The Steam Deck OLED has finally been unveiled by Valve more than a year after the company announced its first mobile gaming PC. It’s a new version with some major enhancements, like a better display, better audio, and a longer battery.
There are two storage options for the Steam Deck OLED: 512GB and 1TB. Regarding cost, the 512GB variant is valued at $549. The cost of the 1TB portable is $649. It’s also important to note that a 1TB limited edition Steam Deck OLED with a transparent covering is available for $679.
Steam Deck LCD comes in three versions. The 64GB comes at the price of $349. The 256GB version costs $399. The 512 GB version is available for $449. With the launch of Steam Deck OLED, the 64GB version and the 512 GB version will be phased out.
As of November 16, Steam has released the three variants of the Steam Deck OLED for preorder. Players can preorder the Steam Deck OLED by going to the order page after logging onto Steam. The special edition is exclusively available to players in the US and Canada, while anybody may pre-order the two standard consoles.
Steam Deck OLED features
With a larger 7.4-inch unique RGB-stripe Samsung OLED with a refresh rate of 90 Hz and a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, the new Steam Deck OLED boasts impressive specs. The upgraded model’s OLED panel boasts 1,000 nits of HDR peak brightness and can display up to 110% of the DCI-P3 color gamut at this resolution. There is also 50 watt-hours of battery capacity available now.
The NVMe M.2 2230 SSD storage modules are the same in the new model, but it sports a larger, more efficient heatsink and fan, as well as updated 6400MT/s memory. Along with enhanced haptics and bass, the speakers now have a redesigned touchpad for enhanced fidelity and edge detection.
Additional enhancements include a longer 2.5m power cord, AptX HD and AptX Low Latency, Bluetooth 5.3 with a dedicated antenna, Wi-Fi 6E for quicker downloads with new 6GHz connectivity, and wake via Bluetooth controller. The battery life has been increased from two to eight hours to three to twelve hours. The charging rate is also faster, reaching a 20%–80% charge in as little as forty-five minutes.
Steam Deck OLED V. Steam Deck LCD
The most notable difference between the two models is the OLED screen that the new Steam Deck features. But in addition to having superior black levels, the new OLED panel has HDR capability and is 0.4 inches bigger than the one on the original Steam Deck.
Furthermore, the original Steam Deck, which Valve now refers to as the Steam Deck LCD, was powered by a 7 nm AMD APU with a Zen 2 CPU clocked at 2.4–3.5GHz along with a GPU with 8 RDNA 2 CUs clocked at 1.0–1.6GHz. On the other hand, A 6 nm AMD APU is used by the Steam Deck OLED.
Valve also promises that the Steam Deck OLED will have a 30–50% longer battery life than its predecessor. This is even with the bigger screen and increased brightness. This is because the battery has been upgraded, going from a 40Wh to a 50Wh battery.
Additionally, Valve switched to a Tri-band Wi-Fi 6E radio, which uses the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bandwidths, in place of the Dual-band Wi-Fi 5. This will enable better connectivity and quicker downloading speed.
The improvements that the Valve made to the handheld’s overall weight and thermals are another, less noticeable improvement. The new Steam Deck OLED weighs only 640 grams, or around 1.4 pounds, as opposed to the 669 grams of its predecessor.
The elimination of the LCD backlight and the switch in APUs has improved airflow through the console from a thermal perspective. Therefore, the new model will be less prone to heating issues.