The Steam Deck: A Gaming Handheld PC with Windows Option

One of the big things about me is taking advantage of Game Pass games. So, because I already pay for Game Pass Ultimate, I can install those games on my Steam Deck, but I have to do it on a Windows device instead of Steam OS. 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 are a mouse and keyboard, and so in something like Forza, it doesn't work.

Actually, what has been 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-centric, which I haven't got fully up and running yet, but on top of that, games that are not really optimized for Steam OS but 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 going to 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's 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; it's certainly a little bit harder to justify than 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.

Ultimately, is the Steam Deck OLED worth it? In a word, yes. Is it perfect? No, of course not; no product is. But 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.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- This is the brand new Steam Deck OLED.Now, I have a few questions.First and foremost, what exactly is new?Because it looks prettysimilar on the outside.Does this have the performanceto keep up in 2024 and beyond?And ultimately,is it worth the upgrade overthe original Steam Deck?At first glance,the Steam Deck OLED looksalmost the exact sameas the original Steam Deck,but the differences go fardeeper than just skin deep.That's pretty deep if you'redeeper than skin deep,some might say that's real deep.- No, God, please, no!- Immediately you'll noticethe 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 definitionand a 1000 nits forgames that support HDR,but on top of that,the color and especially thecontrast and viewing angles,I mean it is a night and day difference.On top of that, the Steam Deck OLEDdoes support a 90 hertz refresh rate,which I didn't think wasgonna be a huge deal,but I'm surprised at how many gamesI've actually been ableto push above 60 FPS,unlike the original Steam Deckwhere I kind of leftthings sort of at 30 or 60most of the time.These days the Steam Deck is terrific,but this screen always has feltlike a real cost cutting moveto get this thing out the door.And I'm glad that Valvespent the time and the moneyto have a custom display madespecifically for the Steam Deck OLED.It makes a huge difference.Now, beyond just the screen,pretty much every otherelement of the Steam Deckhas been updated,especially when you lookat the actual internalsof these Steam Decks.What we've got hereis a substantiallydifferent internal layout.So on top we have the original Steam Deck,which was a very competent device,but the OLED is improvedin pretty much every way.So starting out with from the screen,because it's not only thathigher quality display,but because it's an OLED, itactually means it's thinner,which means that while theactual physical dimensionsof these two Steam Decks are very similar,they were able to packa lot more in the OLED.Starting out with actuallywe've got the battery.So they went from a 40 watthour to a 50 watt hour battery.So right from the jump wehave 20% larger capacity.They've also shrunk the chip.So the original steam deck hada seven nanometer processorwhere this has a six nanometer chip.It's not a huge difference,but it means it's a little bit smallerand importantly a littlebit more efficient.Between that and the new display,you should expect it topull a couple fewer wattswhile you're gaming,and that combined with the larger battery,according to Valve,will give you between 30to 50% more battery life.It's an interesting choicebecause when you compare thisto like some of the Windows handheldsthat have the much morepowerful Ryzen Z1 Extreme.Those have a lot more sortof theoretical performanceand far worse battery lifebecause they're muchmore power hungry chips.It feels like Valve werevery much conservativewith the Steam Deck OLEDbecause it is a difference.It's certainly going togive you more battery lifeand I've noticed that as well,but you guys seeing alot more performance.I actually personally thinkthat's a pretty reasonable tradebecause they've also pairedthat with a lot of other thingsto make this a more refined experience.The Steam Deck OLED feelslike the last couple of yearsthey've pretty much entirely been focusedon making a fully upgrade Steam Deckand the amount of littletweaks and tuned things,and like the stuff thatthey've done here to improve itis truly impressive.I mean, no, does it make theLCD completely irrelevant?Absolutely not.But there is not a single thing I can saylooking at this Steam DeckOLED 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 littledifference of like, dumb,but look, they like colormatched the ribbon cables.It went from white and blue to black.Does that matter at all? No.Does it show that someone a Valvereally cared about everylittle element of this thing?Yes, it does.And when you compare thatwith what Sony did with the PS5 Slim,which if you haven't caught that video,would highly recommend itbecause essentially the PS5 Slimhas also done a sort ofsimilar transformationgoing from a seven to asix nanometer processorand they've kinda shrink things down,but every element of that PS5 Slimis cheaper, cheaper, cheaper,cheaper, cheaper, cheaper.This is technically moreexpensive but only by a few bucks.We'll get into the pricing a little bit,but it's clear that likethere was some real love and attentionthat