Steam Deck OLED | Hacker News Reader

Steam Deck OLED

store.steampowered.com

983 pointsrobbiet480683 comments

Gotta love that they know how people tinker with their devices:

Rear cover screws now thread into metal

Adjusted rear cover screw heads to Torx™, as well as other materials and geometry tweaks on the heads to reduce stripping risk

Lowered number of screw types throughout system

Reduced step count required for common repairs

Improved bumper switch mechanism drop reliability

Moved bumper switch to joystick board for easier repair

Improved display repair/replacement to not require taking rear cover off

Wow, it's very rare for companies to move in this direction. This is the polar opposite direction of what Apple's been doing.

It'll be a very dark day for us all when Valve turns evil.

Steam Deck has been a modder's dream since it came out. Just having "desktop mode" be a standard option has been amazing.

Steam is not a publicly traded company. Their decisions don't necessarily have to improve profit margins.

Valve's a software distribution company, not a hardware company.

The steam deck exists primarily to expand their targetable market.

It's of no benefit to them if people's devices fail - they just stop buying games (unlike Apple, where the devices are intended to slow down or stop working altogether).

I don't think Apple is the pinnacle of repairability by any means, but they have been making slow improvements in this area (like replaceable back glass in the new model phones, the entire mainboard doesn't need to be replaced for common repairs as often now, etc).

Check out Fairphone. Maybe not as feature packed as the latest Pixel or iPhone, but definitely a step in the right direction.

Even Marques Brownlee [0] said he's going to rate gadgets' green/sustainability creds from now on, after reviewing the Fairphone.

0. https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee

Apple is going back to how home computers used to be, before Compaq got lucky with the IBM PC cloning.

They were consumer electronics devices, most of the expansion possibilities were via external devices connected on an expansion port of some sort, and that was about it.

Naturally this model offers better margins than selling PC components on thin razor margins, which is why even the PC world is going into that direction, leaving custom PCs for hardcore gammers and servers, where OEMs can also enjoy higher margins.

If you do it well, the polar opposite just boots your marketing and overall goodness.

It'd be nice if it was a real console and not a glorified Nintendo games piracy device.

It's very easy to be user friendly when your business model is relying on piracy, they even showed an emulator in a now deleted trailer

It's amazing to watch how Torx screws have gone from crime against humanity to actually a good thing over the last decade.

Engineering wise, Torx was always superior, particularly small screws that would strip easily. People hated it because of the patents, and getting good tools were extremely expensive because of the licensing.

Philips used to be the "good" one because although it's a pretty bad design, everyone had it. Now that lots of people have torx drivers, they're better in pretty much every way. They're a lot harder to strip, they don't cam out as much etc.

Are they still covered by the patents that made them unattractive initially? Patent expiry could very well be the reason for their increased popularity.

Hex are a crime only because there are way too many sizes.

I thought most of the hate was for tri-wing and pentalobe.

> Improved bumper switch mechanism drop reliability

> Moved bumper switch to joystick board for easier repair

These are such a big deal, and such a design flaw in the first deck.

The most breakable part(eg. From any drop) requires valve to do the repairs because the same board houses the most complicated parts

I'd argue that putting the USB-C charge port directly on the motherboard instead of a replaceable carrier was an equally poor choice. One booboo or too many accessory plug-unplug cycles requires a motherboard replacement, RMA, or a hotplate and hot air at a minimum. There are contacts that are under the USB-C port module, so it's not even possible to change it with an iron. Better a separate daughterboard connected by FPC. Mine has a magnetic wearout extender on it now.

Steam is in the world of selling you games; Steam Decks being cheap/reparable/etc leads to more game sales.

By my count I've bought 17 games since getting my SteamDeck, they got me.

I prefer steam’s openess as an incentive to sell games versus companies that manipulate you, spy on you, prevent repairs, steal your data or use all sorts of dark patterns. Steam is simply a company that builds products the right way. They deserve my £.

Oh and that sexy support of Linux. It won a loyal customer for life (or until they get acquired and get enshitified to death).

Sounds like a win-win-win situation for gamers (buyer), developers (seller), and valve (marketplace).

Is there something wrong with that?

Small observation, I think they got the idea for a limited edition see transparent case after seeing how many people were interesting in modding theirs with an aftermarket one, and also probably a reason they made it even easier to take apart. The steam deck has seen more hardware mods than any other consumer hardware device I can think of in the past decade.

And no jailbreaking required. I just wish I could hold one to see if my hands fit.

My awkward hands where DS, Switch, PS and Xbox controllers all give me cramps after around ten minutes of play time.

N64 not so. It's why I've always been a PC gamer.

if your hands cramp when using a switch, the deck might be good for your hands. I've had the same issue with the low stick placement on it and the deck has been an ergonomic joy.

I've found the Deck quite uncomfortable to hold, with the rear buttons being the lowest point. Lots of pain in the curve of the palm, plus the stock plastic is slippery which makes you try to squeeze harder. Propped up on a stand with an external controller is my preferred way personally.

the switchdeck is massive compared to all of them

Well not sure about the Steam Deck, its all nice and fine but if the original device is not very durable its still sucks of you need to repair it often.

