Steam Deck OLED Review - OMG

**A Closer Look at Valve's Steam Deck OLED Refresh**

The new Steam Deck OLED refresh is finally here, and it's clear that Valve has put a lot of effort into creating an improved device. As I examined the device for the first time, I was struck by how similar in shape the battery is to the previous generation. This led me to wonder if the new battery would be able to fit into the old battery spot, allowing users to upgrade their existing devices to take advantage of the new 50W hour battery. However, my hopes were quickly dashed as I realized that the new battery is slightly taller and wouldn't fit in the same location.

**Inside the Steam Deck OLED Refresh**

Removing the shrouding from the device revealed a major refresh on the inside. The good news is that Valve has made significant changes to improve the overall performance of the device, including a larger and quieter fan. However, the bad news is that many parts cannot be swapped out with those from previous generations, making it difficult for users to upgrade individual components.

One notable change is the new SSD placement on the side of the device. While its position has changed, removing last year's SSD reveals an Intel Wi-Fi card that was previously hidden underneath. This year's chip supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, with a dedicated antenna for the Bluetooth signal. The chip itself is similar in size to a 7nm chip from previous generations.

**Pricing and Storage**

Valve has maintained its pricing tiers from the original Steam Deck launcher. The base model remains at $399, but the mid-tier and top-tier models now feature OLED displays with larger storage capacities. The mid-tier model comes with 512GB of storage, while the top-tier model boasts a full terabyte of storage.

While I was surprised by the pricing, which is relatively fair considering all that's included in the device, my mind kept wandering to comparisons with other companies like Sony. Specifically, their PlayStation 5 Slim feels more focused on monetary gain than user desire. In contrast, Valve has made significant changes based on user feedback and wants.

**The Case: A Two-Piece Wonder**

One feature I've been wanting to mention throughout the video is the case itself. It's 30G lighter than the previous version, which may not seem like a significant difference. However, this reduced weight comes at the cost of being able to store the AC adapter in the back, as with the original device. The case itself has two pieces, opening up like a regular case but also featuring an inner compartment that allows for more compact packaging.

This inner compartment is perfect for transporting the device in a lighter package without sacrificing its functionality. While it may not be the most convenient design, it's certainly an innovative solution to reduce weight and make the device easier to handle on-the-go.

**A Final Thoughts**

Overall, my experience with the Steam Deck OLED refresh has been overwhelmingly positive. It's clear that Valve has put a lot of thought into creating a device that meets user needs. While some changes may have been unnecessary, it's great to see a company willing to push boundaries and innovate for its customers.

