Valve reveals Steam Deck OLED for November 16th

I hope that they keep LCD as an option when the Steam Deck 2 eventually comes along. OLEDs hurt my eyes no matter how much you can change the brightness, and I also don't want to waste money on hardware that's guaranteed to die due to the organic components, so they're always a dealbreaker for me, unfortunately!

I'll stick to my good old SD, but the additions are really tempting, they went directly to improve the most criticized aspects of the machine (screen, battery) and added some more nice things along the way. If you were considering buying one, now is a great time to do it!

I really don't know if I should feel happy that the deck is getting upgraded, showing how well it is doing. Or really angry that it is getting upgraded so soon. I got the "bigger and better" more expensive Deck thinking about the future, thinking the deck won't get any significant upgrade for the next 5 years (like everything else) and if we needed, we could always go to third parties for bigger SSD, batteries etc. And here I am 1 year later looking at this ... that really doesn't sit right with me. And the thing I think I hate the most is the limited edition translucent case. Not that I don't like translucent case, I love them, always loved them since I was a kid. If this was available when the deck first got out, I would have bought it. No, what I hate the most is the "limited edition", I really despise that kind of thing. It's really the first time I'm disappointed at valve.

Yeah did the same thing and feeling salty too.
Can't just whip out anothwr 700 bucks on a whim forna version I'd have been down for in the forst place.
Be nice if early adopters got a deal here for their loyalty but eh if it's gonna be like this maybe I'll skip this and a deck 2 as well.
The price to pay when jumping in early I suppose.

I think it woulda been fair if they just waited till next year and announced it now so we could all plan for it and have a chance to resell our current ones before a price drop.

I hope that they keep LCD as an option when the Steam Deck 2 eventually comes along. OLEDs hurt my eyes no matter how much you can change the brightness, and I also don't want to waste money on hardware that's guaranteed to die due to the organic components, so they're always a dealbreaker for me, unfortunately!

Isn't everything guaranteed to die? Ha, after buying a 77" OLED TV, I definitely get annoyed by light bleed. Never bothered me before...

But for sure, OLED screens can be obnoxiously bright, especially for someone who has gotten lasik surgery.

Isn't everything guaranteed to die?

To a degree, but not like this - being organic is a major downside of Organic-LEDs.

Though they're not quite as short-lived today, the first ones to market were dying off within months to a year, and often not fully, with huge chunks or lines suddenly going missing.

Anyone remember the original PS Vita? The OLED was such a problem that the "Lite" revision replaced it with a standard LCD.

Ha, after buying a 77" OLED TV, I definitely get annoyed by light bleed. Never bothered me before...

But for sure, OLED screens can be obnoxiously bright, especially for someone who has gotten lasik surgery.

I haven't had any eye-surgery, but I just can't look at those bloody things. They're completely unusable for me.

Isn't everything guaranteed to die?

To a degree, but not like this - being organic is a major downside of Organic-LEDs.

Though they're not quite as short-lived today, the first ones to market were dying off within months to a year, and often not fully, with huge chunks or lines suddenly going missing.

Anyone remember the original PS Vita? The OLED was such a problem that the "Lite" revision replaced it with a standard LCD.

Ha, after buying a 77" OLED TV, I definitely get annoyed by light bleed. Never bothered me before...

But for sure, OLED screens can be obnoxiously bright, especially for someone who has gotten lasik surgery.

I haven't had any eye-surgery, but I just can't look at those bloody things. They're completely unusable for me.

Now this is hard for us consumers to reliably test without simply waiting and see but LG announced already back in 2016 that their panels had a life expectancy of 100k hours (which is more than double that of LED and LCD) so it sounds like nothing to worry about anymore.

And the ongoing Rtings test shows that burn-in worries is mostly overblown (yes they experience burn-in but they do run their tv:s on for 24x7 with static images), with LED:s actually performing worse when it comes to uniformity.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results

I'm pretty satisfied with the original Deck; I don't use mine more than once or twice a week either.

Based off my experience with the OLED displays on my Pixel phones, having one on my Steam Deck would be pretty nice. I like original IPS LCD screen fine though.