went into thisthat certain other console makerscould probably take some notes on.Valve is not claiming any performance upliftsgoing from the Steam Deckto the Steam Deck OLED.However, the OLED doeshave faster memory.So going from 55 to 6,400mega transfers a second,and with these AMD APU, whichare incredibly memory hungry,that actually should makea noticeable difference.I mean nothing crazy,but maybe a couple extra frames per secondgoing to this new OLED,which when you combine thatwith the cooler quieter fan,the better battery life,et cetera, et cetera.I mean, it just doesmake it a slightly fasterand better overall refinement experience.Better overall refinementexperience, that's the quote.You can put my name on it.Now when it comes to actuallybuying a Steam Deck OLED,a question I think a lotof people are gonna haveis that if you already have a Steam Deck,is it worth the upgrade?Now this is by all accountsa classic mid-cycle, slim style refreshand I think for most peopleyour existing Steam Deck is great,but if you've got the disposable capital,it actually is a pretty solid updateeven over the original Steam Deck.Yes, of course,it is not gonna be a significantlymore powerful console,but that screen,and even like little detailslike I'm sitting herejust like scrolling around on a webpage,and the preciseness I can getwith the touch pads and whatnot,like there are so many littleupdates 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 thingto trade your old SteamDeck in and buy an OLED,but I wanna be clear,no one has to do thator really should do it,but it's a lot betterthan going from like a PS5 to PS5 Slim,which makes sense for literally no one.Where things get a littlebit more complicatedis if you don't already have a Steam Deckand are looking to buy onebecause there are actually nowfive 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 inat 399 with a 256 gig SSD,but keep in mind that thisis completely unchanged,this is the original steam thatthey're continuing to sell.On top of that, you've gotthe 512 gig OLED model,which is 549.And you can go up to theone terabyte OLED for 649,and that also, which isthe model I have here,has the anti-glare display.Now between the three of these,I would actually lean a little bit moretoward the 512 gig OLED.It's nice, of course, to havethe one terabyte of capacity,but I'm not a huge fan ofthe anti-glare coating.That anti-glare coating to memakes 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 OLEDwith 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 morebudget alternative,getting a 64 gig steam deck,either new or used refurbished,and putting a little bitof money into the upgradesgives you almost the same experience,you know, it's not quite as nice,but a very similar experiencefor less than 350 bucks,look that is crazy to me.My number one questionabout the Steam Deck OLEDis performance related.When the Steam Deck first cameout, it was quite powerful,but that was a couple of years agoand the goalposts have certainly moved.And I'll say in my own personal experiencewith the Steam Deck,there's certainly some AAA titlesthat are starting to push the envelopeon what the Steam Deck canreally run comfortably.There's a lot of settingsthat you have to turndown 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 Deckis gonna run poorly onthe Steam Deck OLED.Now that's not always true.So take Baldur's Gate for example,not only has the gameseen a number of patchesas well as Steam OS,but also the performanceis just so much better.Like originally, I wasstruggling to hit 30 FPS.Now on this Steam Deck,I've been operating it with a 45 FPS capand it holds fairly well.You can see in these outdoor areaswe 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 gamesthat are a little bit more demandingbecause 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, likeI'll show you in a minute,you actually can hit 90 FPSor at least well above 60,which does show off that fluidity.Something else I wannashow is the HDR brightness.So you can see there's a littletab 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 thanI would want to playwith any kind of regularity,it is just, oh, I'm on fire now,this is just so, so bright.This just goes to showthat Valve made a good callin getting a fully custom OLEDdisplay for the Steam Deck'cause it looks terrific.Like I would say thatthis is more impactfulthan having a more powerful processor,and especially if we switch over to a gamethat can take advantageof the full 90 hertz,as I get stuck, you'll reallysee what this thing can do.I'll be honest, runningForza Horizon 5 on thisis kind of impressive.So here I'm running witha mix of medium settingsand FSR turned on,and I am seeing 70 to 80 FPS,which really flexes thecapability of this display.Now, sure, it's not goingto be the HDR showcasethat Baldur's Gate is.The HDR does not work inForza Horizon 5 at the moment,but even running an SDR atthe 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 titlesthat are still going to struggleto run on the Steam Deck.And when you look at theother competition out there,the ROG Ally, you've got the Legion Go,none of do they have roughlydouble the performancejust raw power with the Z1 Extreme chips.But on top of that,they don't have the addedoverhead of Steam OS.Look, I love Steam OS, there'sa ton of advantages there,but it's pretty much always running gamesthrough a compatibility layer with Proton.It's a damn miracle thatProton works at all,I'll give you that, but there'sa little bit of an overhead,you lose a little bitof your peak performancebecause you are doing that translationand when you have half the performanceof those Windows handhelds,you're inevitably going tohave to make some compromises,which really got me thinkingwhat happens if you installWindows on a Steam Deck?Does that magically giveyou a performance benefit,and is it remotely worth it?Here's the thing,I actually started workingon this video a few weeks agobefore the Steam Deck OLEDhad even been announced,so I've got some thoughts.