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When the Steam Deck first launched, our in depth evaluation particularly referred to as out the “ho-hum” LCD display screen as “the system’s greatest heartbreak.” The “washed-out” shade copy and “apparent mild bleed” have been among the many extra apparent results of Valve “reduce[ting] corners to avoid wasting money” on the Deck’s 7-inch LCD panel.
Within the many months since that launch, Valve has provided frequent software program updates to repair different early points in areas like sport compatibility, stability, and system-level options. However that lackluster LCD display screen has remained the Steam Deck’s greatest flaw, a headache that customers have to tolerate to get pleasure from a transportable PC gaming expertise that is in any other case fairly low on compromises.
With the Steam Deck OLED, Valve is able to remove that concern. The brand new unit, which goes on sale later this week, sports activities an excellent display screen that’s lastly on par with the one Nintendo offered to keen Change house owners over two years in the past. Paired with a handful of different small quality-of-life {hardware} upgrades, the brand new model of Valve’s handheld ought to arouse loads of jealousy in these caught with a now-outdated LCD unit.
As good as these upgrades are, although, they don’t contact the Steam Deck’s core pixel-pushing specs, that are already beginning to look a bit dated within the shadow of upstart rivals with beefier chips. Whether or not these shortly getting old internals are sufficient to final till the deliberate launch of a real “Steam Deck 2.0” in a number of years relies upon largely on what sorts of video games you count on to play on the hand held.
Brilliant and clean
We’ve been touting the advantages of OLED vs. commonplace LCD screens right here at Ars since at the least 2016, so the most important enhancements within the Steam Deck OLED are fairly acquainted by now. Deeper blacks, higher distinction, brighter colours, much less blurring—it’s all right here.
If something, the OLED enhancements are much more spectacular due to simply how awful the display screen was on the unique Steam Deck. When the Nintendo Change launched an OLED mannequin in 2021, we deemed the improve “nonessential,” largely as a result of the unique Change display screen was already fairly first rate. Leaping from the Steam Deck to the Steam Deck OLED, however, is akin to transferring from a view by way of frosted glass to a view by way of expertly tailor-made prescription glasses.
Kyle Orland
The visible pop is most obvious in video games designed to make full use of the HDR shade gamut. By now, players with first rate TVs or displays are very aware of the impression of, say, an excellent HDR dawn shining by way of the skyscrapers in a sport like Spider-Man: Miles Morales. And whereas smartphone players have been having fun with this sort of impact on choose video games for some time now, there’s nonetheless a sure wow issue to seeing these colours on the comparatively massive display screen of a devoted gaming handheld.
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