All aboard the new Steam Deck OLED special!

Oh look, a brand new Steam Deck! | Valve Steam Deck OLED review | 'The next thing we're working on moving forward is Steam Deck 2,' but Valve has yet to see silicon offering the leap it's looking for Created for ignoble.experiment@arconati.us |  Web Version November 12, 2023 CONNECT WITH PC GAMER       SIGN UP ⋅   SHARE First up Oh look, a brand new Steam Deck! (Future) Surprise! There's a new Steam Deck. It's not a sequel, this is "the definitive first-generation Steam Deck" and it comes with a lovely new OLED screen, a bigger battery, and a new AMD Sephiroth APU. That means it's the best-looking and longest-lasting version of Valve's handheld gaming PC ever made, and it's honestly a bit of a doozy. But don't worry, it doesn't mean there won't be a Steam Deck 2... The Big Story (PC Gamer) Valve Steam Deck OLED review If the Steam Deck was a beta, the Steam Deck OLED is its finished form. It's not a sequel, it's not a beefed up "pro" version, and it's not a major redesign. I can't even tell the difference between the old model and the new model when I sit them next to each other - save for the new orange accents. The Steam Deck OLED, which replaces most of the current models at the same price, is the ultimate form of one of the best handheld gaming PCs available today. The differences between the original Steam Deck and the Steam Deck OLED are largely invisible, but they refine what was already a fantastic way to play PC games wherever you want. There are clear improvements with its most crucial stats: it has noticeably better battery life, more storage capacity, a sharper, brighter screen, and weighs a tad less. But there are also some surprises, too: the touch screen is way more responsive, the thumbsticks have an improved grip, and the bigger fan purrs much softer than before.   I don't want to go back to the original Steam Deck now. I don't hate it, but the OLED captures the promise of the original in ways I didn't initially expect. And while I don't think there's a sensible reason to upgrade if you've already bought one, the Steam Deck OLED cements Valve's device as the most accessible handheld gaming PC you can buy right now. The Steam Deck OLED is like every YouTube chef who will implore you to make your own pizza dough from scratch. It's a subtle, yet essential change to the experience that will ruin all other pizza doughs for you. Like adding in a few drops of honey, the OLED screen on the new Deck sweetens the experience of playing games in a way that has me feeling more fancy than I probably should. My favorite games radiate on the new Deck's slightly larger 7.4-inch screen. The OLED panel can push 1,000 nits of brightness, which is to say that when you take your first steps into Elden Ring's pastoral opening region without properly adjusting your settings, it's like someone flipped on light mode. And with an impressive 110% of the DCI-P3 gamut, the colors on the Deck OLED are deliciously vibrant. Given the Deck's modest screen resolution—it's still 1280x800—the color accuracy combined with the sharp 1M:1 contrast ratio distracts you from the fuzziness of playing games below 1080p.   HDR does too. When it's on, HDR clarifies the extremes of a scene, revealing detail in the darkest blacks and brightest whites. Neon signs pierce through the dim bar in one of Cyberpunk 2077's intros without clouding the shape of the letters with bloom, and the brilliant deserts in Diablo 4 don't swallow your character whole. On such a small screen, that level of clarity meaningfully impacts fast-paced games. I can actually see what's going on as my Sorceress electrifies entire rooms of demons. It's almost hard to go back to my regular old PC monitor that is embarrassingly incapable of displaying that level of detail. For all of the Deck OLED's improvements, they're not so revolutionary that I can't stand using my old model. I miss the extra battery life and the screen the most, but unless you've got a buddy dangling the newer model in front of you, you're probably better off waiting for whatever Valve releases next. Because other than shifting some internal hardware around and shrinking the 4-core AMD APU down a little, the Deck OLED runs the continuously growing list of Verified Steam games just the same. Valve has even said that it will continue to maintain software parity with both models for the foreseeable future.   For those who haven't decided on a Deck yet, this is the absolute best version to get. Anyone with a big Steam library or the drive to tinker with Linux, there's simply no better handheld available. When I visited Valve to pick a Deck OLED up, almost every developer I met described the Deck OLED as the device they wanted to make from the beginning. It's the device I would've wanted from the beginning, too. At a price that still slips in under the competition despite all of its improvements, the Steam Deck OLED earns the crown as the king of handheld gaming PCs. Read the full review (PC Gamer) 'The next thing we're working on moving forward is Steam Deck 2,' but Valve has yet to see silicon offering the leap it's looking for Valve has been adamant to talk up the new Steam Deck OLED as "the definitive first-generation Steam Deck" and definitely not anything like a sequel to its immensely popular inaugural handheld PC. But if you were under any