I do not know if they are going this route with the Index, that thing is notoriously bad build, and it breaks for people after a very short lifespan all the time. Basically almost every serious reviewer complained how their Index broke after X months. I do not think its easy to repair at all and does Valve sell spare parts? It should life longer in the first place.

I have owned an index for 4 years with heavy daily use during the pandemic, and the only issue I've had is when I smashed a controller in a wall playing beat saber (and even so only the thing that retains the elastic strap broke).

I've also spent a while in VRChat where these issues would be discussed and I've never seen anyone mention that the index in not durable.

Hmm, given the chassis changes, what are the odds the OLED screen can be dropped into existing Decks? It would probably hold back adoption but I'm unlikely to upgrade so soon anyway.

Valve says it cannot be installed in LCD models. A third party may offer a solution though.

Do you know if the plastic casing is any easier to open? I damaged the edges of mine with the spludger when prying it open to install an SSD, the plastic is quite soft.

Valve: Install whatever you want from wherever you want - hardware, software, operating system.

And they provide you parts and schematics in case you need to repair/mod your device. Never thought I'd see a day when linux gaming would be as good as what I get via my steam deck these days.

Kudos to Valve for embracing such an open approach to gaming/portable devices in general.

Steam fees are their money maker, hardware is just a way to get more people buying stuff on Steam

And it absolutely worked on me.

Prior to having a Steam Deck, my overall video game time was fairly low since it took time to boot the PC and start everything up. With the SD, it's much easier to grab it and get a small session in, and I've purchased a number of games (and will even buy games on Steam at a higher price than elsewhere) because of the Deck. It's the price of convenience, but well worth it in my opinion.

It's not just about trying to get more people to buy stuff on Steam but also safeguard their own future, while carving out their own experience and a niche.

Back when the whole Steam on Linux started, they saw Windows 8/10 as a real threat to their existence. (Windows S?)

It's just that the way they went about to solve this in an open way is what's nice.

They improved the graphics drivers situation, invested in Wine and other open source projects, put in a lot of effort to create a user experience they wanted on a handheld device.

Ultimately this gave them a real edge over their competitors. Was surprised to see random youtubers making videos on how to install steam OS on their more powerful Rog Ally/Gpd/Home theater PC etc ..

And it's absolutely working! So far I've spent 566€ directly on Steam this year and my willingness to spend money on GOG or EGS has dropped dramatically considering what a seamless experience I get with Steam and the Steam Deck.

Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that no public traded company would ever do this, or spend this much resources in things such as repairability or Linux layer improvements. It's nice that Valve is still a private company and can decide to focus on things that actually good for the space and consumers, even if it's not the most optimal use of their time.

Same goes for XBox and PlayStation, but you don't see them using anything other than a closed environment.

Given that PC gaming thrives on modding, it's only right that the most PC-like console gets it right.

If that were the natural outcome Xbox would’ve “gotten it right” since it was the most PC-like console before the Steam Deck.

The moddability is a deliberate strategy by Valve, and I don’t see it as an inevitable move for every PC-centered company, Microsoft being the prime counterexample.

Valve isn’t taking some moral high ground here, they are just trying to commoditize hardware and OS platforms. It isn’t a new idea: https://gwern.net/complement

That's an interesting take. Reminds me of when Android came out as free and open alternative to whatever we had back then.

I hope Steam OS doesn't end up the same locked down mess that Android has become these days ...

> And they provide you parts and schematics in case you need to repair/mod your device.

Where are the schematics? I was trying to do a repair on an unusually common failure and couldn't find anything.

I am not sure if schematics is the right word, but I meant things like: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/SteamDeck/hardware and whatever they provide to likes of https://www.amazon.com/Joystick-Steam-Deck-Hall-Effect-Senso... to and steamdeck HD, to make hall effect joysticks and high resolution display mods for steamdeck.

Sorry, where are these schematics? I was not aware.

The already have most of online PC games sales through their platform and take a very healthy chunky cut off it, they don't have any financial incentive to close their platform. I also doubt they sell Steam deck at a loss like console companies do.

>I also doubt they sell Steam deck at a loss like console companies do.

They (GabeN I believe) mentioned early on that it was "painful" to hit the Deck's price point. Unsure if this means sold at a loss or just a smaller-than-ideal profit.

albeit in software, but valve got a lot of success built on top of video game mods (see counter-strike and dota series).

they are far from saints if you zoom out (from lootboxes and fostering an official means to trade virtual items for money), but being an independent company still driven by gaming helps.

The upgrade to 90 Hertz is really good for a non-obvious reason: In the Steam Deck userbase, the "Golden 40", playing games at 40fps and the screen at 40 hertz, is a pretty well-liked trick for getting the frame time right in between 30 and 60fps at 25ms while "only" needing power to render 10 more frames per second than 30, making for a much better experience than 30.