For those considering purchasing one of these handheld devices, I would recommend keeping in mind that the Steam Deck is an exceptional gaming experience, but it may not be as powerful as some other Windows-based handhelds. Those looking for AAA gaming with smooth frame rates will find better performance elsewhere.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI did not think that this would happen anytime soon we had multiple Publications stating that this wouldn't happen at all but then it showed up in studio and I couldn't believe my eyes a fully refreshed steam deck and I mean fully refreshed every single major component of the system is new we have a larger OLED display we have a new chip a 6 NM chip more energy efficient we have slightly tweaked sticks uh the touchpad the speakers are better the battery is bigger Longer battery life we have a improved thermal system let's just get right into it uh let's start off with the exterior Dimensions because that's one of the very few things that hasn't really changed per se the biggest difference is like the presence of this new orange power button it just like signifies the kind of new version of it even the screen cutout is the same It's a larger panel but because of the thinner bezels the old accessories all work so the kill switch from dbrand still fits perfectly and same with their screen protectors all right let's start with the displays so this here is the the previous model like the original steam Deck with its 7-in display so it was a 60 HZ panel 400 nits but the biggest issue with it was really the color reproduction it just was not a particularly colorful or color accurate display and I think when it comes to games a lot of the kind of subtle details and visual Nuance of games they're just lost when you're displaying it on a mediocre screen but with this new panel it's a different story we got a 7.4 in OLED that runs at 90 HZ 600 nits brightness that goes up to th000 nits for HDR content little peek up there uh it's more energy efficient cuz it's OLED it's got way better contrast so the benefits of this display are immediately noticeable in pretty much every game like bright and colorful games look awesome like you'd expect uh but even dark and Moody games are significantly better because the blacks are just black instead of like a gray back lit pixel it's just so much nicer to look at and also HDR content for the games that do support it looks awesome like the bright elements just blast out of the screen at 1 thousand nits now this display also is a 90 HZ panel and on games that make use of it like this one dead cells it's just immediately noticeable it's difficult to convey the kind of increase in frame rate on a 60 HZ video like you're watching but if youve just played any High refresh game the difference from 60 to 90 is very significant keep in mind though that there are other devices out there with significantly faster screens and more powerful processors but the fact that the steam dech went from 60 to 90 is already a huge win in bu books now in terms of the screen size it's not massively larger so it's a little bit bigger uh but I I would say that the improvements that you get from the new steam deck do not come from the screen size at least for me it's also the same resolution still 1280 by 800 it's just that the image quality is so much better now one last thing if you'll remember steam decks come in three configurations it's like the base model and then the mid-tier and then the top tier but only the mid-tier and top tier are going to get this OLED refresh so the top tier configurations like this unit here have this anti-glare etched glass finish to them and the purpose of it is just to kind of cut down some of the reflections so this unit here does not have that etched glass coating so if you're in a really bright environment or brightly lit room sometimes those Reflections can be a little bit harsh right but here they're diffused a bit the problem is though because it's an OLED display I feel like you lose some of the the OLED properties like the the popping colors in the really black blacks are lost because of that matte finish on that etched glass so as a demonstration this is uh it's like a screen protector this is going to be very crude demonstration but hopefully it gets the point across if you give it a second for this screen to kind of fuse on or the protector to fuse on look at the difference in the color like look at the black part of the menu there right on the left side is that etched glass it's almost lost its true black nature because of the OLED right but on the right with that smooth uh screen protector on it it's still quite dark so I'm just thinking if you're going to purchase one of these things unless you really care about brightly lit environments and you want to cut down those Reflections badly I would opt for the regular screen without that anti-glare property the other thing is that if you get a screen protector you put it on it fixes it but I'm just saying with the anti-glare you lose a lot of that OLED goodness the new device also has slightly better sticks in the sense that the rubber top has a bit of a lip to it so it's just nice to grip it's also a different ball joint color it's black instead of gray but the shoulder buttons also had a bit of an upgrade so on the old one I found that if you had longer fingers if you just pressed that shoulder in a different spot it wouldn't be a consistent press like it would actuate nicely at the edges but if you brought it up to the Top If you had like longer fingers it became harder and harder to press and on the new one the location of that button and the actuation point is different so it's just like consistent and it's like a tighter click as silly as it sounds uh okay the ha itics on this actually they've changed the touchpad to be a little bit more accurate and a little bit more responsive but there's also updated haptics so they feel a lot more precise they're just like a tighter ping As you move around the speakers are also a little bit louder and basier than before all right let's talk about performance