Valve has just announced the Steam Deck OLED, an update to the company’s well-received handheld gaming console that offers a much better screen, cooling, and battery life, among many other things. But there’s a catch (we’ll get to that later.)
As its name suggests, the most apparent upgrade to the new Steam Deck OLED, which is slated to release on November 16, is its screen. Gone is the 7-inch 1280×800 LCD and in its place now sits a 7.4-inch OLED display that supports HDR.
While the updated Steam Deck didn’t receive a resolution bump, its screen can now reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits compared to the 400 of its predecessor. The new display also has a higher 90Hz refresh rate and is expected to bring with it the benefits OLED is known for, such as deeper blacks and improved energy efficiency.
The space that was freed up from adopting a thinner display has made it possible for the battery size of the Steam Deck OLED to go up from 40Whr to 50Whr. Valve is now advertising the Steam Deck OLED to have between 3 to 12 hours of battery life, while the original was only expected to last 2 to 8 hours of gameplay.
Valve also improved the Steam Deck OLED’s cooling, with the heat pipe, heatsink fins, fan body, and impeller all increasing in size. In theory, this should help with acoustics and make fan ramps and de-ramps less noticeable, according to Gamers Nexus.
Despite all these improvements, the Steam Deck OLED isn’t expected to perform any better than the original. That’s because even with a 6nm APU node change and an upgrade to a faster LPDDR5 RAM variant, the hearts and brains of the new handheld are the same. So anyone looking for a more powerful machine should just wait for the Steam Deck 2 or the dozens of handhelds that the first one inspired.
Other changes with the Steam Deck OLED can be found on its support page, but the one detail that people should take note of is the improved handheld’s higher price tag.
The Steam Deck OLED will start at $549 (~Php 30,600) and a limited edition version that sports a transparent chassis and red accents will cost $679 (~Php 37,900). Valve’s updated lineup phases out the 64GB base model of the original, which only went for $399, or around Php 22,300, as well as the 512GB variant. However, the 256GB version of the original Steam Deck will get a price cut and fill in the void left behind by the 64GB model.
Valve never officially released the original Steam Deck in the Philippines, but who knows, it might just offer the new Steam Deck OLED to its Filipino fans.
