Valve Unveils Steam Deck OLED With Improved Features

Valve officially revealed the refreshed Steam Deck which features better performance and longer battery life.

Steam Deck OLED Details

While many were hoping for a Steam Deck 2, Valve released a refreshed version of the first console. The new version is promised to be the company's first handheld console with HDR OLED. It has a 7.4-inch 90Hz OLED custom Samsung screen, making the display slightly larger, and has a faster refresh rate.

In addition, the 1,000-nit HDR peak brightness, and 600-nit SDR brightness brought a big difference from the previous 400-nit. Despite its promised improvements, there are no compromises as Valve also increased the battery life to 50 watt-hour battery. The OLED version is also equipped with a larger yet quieter fan and heatsink.

"We picked OLED because we were able to prove to ourselves that the longevity in the device was there," Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat told The Verge. The engineer also revealed that the company does accelerated testing at max brightness for weeks or months. Moreover, the company also had a firm belief in the power of the device's hardware.

Valve Retains Some Specs from Original Steam Deck

The device is only a refreshed version of the original Steam Deck. The main highlight of the new design is the OLED feature which is why it is no surprise that Valve continued to use some of the specs for this new device.

The Steam Deck OLED still has the same processor and offers basic performance with no turbo mode. "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," Aldehayyat explained. In conclusion, the company simply does not want to give the customers more weight and budget on things that are not necessarily useful.

Meanwhile, Valve hinted that this could be the last version of the Steam Deck 1. However, version 2 will not happen unless there is a "generational improvement" in the performance. Regardless, the company is optimistic that in the next couple of years, they will be able to release a Steam Deck 2.

The Steam Deck OLED will start shipping on November 16. The 512GB version will cost $549 while the 1TB version is priced at $649. A new limited edition transparent model for $679 will be sold in the US and Canada.