so the chip in here is new it's running a 6 nanometer chip compared to the 7 nanometer chip that was in the previous generation but it's still running the same clock speeds and the same kind of power draw the ram is also still at 16 GB but it's running a little bit faster at 6,400 megat transfers per second now because of that faster Ram I was hoping that there'd be some kind of performance gains but for my testing if there is a performance bump it's so slight I would consider it insignificant at least for most Gamers it does does resume from suspended games a little bit faster though but with that new chip because it's 6 nanm it is a little bit more energy efficient and because of that you have slightly less heat and with less heat you have quieter fans fans that don't come on as often and fans that don't stay on as long so any kind of gaming sessions were both cooler and quieter than the original steam deck and then in addition to that more energy efficient chip and the more energy efficient OLED screen we also have a 25% larger battery it's gone from 40 w to 50 so you combine all those three things you just get better battery life now valve claims a 30 to 50% bump in battery life from my testing the really demanding games got a more modest battery life Improvement and the charging speeds are also a little bit faster this year so the steam deck has always been easy to open easy to repair but this year they've done a few things to make it even better so first the screws the old screw was this Phillips headed screw that I've stripped so badly on my previous team deck uh the new ones are these machined Torx screws if you know anything about Torx you know anything about screws that's definitely better and to get inside its just a quick pull of the side plastic area at least that's how I do it and this is the inside now the first thing I noticed was like okay the battery is very similar shape to the previous generation this is uh actually I should put them like this like the earlier part of the video so the Old One's up top the new one is down here so I thought I was hoping that this new battery would be able to fit into the old battery spot and then people could all get 50w hour batteries you can't they look very similar in shape but this new one's a little bit taller and because of this framing you wouldn't be able to fit this one into there unfortunately uh okay let's remove the shrouding here to take a look at the internals the first thing that you should be aware of is almost everything has changed on the inside so the good the good news is that okay it's a major refresh the bad news is that you can't just swap out Parts you can't just pick and choose the new things and put them into the old one to kind of update it unfortunately the fan is a little bit bigger better and quieter uh and then on the side here you'll notice that the SSD is in a similar position but different orientation but if you remove last year's SSD you can see the Intel Wi-Fi card that was underneath it this year it's a much larger Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip this is from a company called quickel and it now supports Wi-Fi 6E as well as Bluetooth 5.3 and there's a dedicated antenna just for the Bluetooth signal if you look at the chip itself it's about the same size as a 7 NM chip from the previous generation now in regards to pricing valve is running the same kind of pricing tiers as the original steam deck launcher they have a 3.99 base model which remains unchanged it's still the same original 399 model with 256 gigs of storage but the mider tier and the top tier are these OLED refresh models with larger storage than before so the mid- tier has 512 gigs the top tier has a terabyte of storage and didn't even close this properly uh and my thoughts on it are that I think the pricing is quite fair I would say that considering all that you're getting it's a very fair price the thing that my mind goes to is like I just did a video on Sony's PlayStation 5 refresh like their updated kind of slim version and the difference in just company Mantra of what they're trying to do is wild like the Sony's PlayStation 5 Slim seems to be just focused on you know some kind of monetary gain for Sony but here this is a crazy refresh in the sense that they put so much effort to do all these tweaks and adjustments for what the users actually want and a lot of it was just unnecessary but they just did it because they could and also that the pricing like this could have been so much more expensive and I I would have imagined that it would have cost more for this kind of update but they've kept the same kind of pricing with more storage I mean only valve can pull this off because of the whole steam thing and how they own it and how they're just making money but just it's so interesting how Sony did that and valve did this uh okay I'm going to wrap this up with a little demo of the case actually something I keep wanting to talk about this is 30 G lighter than the previous version I kept wanting to say that over the course of this entire video but didn't have the opportunity it's a little bit lighter it's not a significant difference though uh it's noticeable but I would argue not particularly significant so this is the new case and it's a two-piece case I don't know if that's the best way to describe it but it makes it sound like a bikini two-piece in the sense that well it opens up like a regular case it's got like the velcro up front and you can open it up white microfiber but it also has a second functionality where there's a an inner case and this inner case allows you to transport the product in a lighter package so this uh right this is a little bit more compact than that big case so it's like a twoin one case but when you use this kind of Slimmer case you don't have the ability to store the AC adapter in the back like the big case like the original one but yeah a two-piece case there you have it but if you are interested in one of these handheld devices do keep in mind that the steam deck as awesome as it is even this new OLED version it's not going to be as powerful