The only problem with this is if a frame is slightly late at 40 hertz, you're waiting the full 25 ms for the next one instead of 16.6ms at 60hz. Being able to run the screen at 80 hz for 40fps games cuts that stutter time on a missed frame in half to 12.5ms, and will make a huge difference!

So does the Steam Deck not support VRR for the onboard display? I see articles saying support was added for external displays, but it’s not clear whether the onboard one has it. If it does, then it seems like it shouldn't be a problem for a frame to be slightly late.

Edit: I read some other comments that explain the situation. It sounds like there is no VRR for the internal display unfortunately.

No, it sadly doesn't do VRR and neither does this new one. According to the LTT video[0], it's because of the internal connector that the internal display is attatched with, because external VRR screens do work. They speculate that valve were just limited by what is available on the market because they are not quite shipping enough units yet to warrant fully custom designs / orders. Apparently there are hints towards this being the same supplier that also supplies the Switch OLED's screen.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCVXqoVi6RE

The display uses a mipi interface instead of a edp. This is because the screen isn’t completely custom and likely used one from a manufacturer similar to the switch oled which also uses a mipi display.

If valve sold more units it might justify a completely custom solution but this is still way better than what people had to do to get a better screen before.

People consider 40fps the sweet spot?

Yeah, for games that don't quite run at 60fps. You set the screen to 40 hertz, the difference between 30 and 40 is HUGE latency and general smoothness wise.

It doesn't sound like a big difference but 40fps is actually about halfway between 30fps and 60fps in response times. Because 30fps is 1 frame every 33ms, 60fps is 16ms. 40 fps gives you 25ms.

It is only needing to produce 33% more frames for 40fps vs 30fps. Compare that to producing 60fps which is 100% more frames. So you are only sacrificing a small amount of performance to get 40fps but a significant amount to reach 60fps.

In practicality, most people can't tell the difference between 40fps and 60fps, or at least won't notice it in normal gameplay.

So you get nearly the same experience as 60fps but for much less processing power and therefore also better battery life, less fan noise/cooling, and you can crank graphics a little higher.

Most people are more likely to notice the difference between "Medium" and "High" very easily or "High" and "Very High", but won't notice the impact of 40fps vs 60fps. So that's why 40fps is generally a sweet spot between performance and experience.

There's a weird cult-like attitude around 40fps that I've noticed. Personally I run everything at the normal 60hz and almost everything I play runs fine, even at the higher resolution (1920x1200) of my external monitor. Counter-Strike 2 runs horribly and Baldur's Gate 3 was sub-60, but mostly I don't play anything that demanding (mostly indie, lots of 2D). It might matter more if you play all the new AAA titles that come out.

I limit Elden Ring to 35FPS to avoid stuttering and it basically feels as smooth as 60FPS on the XBox Series S. As long as you get at least ~30FPS the framerate doesn't matter as much as framerate stability.

It's a bit better than 30 while saves battery compare to 60

Maybe for battery.

On the Deck, yes.

I’m a first gen deck owner and am constantly impressed by the quality of the product. The hardware is good, more than good enough, but the fact that it is running windows games mostly seemlessly is incredible. Yes, I know wine has been around forever, but with the deck you barely even notice that you’re running through a compatibility layer. Performance and battery life in all but the last few years of AAA games is also great. The improvements here are marginal, but it’s great to see them making smart, incremental updates.

I’d love to see how the market would react to a deck in a console form factor, with similar input options to the deck (pad plus touchpads) and an APU comparable to modern consoles.

The Steam Controller was killed off, and IIRC there was a patent infringement issue with the paddles on the back. I'd love to see a redesigned Steam Controller based on the Deck's controls. I play my Deck almost exclusively docked, but your average controller packs less functionality than the Deck's built-in controls, so it would be neat to not have to compromise.

I didn't know about the patents case, but I think the Steam Controller was considered pretty mediocre universally. It's got quite an unusual design, and it feels like an early (failed) experiment for the Deck control scheme.

The Deck controls are the best input method for games I've ever used. If they take the Deck inputs and stuff them into a handheld controller, I'd expect the end result to get popular quickly. The Deck shines where the Controller failed.

I still have my Deck and Link lying around because they were cheap (practically came free with a game) and because I liked the concept. I really hope Valve manages to get something like the Steam Machine into the mainstream, because they've got all the ingredients to become the perfect in-between for locked down consoles and messy PC gaming setups.

I bought a Sony Dual Sense EDGE controller for playing Steam games under Windows, and it's been AWESOME. Pricey, but AWESOME. I have a PS5, and used it to program a custom profile with the back paddles, but the build quality, weight, and "feel" are all better than the standard controller. Makes it truly feel like an upgrade to the stock model.

The switch has really proven that this hybrid handheld formfactor is the future. On the software side, Proton has been the savior that liberated PC gamers from Microsoft’s iron grip.

The space is getting really exciting now that there are a few alternative products to the Steam Deck, too (Ayaneo, ROG Ally, etc). Phone controllers are nothing new, but iPhone switching to USB C means manufacturers can now sell a single SKU for iphone/android, and we’re starting to see AAA releases on those platforms.

