in games that aren't Steam working,
which I haven't got that fully up and running yet,
but on top of that
games that are not really optimized for Steam OS
that are optimized for Windows
should deliver far better performance.
So it's still very much early days,
there's a lot more tweaking and tuning I want to do,
but the gist of it is this,
Windows does work on the Steam Deck, but it's kind of janky,
and there's going to be a lot more tweaking and tuning
I'm gonna have to do to get this to be a playable state.
Whereas, of course, if I was running on Steam OS,
everything would just kind of work.
Look, if Valve turns on the ability to dual boot tomorrow,
I would strongly consider it on my Steam Deck,
but as of right now it is too drastic of a change.
It is just not worth it.
When you compare the Steam Deck OLED
with the other handheld PCs out there,
price is a major factor.
So on the lower end,
the Steam Deck LCD, I think, is a terrific deal.
Again, when you're talking about this thing at $350
to last with a little bit of upgrading terrific value.
Now at $550, the Steam Deck OLED is fairly priced,
I will say.
It is certainly a little bit harder to justify
than, you know, maybe the older 400 model
where you could just throw an SSD in,
but 550, I think, is very fair for the 512 gig version
when you consider that it's competition is about $700,
technically you could actually get the Ally
for slightly less,
but generally speaking, we're talking about $700 over here
versus 550 for the Steam Deck.
And I will say that I will take the Steam Deck OLED
over either of these.
It's not too much of a competition.
Yes, there's more performance here,
but Windows is janky, right?
It's just not as seamless of an experience.
Now, if I had the ability
to load up Steam OS on these devices,
I think it's a much more compelling setup
or assuming that Windows ever gets their (beep) together
and actually designs an OS
that feels good on a small touchscreen,
that's a different story,
but I can only evaluate what I have today
and the Steam Deck OLED is done terrifically well.
So ultimately, is the Steam Deck OLED worth it?
In a word, yes.
Is it perfect? No, of course not, no product is.
And the performance does give me a slight bit of pause
on a full, full glowing recommendation
because it is very usable today, don't get me wrong.
Like I have found that,
especially with the 90 hertz
and the ability to adjust your frame rate targets,
it is still very competent.
But as time goes on
and as more games demand more and more power,
it is going to start falling behind.
That's fine
and I think that's a reasonable trade-off
considering that this has far better battery life
than the other options out there.
It is cheaper, it has,
even though it's not quite as high resolution
and high frame rate of a display,
ultimately the OLED absolutely carries this display
to being the best on any handheld console.
Like it is rare to see a device get so much better
in so many ways from one generation like it just,
Valve have done something special with the Steam Deck OLED.
I'm sure you've seen other videos
talking about why it's great,
I tried to go into it being a little bit more skeptical,
but I'm completely sold.
Like it is the move
if you were looking for a handheld PC.
Thank you very much for watching.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel
and ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button.
If you'll excuse me,
I'm gonna go grab my deck and have a great time.
(team laughing)
- [Alex] We're gonna get demonetized.