(upbeat music)The first thing to knowis that if you installWindows on your Steam Deck,it requires you to reformat the driveand completely get rid of Steam OS.And same thing if you wantto switch back to Steam OS,you gotta reformat and get rid of Windows.So, as of right now, we'verecording this video,there's no dual boot supportfor 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 theSteam Deck running Windowshave been very mixed.The Windows-y bits are annoying.Now, this is not really aSteam Deck specific thing,but dealing with the onscreenkeyboard is not good.And I've had multipleissues with the Steam Deckwhere 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 screenbecause the keyboard would notpop up, so I had to restart.It's really, really finicky.I'll say that I have these problemswith most Windows handhelds,but it does seemlike it's a little bitworse on the Steam Deck.That being said, thereare, of course, advantages.One of which is the compatibility.So, you're no longer bound togenerally just Steam games.Actually, one of the big things for meis taking advantage of Game Pass games.So because I already payfor Game Pass Ultimate,I can't install thosenatively on Steam OS,but I can install thosenatively on a Windows device.The problem though, comingback to our janky discussionis that for some reason out of the boxWindows thinks that theSteam Deck controllersis a mouse and keyboard,and so in something likeForza, it doesn't work.What I will say has beenactually really impressiveis playing Baldur's Gate 3.Now this is a game that I'veplayed fairly extensivelyon 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 certainlya lot of disadvantagesto running Windows on your Steam Deck,the advantage is,well theoretically, in gamesthat aren't Steam working,which I haven't got thatfully up and running yet,but on top of thatgames that are not reallyoptimized for Steam OSthat are optimized for Windowsshould deliver far better performance.So it's still very much early days,there's a lot more tweakingand tuning I want to do,but the gist of it is this,Windows does work on the SteamDeck, but it's kind of janky,and there's going to be alot more tweaking and tuningI'm gonna have to do to getthis to be a playable state.Whereas, of course, if Iwas running on Steam OS,everything would just kind of work.Look, if Valve turns on theability to dual boot tomorrow,I would strongly considerit on my Steam Deck,but as of right now it istoo drastic of a change.It is just not worth it.When you compare the Steam Deck OLEDwith the other handheld PCs out there,price is a major factor.So on the lower end,the Steam Deck LCD, Ithink, is a terrific deal.Again, when you're talkingabout this thing at $350to last with a little bitof upgrading terrific value.Now at $550, the SteamDeck OLED is fairly priced,I will say.It is certainly a littlebit harder to justifythan, you know, maybe the older 400 modelwhere you could just throw an SSD in,but 550, I think, is veryfair for the 512 gig versionwhen you consider that it'scompetition is about $700,technically you couldactually get the Allyfor slightly less,but generally speaking, we'retalking about $700 over hereversus 550 for the Steam Deck.And I will say that I willtake the Steam Deck OLEDover 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 seamlessof an experience.Now, if I had the abilityto load up Steam OS on these devices,I think it's a much more compelling setupor assuming that Windows evergets their (beep) togetherand actually designs an OSthat feels good on a small touchscreen,that's a different story,but I can only evaluate what I have todayand the Steam Deck OLEDis done terrifically well.So ultimately, is theSteam Deck OLED worth it?In a word, yes.Is it perfect? No, ofcourse not, no product is.And the performance doesgive me a slight bit of pauseon a full, full glowing recommendationbecause it is very usabletoday, don't get me wrong.Like I have found that,especially with the 90 hertzand the ability to adjustyour frame rate targets,it is still very competent.But as time goes onand as more games demandmore and more power,it is going to start falling behind.That's fineand I think that's a reasonable trade-offconsidering that this hasfar better battery lifethan the other options out there.It is cheaper, it has,even though it's notquite as high resolutionand high frame rate of a display,ultimately the OLED absolutelycarries this displayto being the best on any handheld console.Like it is rare to see adevice get so much betterin so many ways from onegeneration like it just,Valve have done somethingspecial with the Steam Deck OLED.I'm sure you've seen other videostalking about why it's great,I tried to go into it beinga little bit more skeptical,but I'm completely sold.Like it is the moveif you were looking for a handheld PC.Thank you very much for watching.Make sure to subscribe to the channeland ring-a-ling that ding-a-ling button.If you'll excuse me,I'm gonna go grab my deckand have a great time.(team laughing)- We're gonna get demonetized.