If I were running Xbox or PlayStation, I’d be a little stressed out.

> I’d love to see how the market would react to a deck in a console form factor,

They already tried this with Steam Machines and that didn't end well.

> with similar input options to the deck (pad plus touchpads) and an APU comparable to modern consoles.

There's the Steam Controller, but maybe they'll try something new with analog sticks.

> They already tried this with Steam Machines and that didn't end well.

They tried this in 2014 when Steam OS was immature and Proton didn't even exist (Steam Machines were relying on Linux Ports at time). Also, if I record well, we didn't had a Steam Machine 100% done by valve, only third-parties.

I bet that the market reaction would be very different today with first-party steam machines running Proton,

Apple has also historically been good at this.

68k -> PPC -> Intel -> ARM has been seamless as a user, and the "Carbon" apps that ran on both classic Mac and on X.

It's pretty amazing to know "this app is calling all the wrong APIs, but they've been shimmed to match the right ones, and the device is fast enough that you won't notice the difference."

Game Porting Toolkit works OK. It's just a pain getting it to work without first party support like Proton has.

Wish Apple would pay Valve or Codeweavers (Crossover) to officially do this, but it's just not a segment Apple seems to care about. Sigh.

There was Steambox, which was their bid to get into the console PC gaming tower market. We got SteamOS out of that, but the product launch itself didn't go so great.

To my recollection the problems with the Steam Box were reliance on third party hardware manufacturers, weak hardware, and trouble with game compatibility.

If they were to do a reboot of that product line today I think it’d go quite differently. They have the chops to manufacture the hardware themselves this time around, and the game compatibility factor has improved dramatically (partially of their own doing). I think there could be a real market for a console with an APU somewhere in the ballpark of the PS5’s, but running SteamOS and embracing upgrades and modding like the Deck has, especially if they can price it aggressively.

TSMC N6 is compatible with N7:

https://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/pla...

Which is how they could pull the APU shrink off without breaking the bank.

And... Is the OLED not VRR? That was my #1 wish for the original Deck (with #2 being an OLED).

> And... Is the OLED not VRR? That was my #1 wish for the original Deck (with #2 being an OLED)

According to LTT it is due to the physical connection. Basically the panel is the same as Switch OLED and thus uses whatever it uses which is MIPI and thus no VRR (need eDP for that). The hardware clearly supports it (just plug an external display with VRR support into the deck and it works)

https://youtu.be/uCVXqoVi6RE?t=179

Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get.

I was wondering where they sourced the OLED from.

Makes sense. The highest volume OLED with the right size is... the Switch's!

>Basically Valve doesn't do large enough volume to make proper custom display economical so they have to take whatever they can get.

Yeah exactly. I see a lot of online complaints (mostly outside HN) about no new APU or no custom display, but the capital costs of doing either from scratch are just hilariously high.

The Switch is 1280x720 and the Steam Deck is 1280x800. They're not the same size.

Judging from the Digital Foundry video[0], it appears to have a limited form of VRR that will sample the refresh rate closest to whatever you're limiting for (eg. 40fps -> 80hz). It's not a complete solution, but it should effectively "solve" frame timing issues if your framerate is high enough.

For what it's worth too, my experience gaming on Wayland has been great from a consistency perspective. Once you dial in settings that work, the only performance blips you can notice are related to shader compilation. 144hz feels like 144hz, which has not always been the case on Linux.

[0] https://youtu.be/Z1KLj06fn2s?t=257

What are you running exactly? I haven't been able to get a 144hz + 60hz setup working with KDE on X. The main monitor just doesn't want to do 144hz, even if I disable the other one via xrandr. My 1070 Ti has me afraid of wayland because the nvidia driver already breaks something once a month.

The 7->6 move is also behind the modest shrinkage of the PS5 that preceded its new "somewhat slim" variant. (They did the shrink first with an unchanged case a little while ago).

I wouldn't be surprised if they skip another shrink entirely before the PS6. Capital costs for the small nodes are said to be increasingly horrific.

VRR would help so much for when it can't quite hit framerate.

Yeah. Its basically free performance, and free power savings, and also makes the whole configuration process less fiddly.

Those are all things you particularly want on the Deck.

I want a Steamdeck with four Zen4c cores and 16 CUs.

More CUs the better. The wider it is, the slower it can run.

But I don't think that's gonna happen until Zen 5, and only if we're lucky and AMD restarts the Van Gogh successors they canceled[1].

1: https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-6000-notebook-roadmap-...

As a Ally user, still not enough to get me to switch but I love the competition that Steam ignited with the handheld PC gaming market. Ally, Legion Go, Steamdeck, Ayaneo Kun, etc. A lot of great devices on the market.

I've played more PC games now than I have in the last 10 years.

Do the various other handheld PC’s tend to run Windows or Linux with proton?

Windows. They have a sub-par user experience because of that compared to the Steam Deck. Windows just doesn't work that well on small screens like these, and the custom UIs they have are the usual bloatware you find in "gaming" products.

