512gb OLED: $549 USD
1Tb OLED: $649 USD
- NVMe SSD
- 1280 x 800 HDR OLED display (same as LCD res but 90hz RR vs 60 on lcd)
- 7.4" diagonal display size (vs 7 on LCD)
- 6 nm APU (7nm on LCD)
- Wi-Fi 6E (5 on LCD)
- 50Whr battery (40Whr on LCD, 3-12h gameplay vs 2-8h on LCD)
- 45W Power supply with 2.5m cable (1.5m on LCD)
- 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (6400 MT/s quad 32-bit channels) (LCD has 5500 MT/s, so faster ram)
- Bluetooth 5.3 (vs 5.0 on lcd)
I’m frickin stoked!!
Where did it say 90Hz? That sounds like a HUGE upgrade. The OLED image quality will be nice but higher refresh rate is something I’ve really wanted, though unfortunately I haven’t seen anything regarding VRR.
90hz is mentioned on the linked page, under ‘other updates to Steam Deck OLED’. but yes, no VRR support for this display unfortunately. A bit confusing because the software supports VRR and it still works with external displays.
My understanding is the display uses MIPI (not eDP) which doesn’t support VRR.
Even without VRR there are noticeable improvements on the LCD deck from running at 60hz even when frame rates dip heavily, just because the frame timing is shorter so the new frames can be showed sooner.
There’s also the benefit that there’s no gaps in the range for frame multiplication, as long as the display still goes down to at least 45hz. With the original screen you can’t run at 35fps properly (at least OOTB), since it’s lower than the min of 40hz but doubling it exceeds the max (60hz).
True, half of 90 is 45 while half of 60 is 30. The LCD Deck benefits from the 70Hz display overclock tweak noticeably so going up to 90 is huge. I hope the OLED can at least operate at any fixed refresh between 30 and 90.
It’s a disaster. I bought my Steam Deck like 2 months ago. Now I want the OLED version, of course.
Yeah… I wouldn’t trust ltt with much of anything at this point, especially especially when they’re “speculating” on something. Imo ltt is now “tech top gear” except nowhere near as funny. You watch it to be entertained, not because you’re going to get good reviews for stuff.
The biggest metric is, by far, panel uniformity: boot up a grey (#A1A1A1) image and you’ll see how subpixels misbehave greatly, with a lot of extra green activity creating almost a “snow” or “digital noise” to the image. If you reduce panel brightness to around 35% and move around in a dark scene in a game, the fixed points of extra green actually become distracting once you know about them. You can also find little pockets with bad brightness or otherwise weird artifacts all around.
Still in the panel uniformity category, the Switch OLED panel struggles with horizontal uniformity, it’s extremely common for the left side of the screen to have a different white point to the right side, and by a great margin.
Nintendo also doesn’t calibrate panels individually at the factory, they load a “default interpolation curve” for brightness that means in all units I tested colors only look correct at 100%, 50% and 25% brightness. If you deviate from that, the screen keeps flip-flopping between too much green and too little green. If you test this in a dark room and with small increments of the brightness slider, you’ll be shocked at how bad it actually is.
Not as noticeable, but still relevant, is the fact that if you have a portion of the screen with an absolute black element, everything in that vertical space will get around ~5% darker. For instance, if you go to the main menu in the dark mode and move your cursor to a game with a mostly black icon, and pay attention to the colors right above it, you’ll see that entire section of the display being darker.
There are things it does quite well compared to earlier OLED panels though, like black to color transitions and having an actual RGB subpixel layout. Still, even a mid range phone from 4 years ago will offer better quality than this panel. But keep in mind, I’m only talking about the Switch - I naturally do not have a Steam Deck OLED to compare.
This announcement also means that the 64 GB Version is gone and the non-OLED 256 GB version will be the New Entry model.
Very, very good. Pricing seems okay as well. Glad the specs are the same so games will work on both versions. Saving straight performance upgrades for the next version seems like the right move.
Very interested in upgrading but I can’t justify it to my wallet. I love my Steam Deck as is and often use a portable external screen with it anyhow.
Sure! Seems my screen isn’t up for sale anymore. This is the closest I could find without diving too deep: https://a.co/d/01D6h52
Portable, built in battery, plug into the deck with USB-C and you even get touch. Chose if the screen should charge the Deck while plugged in or not. Mostly just plug it with hdmi though and play Mario Kart and Kirby with my son. Has Samsung Dex-support so with one of those phones plugged in you get a laptop like experience. Truly a great buy. Can’t recommend enough.
Do some research though. Make sure you get a screen with touch and battery to get the most out of the screen (touch isn’t good enough to play mobile games but good enough to navigate menus, use YouTube, etc). Stay in the range of 14-16" for it to be portable. And check that your phone is compatible with the screen you buy. Also check the ms so the game experience is good.
Now you can play 4p Mario Kart on mount everest.
