The Valve Steam Deck: Recommending the Game Boy, DS, Switch to a High-Performance Game-Boss System

But while the original Deck was shoved out the door months before it was ready, I feel far more confident recommending this one, and I’d argue Valve has more than earned the benefit of the doubt. Over the past 21 months, it has been updated over 300 times, transforming it into a genre defining handheld. I now trust Valve more than any other maker, thanks to the updates and hardware support I’ve seen.

The design of the Steam Deck is by Design, and it isn’t a next-gen “Steam Deck Pro” or “Steam Deck 2”. In September, Valve told The Verge it wouldn’t make the Steam Deck faster anytime soon, despite the fact that rival handhelds with faster processors can now get far more playable results in demanding games like Starfield and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Good things often come to gamers who wait. There are always better, more power-efficient consoles coming. Nintendo has long hammered out attractive new combos of size, screen, color, and battery life for its Game Boy, DS, and Switch.

It fixes my biggest complaints about Valve’s original handheld gaming PC and then some, without any new catch. Starting at $549 for 512GB of storage, it only costs $20 more than last year’s model with half that capacity — or you can pay the same $649 as last year’s 512GB to get 1TB now.

What Is a Faster, Cooler, More Bright, and Less Battery Hyperon Gaming? A Review of Steam Deck OLED

Here is a sentence lifted word for word from my test notes that might give you some idea: “Cyberpunk is running faster, more stable, cooler, quieter, while drawing less power from a larger battery and looking brighter and clearer and better.”

That’s what I want for all of my games, and that’s what I want for you. Just know that when I wrote “faster,” I only meant an extra four frames per second.

One of the things I prefer about the company is their ability to use the Virtual Reality mode, otherwise I wouldn’t buy an Ally from them. The other is a mode where I get more performance when plugging into the wall. The valve says the mode makes things complicated and requires overdesigned components. Aldehayyat told me they don’t want to use up their weight and budget on things that aren’t useful.

I want to avoid writing 4,000-word reviews, so I focus on what’s new. If you’re wondering “What is this thing, and why would I want one,” check out my original review video and my long-term Steam Deck review.

For example: in 2022, I was able to play the graphically intensive Control for just under two hours on my original Steam Deck review unit at 60 frames per second. This past week, I played the same game at up to 80 frames per second for two hours, 11 minutes.

I also played over three hours of Nier: Automata over the course of two days without returning to a plug — two of those hours at 60fps. When the Deck said I had only 30 percent battery left and 37 more minutes to play, I simply dropped the frame rate to 45 frames per second and then 30 frames per second to double my playtime. (At 45fps, three hours of Control is also definitely within reach.)

Source: Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster

Power Saving with an OLED Monitor: Performance and Battery Capacity of the Valve 8-Meg Steam Deck, a 64 nanometer Optical Device for High Performance Games

The power saving of the new 6 nanometerSephiroth modem is similar to the power saving of the red box Nintendo switch, even though it didn’t have as much performance.

Valve hardware engineers say that the hardware is good enough on its own to not need intervention from them. “We picked OLED because we were able to prove to ourselves that the longevity in the device was there.” The company also does accelerated testing for weeks or months at a time.

And because that new screen was thinner, Valve managed to fit a thicker heatsink, larger fan, and a 22 percent higher capacity 50 watt-hour battery pack into the same space.

The Steam Deck has a screen that can save over half a watt, depending on the content, and I can see how that would affect the drawing power of games. There are exceptions: Nidhogg consumed 7.2W on OLED versus 6W on LCD at the same 60fps, and Max Payne 2 drew roughly the same 10W on each on default settings.

Games last longer with the bigger battery. And the new OLED screen, die-shrunk “Sephiroth” chip, and a slight bump to 6400MT/s memory often make them play better, too.

Starfield still runs like a waste of time. And I won’t say I didn’t see mysterious stutter in other games because I absolutely did. In Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring, I saw slightly higher frame rates and less frame time spikes for more stable gameplay, which I believe is the same thing I am seeing in less intensive games. (And if you ask me, playing an old game at a buttery smooth 80 or 90 frames per second definitely counts as more performance than the old Deck’s 60fps maximum.)

The fan is also whisper-quiet now, fixing one of the biggest issues with the original. The entire handheld runs cooler. It simply doesn’t get uncomfortably hot, even after fully draining the battery with an intensive game. The larger battery of the model I used was only able to be fully charged in 71 minutes, which was less than half of the time for the larger battery of the one I used. According to my wattmeter, the new Deck takes full advantage of its 45W USB-C PD charger right up to the 65 percent mark.