as some of those windows handhelds if you're looking for AAA gaming with the smoothest and best frame rates those will do a better job than this thing okay hope you enjoyed the videoI did not think that this would happen anytime soon we had multiple Publications stating that this wouldn't happen at all but then it showed up in studio and I couldn't believe my eyes a fully refreshed steam deck and I mean fully refreshed every single major component of the system is new we have a larger OLED display we have a new chip a 6 NM chip more energy efficient we have slightly tweaked sticks uh the touchpad the speakers are better the battery is bigger Longer battery life we have a improved thermal system let's just get right into it uh let's start off with the exterior Dimensions because that's one of the very few things that hasn't really changed per se the biggest difference is like the presence of this new orange power button it just like signifies the kind of new version of it even the screen cutout is the same It's a larger panel but because of the thinner bezels the old accessories all work so the kill switch from dbrand still fits perfectly and same with their screen protectors all right let's start with the displays so this here is the the previous model like the original steam Deck with its 7-in display so it was a 60 HZ panel 400 nits but the biggest issue with it was really the color reproduction it just was not a particularly colorful or color accurate display and I think when it comes to games a lot of the kind of subtle details and visual Nuance of games they're just lost when you're displaying it on a mediocre screen but with this new panel it's a different story we got a 7.4 in OLED that runs at 90 HZ 600 nits brightness that goes up to th000 nits for HDR content little peek up there uh it's more energy efficient cuz it's OLED it's got way better contrast so the benefits of this display are immediately noticeable in pretty much every game like bright and colorful games look awesome like you'd expect uh but even dark and Moody games are significantly better because the blacks are just black instead of like a gray back lit pixel it's just so much nicer to look at and also HDR content for the games that do support it looks awesome like the bright elements just blast out of the screen at 1 thousand nits now this display also is a 90 HZ panel and on games that make use of it like this one dead cells it's just immediately noticeable it's difficult to convey the kind of increase in frame rate on a 60 HZ video like you're watching but if youve just played any High refresh game the difference from 60 to 90 is very significant keep in mind though that there are other devices out there with significantly faster screens and more powerful processors but the fact that the steam dech went from 60 to 90 is already a huge win in bu books now in terms of the screen size it's not massively larger so it's a little bit bigger uh but I I would say that the improvements that you get from the new steam deck do not come from the screen size at least for me it's also the same resolution still 1280 by 800 it's just that the image quality is so much better now one last thing if you'll remember steam decks come in three configurations it's like the base model and then the mid-tier and then the top tier but only the mid-tier and top tier are going to get this OLED refresh so the top tier configurations like this unit here have this anti-glare etched glass finish to them and the purpose of it is just to kind of cut down some of the reflections so this unit here does not have that etched glass coating so if you're in a really bright environment or brightly lit room sometimes those Reflections can be a little bit harsh right but here they're diffused a bit the problem is though because it's an OLED display I feel like you lose some of the the OLED properties like the the popping colors in the really black blacks are lost because of that matte finish on that etched glass so as a demonstration this is uh it's like a screen protector this is going to be very crude demonstration but hopefully it gets the point across if you give it a second for this screen to kind of fuse on or the protector to fuse on look at the difference in the color like look at the black part of the menu there right on the left side is that etched glass it's almost lost its true black nature because of the OLED right but on the right with that smooth uh screen protector on it it's still quite dark so I'm just thinking if you're going to purchase one of these things unless you really care about brightly lit environments and you want to cut down those Reflections badly I would opt for the regular screen without that anti-glare property the other thing is that if you get a screen protector you put it on it fixes it but I'm just saying with the anti-glare you lose a lot of that OLED goodness the new device also has slightly better sticks in the sense that the rubber top has a bit of a lip to it so it's just nice to grip it's also a different ball joint color it's black instead of gray but the shoulder buttons also had a bit of an upgrade so on the old one I found that if you had longer fingers if you just pressed that shoulder in a different spot it wouldn't be a consistent press like it would actuate nicely at the edges but if you brought it up to the Top If you had like longer fingers it became harder and harder to press and on the new one the location of that button and the actuation point is different so it's just like consistent and it's like a tighter click as silly as it sounds uh okay the ha itics on this actually they've changed the touchpad to be a little bit more accurate and a little bit more responsive but there's also updated haptics so they feel a lot more precise they're just like a tighter ping As you move around the speakers are also a little bit louder and basier than before all right let's talk about performance so the chip in here is new it's running a 6 nanometer chip compared to the 7 nanometer chip that was in the previous generation but it's still running the same clock speeds and the