No they only run the niche operating system called Windows.

History/context:

Valve launched a Linux-based gaming platform called Steam OS in the early teens. Other companies made the hardware, and games had to be compiled for Linux - this was before Wine/Proton was good enough for gaming. It was open sourced, but stopped getting updated around 2018. SteamOS 1 and SteamOS 2 have public repos.

The Steam Deck launched with SteamOS 3. Many parts of it are open sourced (including gamescope-session, which lets you skip the window manager and go straight to the Steam UI), but there's no official "SteamOS 3" repo. There's a repo of unknown propriety called "evlaV" that claims to be a mirror of the official SteamOS 3 one. It's unclear where it comes from or how true/complete it is. https://gitlab.com/evlaV

SteamOS is an "immutable" Linux, which is to say that the system files are read-only. This allows ChromeOS-style updates without worrying about how someone has customized their system. It uses an application format called "Flatpaks" which skips the whole deb/rpm packaging debacle by bundling all the dependencies in a distro-agnostic container. It's a bit like how a MacOS .app folder includes everything the app needs to run.

There are also lookalikes that implement the Steam Deck UI with open source projects, like mimicking the SD's PIN unlock.

-----

Valve's main competitors in the portable PC space are Lenovo, Asus, and a bunch of Chinesium also-rans. They all ship with Windows.

There's also a vibrant community of people who buy them for the hardware, and try to replace them with as-close-as-we-can-get-without-official-repos SteamOS 3. They include:

- Bazzite: an immutable version of Fedora that uses GitHub Actions to "layer" packages on top. Basically, you write some markup that says what packages you want, GitHub mints an image, and that gets installed on your handheld. When a new version of Fedora/Bazzite comes out, your layers get rebased on top of it. (The whole immutable Linux thing is heavily influenced by Git.). Fedora is used for compatibility, but the gaming pieces (copied over from evlaV) run in an Arch container by way of Distrobox.

- Nobara: Fedora, as personally customized by a Red Hat employee to be better for gaming. His handle is GloriousEggroll, and he's also a prolific contributor to the Proton API compat layer that allows DirectX games to run on Linux.

- Jovian-Nix: NixOS, configured to run the SteamOS/evlaV packages on top

- Holo: The SteamOS equivalent of a Hackintosh: some guy in Russia modifying SteamOS to get it to work on a non-Steam-Deck.

- ChimeraOS: a distro designed for set top gaming and handhelds, derived from Arch.

Ally and Legion Go run Windows

US and Canada only.. guess it's more wait time for me.

> Why isn’t the Limited Edition Steam Deck OLED available in my region? > Steam Deck Limited Edition is an experiment for our team, and we were only able to make a small quantity. That said, we hope this is a successful experiment and customers are excited – if we see there is a large demand for this kind of product, we will definitely continue to explore more colorways in the future.

Please continue Valve

As far as I can tell, there’s a “normal” OLED Deck, which is (or will shortly be) available in the full complement of countries (not including my current place of residence...), and the limited edition with a transparent case, which is NA only. So if you only want the electronics upgrade, you can probably get one.

Yes, just came to the same conclusion after reading more!

I can ship one out to you if you'd like.

Thank you. I will be reaching out if I decide to go for one. BUT I think the limitation actually applies only to the 1TB limited edition (with different colorway). So the 512GB OLED should be normally available as I've seen some people point out!

I am mildly tempted to upgrade to this, it seems kinda weird that the OLED is the same resolution? Doesn't it? Maybe I am just out of touch. But I guess at least that means it won't have a performance impact.

As much as I love my steam deck, it kinda sucks to use after using my OLED Switch after a while. That screen is just beautiful (especially for Mario Wonder).

I have been looking for alternatives for a while now, with the Asus Rog Ally or the Legion Go but the lack of the 4 back controls being vertical have made both of those a no go for me.

Kinda wish it was beefed up a little bit (technically it looks like it is, the GPU is no longer listed as a range if you scroll down, but I am not sure why that is).

I just want official word that the drivers and everything still work on Windows. I assume it will

> it seems kinda weird that the OLED is the same resolution?

Given the specifications of the rest of the device, I'm extremely happy the resolution remained the same! A bump to 1080p or similar would make games on the limited CPU/GPU that much harder to run at a reasonable frame rate while keeping a sharp image. This does not strike me as weird in the slightest - it's common sense to do here.

Not to mention how much hotter the device would run - you would be spending much more time at 15w+ in many titles, which is where the Deck starts to get hot/noisy fans spinning, and of course battery life drops.

I don't think it's as big a deal with Steam Deck using gamescope and system-wide FSR to upscale the image. It's already used if you plug a Deck into a 4k TV: the game defaults to running at 720p still.

With newer games having decoupled 3D render resolution and FSR2, a bump in output resolution no longer means an increase in CPU/GPU required. While allowing older games that aren't as resource intensive to run at 1080p.