I guess, in short, this newer Deck is a "maybe" for me right now.

Wow this is what I had suspected but then everyone started talking about VR. Awesome. I will be buying this as OLED and HDR do make such a crazy difference to the experience.

Absolute Fucking Legends!

I wonder how that works, actually. Is the whole thing just 0.4" bigger overall, or was there space around the edge of the existing screen that could be moved into so the device is the same size just with a bigger hole for the screen, or somewhere in between? Did they need to shift the controls any?

The screen had a large border:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/HwNrva8kmRp6DvT5pzYbBY.jpg

My guess is they just used some of that space.

Yeah, looks plausible.

Now this is hard for us consumers to reliably test without simply waiting and see but LG announced already back in 2016 that their panels had a life expectancy of 100k hours (which is more than double that of LED and LCD) so it sounds like nothing to worry about anymore.

And the ongoing Rtings test shows that burn-in worries is mostly overblown (yes they experience burn-in but they do run their tv:s on for 24x7 with static images), with LED:s actually performing worse when it comes to uniformity.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results

If it's true that they've fixed these things, I'm glad to hear it.

However, it doesn't change that fact that, for me personally, I simply can't look at these displays without pain! I really hope that LCD remains an option with the eventual Deck 2.

I'm surprised they didn't go for newer generation of APU (Zen 4 / RDNA 3 rather than just process shrink). I guess such kind of upgrade cycles are slow for them.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 November 2023 at 10:58 pm UTC

I was defininatly not expecting this right now. The poor color saturation was my biggest gripe with the deck, even more than the small(er) screen. Ori and the Blind Forest was bearable, but playing !Gris was definately not the same as on other screens at all.

Another small change:

45W Power supply with 2.5m cable

The other version had a 1.5m cable that was a bit to short. Most of the time I ended up using my lenovo laptop usb-c charger instead.

The wifi 6 is another thing that will make this device live long and prosper, as even as a plain minipc it already outperformed all other minipcs at their pricepoint. So It's a welcome update indeed!

I wonder how much will the 1st gen be worth on second hand markets...?

I planed to buy Steamdeck to family member for christmas... so plan is canceled. He gets my old one :-D


Last edited by Arten on 9 November 2023 at 11:12 pm UTC

Nice - looks like a really nice refinement.

Now this is hard for us consumers to reliably test without simply waiting and see but LG announced already back in 2016 that their panels had a life expectancy of 100k hours (which is more than double that of LED and LCD) so it sounds like nothing to worry about anymore.

And the ongoing Rtings test shows that burn-in worries is mostly overblown (yes they experience burn-in but they do run their tv:s on for 24x7 with static images), with LED:s actually performing worse when it comes to uniformity.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/longevity-burn-in-test-updates-and-results

If it's true that they've fixed these things, I'm glad to hear it.

However, it doesn't change that fact that, for me personally, I simply can't look at these displays without pain! I really hope that LCD remains an option with the eventual Deck 2.

Where does the pain come from? I understand that OLED usually have higher brightness, but since that is a setting I guess that we are talking about something else?

No essential upgrades, but just enough to be extremely tempting. Damn you, Valve!

I'm very surprised not refreshing the cpu/gpu so this is more of a basic refresh. they might be holding off to all the new apu's get released though and get bugs and thermals sorted before a major upgrade though.

I'm very surprised not refreshing the cpu/gpu so this is more of a basic refresh. they might be holding off to all the new apu's get released though and get bugs and thermals sorted before a major upgrade though.

I also wonder why it takes them longer than to AMD in laptops to refresh the APU. AMD are already shipping Zen 4 / RDNA 3 laptop APUs.


Last edited by Shmerl on 10 November 2023 at 1:38 am UTC

Where does the pain come from? I understand that OLED usually have higher brightness, but since that is a setting I guess that we are talking about something else?

Eyestrain and migraines. I'm told that OLEDs flicker like CRTs did (I had the same problem with those - LCDs were a godsend! ), which would both explain it and suggest that it can't be avoided.