It’s the Steam Deck that should have been — a new screen, bigger battery, quieter fan, a pile of improvements, and better pricing make this a small, but possibly the best console revision ever. It fixes my biggest complaints about the original Steam Deck and then some.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 The Steam Deck was my favorite gadget of 2022,
00:05 but I've always felt it was incomplete.
00:07 Too little screen, too little battery life,
00:10 and a still too noisy fan.
00:12 But you know what?
00:13 I'm no longer recommending the original Steam Deck.
00:16 At least, not until you've considered
00:18 the new Steam Deck OLED.
00:20 (upbeat music)
00:23 This is the Steam Deck that should have been.
00:27 The LCD panel's been replaced by a gorgeous
00:30 90 hertz HDR OLED screen
00:33 that reaches a thousand nits of brightness
00:34 and displays 110% of the P3 color gamut.
00:38 That's enough to make the neon lights
00:39 of Cyberpunk 2077 come alive.
00:42 Did I mention it's larger at 7.4 inches too?
00:45 Less ugly bezel.
00:47 How about the battery?
00:48 22% larger than the original with a new 50 watt hour pack,
00:52 yet it takes less time to charge.
00:54 The fan?
00:57 Whisper quiet now with a larger design
00:59 and a thicker heat sink.
01:01 I've seen temperatures up to 10 degrees Celsius cooler
01:04 in my tests and fewer frame rate dips
01:07 due to power or thermal throttling too.
01:09 It's even 30 grams lighter now,
01:11 which I absolutely do notice
01:13 when picking it up with one hand.
01:15 Make no mistake, this is not a Steam Deck Pro
01:17 or a Steam Deck 2.
01:18 Valve is sticking to its promise
01:20 not to create a more powerful deck anytime soon.
01:23 This isn't suddenly a Starfield machine.
01:25 (faint music)
01:28 And yet the deck OLED experience is absolutely better
01:33 because Valve pulled a Nintendo in the best possible way.
01:36 Nintendo has never upgraded the performance
01:39 or screen resolution of the Switch over the past six years.
01:42 The company shrunk down its circuits
01:44 for better battery life and made it OLED instead.
01:47 Now, Valve is doing both those things at once,
01:50 die shrinking the chip to six nanometers
01:53 instead of the previous seven
01:54 and including a stellar Samsung screen.
01:57 It's not the subtle difference I expected.
01:59 Every game I've played is not only more colorful,
02:02 but smoother thanks to the revised chip
02:04 and the faster screen.
02:05 They draw less power and complete tasks faster
02:08 with a slight bump to 6,400 megahertz memory
02:11 and new power management.
02:13 I'm often seeing a few extra frames per second
02:15 while using a couple less watts.
02:18 Even when frame rates don't increase,
02:20 the frame times are more stable in demanding games.
02:23 Let's put it another way.
02:24 Cyberpunk 2077 now runs slightly faster,
02:28 more stable, cooler, and quieter
02:30 while drawing less power from a larger battery
02:33 all while looking brighter and clearer.
02:35 Control, a game I managed to run
02:36 for just under two hours at 60 frames per second
02:39 when the deck first launched,
02:41 now runs for two hours and 11 minutes
02:44 at 70 to 80 frames per second,
02:47 longer if I limit my frame rate to 60 or below.
02:50 And retro games like Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time
02:52 are telling me I should get eight full hours of battery life
02:56 down from just under five previously.
02:58 Plus, the deck OLED lets you drop to 45 FPS
03:01 for a smoother playing battery saving mode
03:03 than the previous deck,
03:04 while giving me enough battery
03:05 to eke out an extra hour and a half
03:07 in a less demanding game with that tweak alone.
03:10 I am so glad Valve didn't feel tempted
03:12 to up the screen resolution to 1080p or anything like that.
03:16 The battery life here is absolutely my jam.
03:18 And can I take a moment to appreciate
03:20 that Valve's OLED gets brighter than LCD
03:23 without forcing the screen to run dimmer
03:24 the rest of the time?
03:25 SDR content goes up to 600 nits.
03:28 And while Valve was in there,
03:29 it made some other upgrades as well,
03:31 like Wi-Fi 6E for faster downloads,
03:34 a dedicated Bluetooth antenna
03:35 to support more external game pads simultaneously,
03:38 a faster touchscreen that goes up to 180Hz polling rate,
03:42 more sensitive touchpads, revised haptics,
03:44 clickier shoulder buttons,
03:46 and a pair of Steam and Quick Access keys
03:49 that don't make me wanna retch.
03:50 Also my personal favorite,
03:52 redesigned thumb sticks with more of a divot for my thumb
03:55 and a smooth rubbery texture that's pleasing
03:58 and should hopefully collect less finger grease.
04:01 (upbeat music)
04:03 We aren't getting everything.
04:06 While I'm happy Valve didn't change
04:07 the deck's excellent ergonomics,
04:08 you won't find drift resistant Hall Effect joysticks here.
04:11 And while Valve says new machine screw bosses
04:14 and revised layout should make repairs
04:15 and screen replacements easier,
04:17 you can still accidentally guillotine your microSD.
04:21 There's still only one USB-C port,
04:23 and Valve says it didn't quite manage
04:25 to bake variable refresh rate into this screen.
04:27 But I keep looking for a catch,
04:29 some major trade-off you'll have to endure.
04:32 I haven't found a single one yet.
04:34 Like the original though,
04:35 it does still feel like Valve's rushing it out the door a tad.
04:38 I had a mysterious black screen with my review unit,
04:41 just one of them.
04:42 And separately, I discovered that its microphones
04:44 didn't work right out of the box.
04:46 Valve also hadn't figured out yet
04:47 whether it would offer a burn-in warranty
04:49 on the OLED screen as of my briefing last week.
04:52 For a handheld that doesn't let you turn the screen off
04:54 while it's downloading games,
04:55 I do have to wonder about burn-in.
04:57 Valve says it's done accelerated life cycle testing
05:00 and is satisfied.
05:00 There's no HDR support on the Linux desktop,
05:03 no HDR Netflix, no HDR YouTube.
05:05 Now you should know this Steam Deck's being released
05:07 ahead of a new Nintendo Switch,
05:09 rumored to have a significant performance upgrade.
05:11 And while the deck has got quite the edge in battery life
05:14 compared to PC peers,
05:15 it's getting left behind by games like Starfield,
05:18 The Last of Us, and Star Wars Jedi Survivor,
05:20 games that work decently well on say,
05:22 an Asus ROG Ally plugged into an outlet.
05:25 But Nintendo will never have an open library of PC games.
05:29 And it's unclear if any PC competitor
05:30 will ever match the Steam Deck on price.
05:33 The Deck OLED will ship November 16th for $549
05:37 for 512 gigs of storage,
05:39 only 20 bucks more than the original 256 gigabyte SKU,
05:42 and a new higher capacity one terabyte model
05:45 with an etched anti-glare screen
05:47 and this awesome new case within a case
05:49 will cost the same $649 that Valve originally charged
05:53 for LCD with half the storage.
05:56 Each of them come with a power adapter
05:57 with a longer 2.5 meter cord,
06:00 and there's also a $680 limited edition model
06:03 in the US and Canada,
06:04 which adds a full transparent shell and orange screws.
06:09 Let's put it this way,
06:10 the Steam Deck OLED is good enough,
06:12 I'm sorely tempted,
06:14 even though I've already got
06:15 a perfectly good Steam Deck at home.
06:18 (scoffs)
06:20 (game music)
06:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]