Exactly. Maybe my eyes are not good enough, but I've literally never ever wished for more resolution - and especially not as an immediate and unavoidable tradeoff to power/battery/framerate/weight/heat/noise!

I do not need same resolution on my 7" device as on my 27" monitor :)

They deliberately said they don't want to change performance characteristics - which is pretty normal for console refreshes.

I’m still waiting for performance gen 2 to come out. I think that’s going to be the sweet spot

TBH I don't buy that argument, we are talking about PC games that have handled scaling for a very long time. This is standard if you are making PC games.

The Steam Deck really isn't a console in any traditional sense of the word. With there now being multiple devices like this out there, I don't think that argument works.

Seems like the back buttons are a worthy tradeoff if you're looking for a Windows-based handheld. The Ally is faster and has some nifty tricks but Windows holds it back, compared to the snappy, polished feel of the Deck.

For me it is not, I use my Steam Deck has a way to carry the games that I play with a controller on my PC or Console... mobile. I use an Elite Xbox Controller and rely heavily on the back buttons.

TBH I don't think Windows holds it back when once I am in the game (the part that matters) the experience is the same.

>I just want official word that the drivers and everything still work on Windows.

I thought steam deck doesn't run windows ? You install windows on your steam deck ?

It runs a version of Arch Linux called SteamOS. I don't see a reason for Windows to run on it.

Yeah you can dual boot Windows and there are official drivers for it.

It is the primary way I use my steam deck.

Not by default. But you absolutely can setup dual boot if you care to.

I've used stock steam deck since its release and love it to death; but it's super flexible for those who want to install other stuff or play with it :)

Interestingly, the processors changed slightly. Slightly smaller dies and GPU efficiency cores. But it seems like there are no real performance gains.

OLED version: 6 nm AMD APU CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32) GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.6GHz (1.6 TFlops FP32) APU power: 4-15W

LCD (old) version: 7 nm AMD APU CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32) GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32) APU power: 4-15W

I think this is important to prevent fragmentation -- it's too early in the steam deck product cycle for games to only run on "Steam deck OLED" if there was 10% extra performance.

Any changes to battery life? Perhaps they are more interested in the improved efficiency

near double battery life if I remember what I read correct, due to bigger battery and more efficient apu and the display using less power as well

Yes, but they also added a larger battery.

I would guess it has more to do with current and anticipated future availability than anything else.

I don't work in hardware, but I've read some wild anecdotes about the extreme difficulty of establishing a stable supply chain if you want to keep manufacturing exactly the same product for N years. I guess this won't be any surprise to the HN crowd, but often when you buy an X, it will have some different parts to the X (identical SKU) from last year and the year before.

you could probably squeeze out more performance at the same power limit vs the lcd soc.

A bit disappointing that you cannot purchase just the new OLED screen and replace it in the LCD model, considering the dimensions are the same.

I wonder what the true limiting factor for this is? I'd love to upgrade, but ~$500 feels like a little too much for the usage I currently get out of my Deck.

Selling the unit as a whole almost certainly is a loss for them, but they make money by having people buying games from them. Selling parts like that would be unlikely to have a similar effect, so they might not be able to sell it at a price point that makes sense.

$549 is probably a break even price. It's a great value nonetheless, but kind of too high to be at a loss.

I don't think the dimensions are the same. Resolution is, but LCD screen size says 7", OLED says 7.4"

They are the same, the LCD/old version just has massive bezels around the screen so they've just decreased them a little.

deckhd [1] creators (third-party 1200p screen for deck) said it's not possible, as it will require modifying main board (something about voltage regulation, if i recall correctly)

[1] https://deckhd.com/

Also with the MMC option gone (so the PCB area can be reclaimed), thicker fans and cooling solution, different internal size battery and screen, I wonder if the entire mainboard has been redesigned.

eMMC just slots into the m2 slot. There is no area to be reclaimed

With a lot of changes that probably can't be retrofit into a launch Deck, I see this as trying to attract new customers instead of old ones. Probably worth waiting on the next release with an actual spec bump in a few more years.

The screen is thinner and the battery is larger -- it's also, as others have said, a larger screen. The bezels are smaller.

The dimension of the screens are not the same, though.

that difference is likely because of the smaller bezel rather than the display piece itself. they have said the screen protectors and other accessories will still work

but regardless it looks like they use a different connector so it wont be possible https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/823177/Can+I+just+buy+th...

Does anybody here have experience using a Deck booted into Windows with VR headset connected for playing Beat Saber? How well does it work for this purpose? Not finding too much info on that particular setup online.

This revision appears to fix my main gripes with the original model so I’d like to buy one, but if I could use it as an ultraportable Beat Saber machine it’d make the purchase more justifiable. While my Quest 2 can technically run Beat Saber natively, the Steam version is vastly more mod-friendly and PCs generally don’t choke as badly on complex custom maps as the middling smartphone hardware in the Quest 2 does.

i don’t understand why you want a portable beat saber setup that requires hauling around an entire VR setup + a steam deck + all of the peripherals that requires? imo you might as well buy a little laptop with a proper video card if you’re going that route. the deck’s video capabilities aren’t intended to drive VR or run windows, you’ll almost certainly have issues of a million varieties.