Speaking of chargers, every Steam Deck OLED now comes with a longer 2.5-meter (up from 1.5-meter) power cable, and the 1TB model comes with a fancy two-in-one case — a smaller shell suitable for stuffing your Deck into a bag, Velcroed into a larger carrying case for standalone protection. I find it’s a tad harder to zip up — but the small version is actually useful.

There is a choice of 5 GHz or 6 GHz for downloads, with two antennas for either 2.4 or 6 GHz. I still see 500Mbps downloads straight from the Valve server, even though my home network is still on Wi-Fi 6. I am happy to say that the Deck finally supports microphones for chat and that it has a dedicated Bluetooth antenna, which I have yet to check out. (You’ll still need a pair of low-latency headphones or earbuds to avoid game audio lag.)

The Decks are 29 grams lighter and I can see that when I pick them up blindfolded. The shoulder buttons are clickier than Quick Access buttons. The thumbstick tops are taller, wider, and grippier, making it slightly easier to make your character keep running in one direction; they’ve got a tackier, more recessed smooth divot on top that’s a lovely (and hopefully easier to clean) perch for your thumb.

The Value of Variable Refresh Rate on OLEDs: A Comparison with the Steam Deck OLED, Armored Core VI, Ori and the Will of the Wisps

They are normal controllers, and not Hall effect magnetic ones. “We have not seen very many complaints at all with joystick drift,” says Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat.

And as much as I prefer the incredible response time, clarity, blacks, and color of an OLED screen, there’s something left to be desired from the screen’s refresh rate(s) compared to, say, the Asus competition.

The steam deck is always brighter than the steam deck display in every situation and your games finally have real light. The lights in Cyberpunk 2077 look like tubes. There is a realistic glow to the jump jets, lasers, and sparks in Armored Core VI. Elden Ring’s bolts of fire come alive after some in- game brightness adjustment, and the golden light of the Erdtree starts to feel divine.

The best made-for-HDR game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, is so good that it constantly burst with glorious light, and without the rest of the screen suddenly dims like I saw in my recent review. I would like it to be displayed in 16:10.

There aren’t a lot of HDR games out there last I checked, and you might have a hard time finding aHDR video to play on this system. On Linux, there are noHDR streaming services or services that give you a HDR experience. I believe that Valve is helping build some of the first settlements out there, and that HDR is a bit of a Wild West.

Valve display tech expert Jeremy Selan tells me that variable refresh rate (VRR) “didn’t quite make it into this revision,” so the Steam Deck OLED can still easily run into stutter when games can’t keep up with the refresh rate you select. And while you can now select from an incredible range of frame rates all the way from 10fps to 90fps, some of which divide nicely into the refresh rates Valve’s new screen supports, I’m finding it takes a lot of trial and error to see which games work with which refresh options. I am only seeing that work in certain titles, but it should be enough to make 30 frames per second look great. Even 60/60 wasn’t perfectly smooth in everything I’ve tried.

Source: Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster

Review of the Valve Steam Deck 2 Hardware and Software Updates (Supporting Issues with the Steam Deck, Xbox, Nintendo, and GameCube)

I hold onto the best versions of every game console I own. The 60GB PS3 “Phat” with PS2 backward compatibility. A Homebrew Channel-hacked Wii for my GameCube games. An Xbox 360 Elite with the swappable hard drive and supposedly Red Ring of Death-proof “Jasper” motherboard. A Nintendo DS Lite with a special Game Boy Advance cartridge that can play Japanese games with English translations on top. An original PS2 with a hard drive rigged to load games faster than disc.

Lawrence says that Valve is confident they will have aproper Steam Deck 2 in the next couple of years.

Valve is not focused on performance in this version of its handheld PC and will not be releasing a faster handheld for the next couple of years.

But say you don’t have the time to read a full review right now and just want the specs and some FAQs. That’s what this post is for. Here is a list of things that have changed, what is the same, and a few other things.

“Our hardware warranty covers issues with all Steam Deck components, including the display,” Valve product designer Lawrence Yang tells me. We want to know if that means burn-in is covered because companies sometimes need to be chased on that.

Overdesigned Power Regulators: A Case Study on Turbo Mode in a Pc-Pen and P-Pb Scenario

“If you want to have turbo mode you have to design the product to be able to handle turbo mode… you’re carrying around a whole bunch of stuff all the time that you can only use in Turbo Mode.” For instance, overdesigned power regulators, says Aldehayyat.