same kind of power draw the ram is also still at 16 GB but it's running a little bit faster at 6,400 megat transfers per second now because of that faster Ram I was hoping that there'd be some kind of performance gains but for my testing if there is a performance bump it's so slight I would consider it insignificant at least for most Gamers it does does resume from suspended games a little bit faster though but with that new chip because it's 6 nanm it is a little bit more energy efficient and because of that you have slightly less heat and with less heat you have quieter fans fans that don't come on as often and fans that don't stay on as long so any kind of gaming sessions were both cooler and quieter than the original steam deck and then in addition to that more energy efficient chip and the more energy efficient OLED screen we also have a 25% larger battery it's gone from 40 w to 50 so you combine all those three things you just get better battery life now valve claims a 30 to 50% bump in battery life from my testing the really demanding games got a more modest battery life Improvement and the charging speeds are also a little bit faster this year so the steam deck has always been easy to open easy to repair but this year they've done a few things to make it even better so first the screws the old screw was this Phillips headed screw that I've stripped so badly on my previous team deck uh the new ones are these machined Torx screws if you know anything about Torx you know anything about screws that's definitely better and to get inside its just a quick pull of the side plastic area at least that's how I do it and this is the inside now the first thing I noticed was like okay the battery is very similar shape to the previous generation this is uh actually I should put them like this like the earlier part of the video so the Old One's up top the new one is down here so I thought I was hoping that this new battery would be able to fit into the old battery spot and then people could all get 50w hour batteries you can't they look very similar in shape but this new one's a little bit taller and because of this framing you wouldn't be able to fit this one into there unfortunately uh okay let's remove the shrouding here to take a look at the internals the first thing that you should be aware of is almost everything has changed on the inside so the good the good news is that okay it's a major refresh the bad news is that you can't just swap out Parts you can't just pick and choose the new things and put them into the old one to kind of update it unfortunately the fan is a little bit bigger better and quieter uh and then on the side here you'll notice that the SSD is in a similar position but different orientation but if you remove last year's SSD you can see the Intel Wi-Fi card that was underneath it this year it's a much larger Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip this is from a company called quickel and it now supports Wi-Fi 6E as well as Bluetooth 5.3 and there's a dedicated antenna just for the Bluetooth signal if you look at the chip itself it's about the same size as a 7 NM chip from the previous generation now in regards to pricing valve is running the same kind of pricing tiers as the original steam deck launcher they have a 3.99 base model which remains unchanged it's still the same original 399 model with 256 gigs of storage but the mider tier and the top tier are these OLED refresh models with larger storage than before so the mid- tier has 512 gigs the top tier has a terabyte of storage and didn't even close this properly uh and my thoughts on it are that I think the pricing is quite fair I would say that considering all that you're getting it's a very fair price the thing that my mind goes to is like I just did a video on Sony's PlayStation 5 refresh like their updated kind of slim version and the difference in just company Mantra of what they're trying to do is wild like the Sony's PlayStation 5 Slim seems to be just focused on you know some kind of monetary gain for Sony but here this is a crazy refresh in the sense that they put so much effort to do all these tweaks and adjustments for what the users actually want and a lot of it was just unnecessary but they just did it because they could and also that the pricing like this could have been so much more expensive and I I would have imagined that it would have cost more for this kind of update but they've kept the same kind of pricing with more storage I mean only valve can pull this off because of the whole steam thing and how they own it and how they're just making money but just it's so interesting how Sony did that and valve did this uh okay I'm going to wrap this up with a little demo of the case actually something I keep wanting to talk about this is 30 G lighter than the previous version I kept wanting to say that over the course of this entire video but didn't have the opportunity it's a little bit lighter it's not a significant difference though uh it's noticeable but I would argue not particularly significant so this is the new case and it's a two-piece case I don't know if that's the best way to describe it but it makes it sound like a bikini two-piece in the sense that well it opens up like a regular case it's got like the velcro up front and you can open it up white microfiber but it also has a second functionality where there's a an inner case and this inner case allows you to transport the product in a lighter package so this uh right this is a little bit more compact than that big case so it's like a twoin one case but when you use this kind of Slimmer case you don't have the ability to store the AC adapter in the back like the big case like the original one but yeah a two-piece case there you have it but if you are interested in one of these handheld devices do keep in mind that the steam deck as awesome as it is even this new OLED version it's not going to be as powerful as some of those windows handhelds if you're looking for AAA gaming with the smoothest and best frame rates those will do a better job than this thing okay hope you enjoyed the video\n"