Mainly, it’s about maximizing usage of my devices.

At home most gaming (including Beat Saber) is done on a nice custom tower that outguns any reasonably priced gaming laptop, meaning that if I bought a gaming laptop it’d only get used when traveling and would collect dust the rest of the time. Unless of course I sell the desktop and go laptop-exclusive for games, but that comes with some notable tradeoffs (fan noise and longevity primarily).

The Deck’s form factor makes it attractive for at-home use scenarios that a desktop and laptop don’t fit as well, and a such has a better chance of getting consistent usage compared to a laptop.

It's certainly possible, I've managed to make the game run playably on a base model 2019 macbook, but that was completely vanilla on the lowest settings I could manage. Beat Saber (especially with mods) can get pretty damn hard to run (it often lags pretty badly on my 3700X/RTX 3070), especially if you're playing noodle maps or with high poly custom sabres.

I haven't tried it but I expect you'd have a very bad time running a quest due to the encoding step, and also probably wouldn't have fun on anything newer than a vive/cv1 because the resolution is too high.

>While my Quest 2 can technically run Beat Saber natively, the Steam version is vastly more mod-friendly and PCs generally don’t choke as badly on complex custom maps as the middling smartphone hardware in the Quest 2 does.

The Steam version is not more mod friendly.

>PCs generally don’t choke as badly on complex custom maps as the middling smartphone hardware in the Quest 2 does.

The Steamdeck targets 720p 30 fps gaming. The Quest 2 useded the latest generation mobile processors when it released. Similarly the Quest 3 is using the top of the line mobile processors.

> The Steam version is not more mod friendly.

One doesn’t need to mess around with sideloading and PC mods get updates more frequently, which in my book would qualify as more mod friendly.

It sounds like the Deck can’t handle Beat Saber better than the Quest 2 though so I guess it’s moot.

Steam deck runs beat saber very poorly

There's a VR girl on YouTube who has a video running VR on a ROG Ally (like a Steam Deck, but with Windows and better hardware).

As I recall, Beat Saber was okay, but more demanding games were not.

I don't think the SD would be very useful for VR.

My understanding is that Windows is very buggy to boot into.

HN folks, I feel a FOMO for this OLED version because it's just so cool, but I already own a Deck. Would you say there would be an OLED version again, even if limited in stock, in the future?

It looks like the OLED version is replacing the LCD one for the 512/1TB models. It's just the specific colourway that's limited.

I'm in a similar boat - I'm gonna keep my LCD 512GB Steam Deck.

This is probably a Steam Deck v1.5 before v2 comes out. I'm sure v2 will have an OLED option and the differentiator between major versions will be CPU/RAM.

They said the Steam Deck 2 will likely appear in 2-3 years time in this interview: https://www.polygon.com/23951070/steam-deck-2-valve-intervie...

Thank you! This is reassuring. I had thought of upgrading my Steam Deck once a new one comes out, but didn't expect one to show up this quickly.

Looking forward to some variant of 7040 (zen 4 / RDNA 3) as the cpu.

FYI 2023 is the year of the linux desktop. Its going to be about 4 years before anyone noticed that was it:

>Microsoft flops on Win 11, anti-consumer features force a few casual users to try Linux Desktop again. They find Linux Desktop is robust AF, way less downtime than Windows their constant updates and their pestering. They shout the news from the roof: "The future is here"

>Steam Deck making it mainstream. More resources, more users, high quality linux rather than cheap chromebooks/raspi. (Love my raspi thou)

>Linux desktop being so solid. Fedora take my breath away. I cannot believe this is Linux. I can't believe Linux is literally better than Windows.

We like to joke about The Year of the Linux Desktop, but it's already been here for half a decade: ChromeOS.

As far as non chromeos/steamos based linux desktops, yeah it's not gonna happen, not unless microsoft in a fit of insanity breaks backwards compat, OEMs stop pre-installing windows, and even then the users will probably migrate to Apple, not linux.

My biggest complaint about my Steam Deck is the contrast ratio on the LCD screen. The backlight bleed bothers me more than it should, but I think I've gotten used to LCDs with very good contrast ratios over the last ten years. I'm considering upgrading, but wondering how much my current 512GB would sell for.

Really tempted to replace my current Steam Deck with one. Got one in January and I've put 215 hours on it so far. It's a fantastic piece of kit and the improvements sound like they could be worth the expense.

(Wrote some thoughts about it after six months of ownership here: https://burakku.com/blog/steam-deck-six-month-update/ )

The one thing that I am wondering though is if the Wi-Fi 6E alone can boost download speeds. Seemed to me like the poor download speeds were also because of the storage bottlenecking. Although the Wi-Fi is definitely the weakest part of the current Steam Deck hardware, being quite unreliable at times, so any improvements on that front are welcome.