illusions that it wasn't coming Valve has confirmed "it's definitely something we're working on and planning for." Read the full story (PC Gamer) Valve knows people will jam the shiny new OLED panel into old Steam Decks 'but it's probably not going to go well' If you have anything like my tinkering soul, the first thing to occur to you the instant you heard Valve was making a Steam Deck OLED was about whether you'd be able to buy the screen from iFixit—in the same way you can buy the top LCD Steam Deck panel right now—and drop it into an original Deck. Sadly, it looks like that's not going to be a thing… but that's obviously not going to stop people trying. Read the full story (PC Gamer) Steam Deck OLED vs Steam Deck LCD: what's inside The new Steam Deck OLED is here, but while the sparkling screen is the eponymous feature, there's a whole lot else going on under the hood. Valve has made sure the chassis is identical to the original LCD version, which means all your translucent covers will still be compatible, but things are very different inside. Read the full story (PC Gamer) SteamOS will be coming to other handhelds before you can install it on your PC 'because right now, it's very, very tuned for Steam Deck' Where the hell is SteamOS? That was one of the key questions I wanted answered when I sat down with Valve's Lawrence Yang and Yazan Aldehayyat, two of the longest serving members of the Steam Deck team. As always, the answer is "soon" but interestingly Valve is looking to make it available to other handhelds first, before a wider PC and laptop launch. Read the full story (PC Gamer) Valve is committed to bringing Steam Deck OLED 'battery life improvements to the LCD models as well' Now, I know you may be feeling a little glum at the announcement of the new Steam Deck OLED. You know your little ol' LCD Steam Deck can still play the same games at the same speeds as the shiny new Valve thing, but it's taken a little shine off your handheld PC, right? Well, maybe this will make you feel a little better: Not only is Valve going to continue supporting the regular Steam Decks (indeed it's continuing to sell the 256GB version for $399) but it will also be bringing all the software-based battery life improvements it's created for the OLED version to your LCD-based one, too. Read the full story Pretty big deals MSI Vector | RTX 4080 | Intel Core i9 12900HX | 16GB DDR5-4800 | 1TB SSD | 1200p | 144Hz | $1,599 at Newegg (save $500) (MSI) This is the most affordable RTX 4080-based gaming laptop I've found, possibly at any time this year. It's not some hobbled GPU implementation either, using a 175W design of the graphics card to give you the full gaming performance. It's certainly not the most beautiful laptop you will see, nor the slimmest (though that helps keep it cool), and I'd rather a higher refresh rate panel and a bit more RAM, but it's a great price for a high-spec laptop. Price check: Amazon $2,090.87 Gigabyte M28U | 28-inch | 4K | 144Hz | IPS | $429.99 at Amazon (Gigabyte) Here's a monitor we really rate, as you can tell from our Gigabyte M28U review. We actually loved this package for its blend of speed and resolution, even at its original $650 price tag. At this tantalizingly cheap price, it's that much better. Price check: Newegg $479.99 Yeyian Tanto | Core i5 13400F | RTX 4070 | 16GB DDR5-5600 | 1TB SSD | 650W PSU | $1,249 at Newegg (save $350) (Yeyian) This gaming PC is packing a lot of hardware for not a lot of money. There's a 10-core, 16-thread CPU that will handle pretty much any game you like and the RTX 4070 is a great 1440p GPU. Even 4K isn't out of reach, thanks to its DLSS upscaling and frame generation features. The storage and RAM are perfectly acceptable in capacity and speed, but the PSU is fairly miserly at just 650W. If you wanted to upgrade the graphics card to something like an RTX 4090, you'd need to replace the power supply. Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 | Nvidia RTX 4060 | AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS | 14-inch | 1080p | 165Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,299.99 at Best Buy (save $300) (Asus) If you don't want a hulking gaming laptop, let me introduce the Zephyrus 14 (see our review): a 14-incher that can game without busting your bank balance or your shoulder when lugging it around—no-nonsense specs in a delightful package. This is the latest version with the RTX 40-series GPUs; this is a very smart package, though not the most affordable RTX 4060 machine by any stretch, it is still a good deal for this delightful little laptop. Price check: Newegg $1,499.99 Asus TUF F15 | RTX 4070 | Intel Core i7 12700H | 15-inch | 144Hz | 1080p | 16GB DDR4-3200 | 1TB SSD | $999.99 at Best Buy (save $400) (Asus) The TUF range of laptops from Asus is its more value-oriented range, but they're still solid machines and when they're this price, with this level of spec, they're hard to ignore. This is the cheapest I've seen an RTX 4070 laptop on sale for, and your only real compromise is the last-gen CPU and memory combo... which isn't much of a compromise for a gaming laptop. Price check: Amazon $1,250.98 Sign Up  |    Update Profile  |    Unsubscribe Privacy Policy  |    Cookies Policy  |    Terms and Conditions CONTACT US: FEEDBACK  |    ADVERTISE Future US LLC © Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036