I have the 512GB model of the original Steam Deck and have put hundreds of hours in it as well. I'm personally waiting for the true successor to the Steam Deck. This is simply a refresh.

Yeah, I feel like there needs to be language to describe new versions like this:

* If you're going to buy one for the first time, the new one is the one to get.

* It's worth replacing your old one.

This is probably not worth replacing your old Steam Deck (unless you have a lot of money to throw around.) But it's really nice for people who haven't bought one until now.

> because of the storage bottlenecking

Higher end models come with an NVMe SSD. No way that’s slow.

Well, over half of my storage is on microSD anyways. But even with a wired connection over a USB-C dock, the download speeds were not that stellar. If Wi-Fi is 13 MB/s, then wired was maybe like 40? This is on a 1000 Mb/s connection.

I actually use my Deck almost exclusively in docked mode. If you just want a low-cost alternative to a PC for gaming, consider picking up one of the now-discounted LCD models.

I thought I would use mine docked more than I do, but the hardware shows its weaknesses when you try to drive too many more pixels than the built-in display.

Agree, though mainly just for newer AAA games. For example, Hogwart's Legacy (which has breathtakingly good graphics on capable machines) on a docked Steam Deck is much worse than my top-of-the-line Linux AMD rig. I wouldn't expect a $500 handheld to match a $3,000 desktop of course, but I thought it worth mentioning.

If you play games like Shredder's Revenge or Stardew Valley, the graphics will be identical. But if you play AAA games and you care about graphics, you might want something more powerful.

That said, the Steam Deck works perfectly as a remote console. I.e. docked to my TV, and then "stream" the game from the gaming rig. Nvidia Shield is also a great device for that and a big cheaper if you never plan to undock it, but being able to play less demanding games locally is a big feature that makes the Deck worth it IMHO.

I found my TV (not purchased with gaming in mind) adds so much latency that even as a non-gamer I found it unusable.

A minor gripe; overall the Steam Deck blew me away with its capabilities, ease of use, and attention to detail.

I use mine docked almost exclusively, the only thing I do is (funnily enough) stop Steam since it uses quite a chunk of RAM which I'd rather have for more Chrome tabs.

I want a small, inexpensive gaming computer to connect to my TV and have been thinking about the Steam Deck or a mini pc like the Minisforum HX99G (Ryzen 9 6900HX). Would the two computers be roughly comparable?

I'm looking for something small because I don't have room for anything bigger. The Steam Deck is appealing because it doesn't seem very computer-y. What I want is a console that plays PC games. I've tried SteamLink between my desktop computer and AppleTV but it was a terrible experience.

Is there something better than the Steam Deck that isn't expensive (ie not more than $2000).

SteamOS is a controller-first environment, which will give you that console feel. It's just so well done.

I can't speak to performance but I've heard game streaming works really well on the Deck.

I play a lot of "couch co-op" games with my kids while docked to a TV. Low requirements and very console-oriented. Compared to the Switch, here are some things that I bump into:

1. If you have 4 identical controllers, figuring out which is "1", "2", etc is hard. The Switch uses colors and LEDs to make this easy.

2. You need to walk over to wake it up. A controller can't wake it up if it's sleeping.

3. If you pair one of your identical controllers to something else, pairing it back is clunky since you don't know which one needs reconnecting.

But on the positive side, my young kids aren't put off by the leaky abstraction over PC gaming. They actually kind of marvel at the wide range the little device has but admit the advanced wizardry (game mods, desktop mode) can only be wielded effectively by Dad.

> 2. You need to walk over to wake it up. A controller can't wake it up if it's sleeping.

If you have a Steam Controller you can do this, as long as you use the USB dongle and not Bluetooth to connect. I have the official dock with the dongle plugged into that, and the Deck wakes up with the controller just fine.

There are a very wide variety of Windows based handhelds more powerful than the Steam Deck. AyaNeo seems to crank a new one out every 4 months!

I came across a google doc a while back where people were obsessively cataloging them. There are many which have come out in the last 2 years. You have your pick of options. They usually run from 400 - 1200.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1irg60f9qsZOkhp0cwOU7...

ETA: This list has gotten out of hand, lol

As someone who doesn't know much about this stuff and isn't looking for a project, that list is a bit nuts.

I wish they would summarize with some recommendations. Maybe a $500 recommendation, $1000 recommendation, $1500 recommendation, and the best overall.

ETA: ETA PRIME on YouTube reviews basically everything that comes out.

No, the minisforum will be much more powerful. I think that CPU will be roughly twice as powerful and the GPU included (6600M) similarly roughly twice as powerful.

As the other commenter said, there are other handhelds, some getting better chips. But for your use case, you could also choose a small gaming pc or a laptop.

If you would get use out of a gaming laptop separate from attaching to your TV then that's pretty attractive choice because it does everything the mini PC does without that much more space.

The 6900HX has an RDNA2 GPU with 12xCU, compared to the Deck's RDNA2 with 8xCU. The Steam Deck is also limited by the power usage, the TDP is hard capped at 15W, while the 6900HX gets 45W TDP.

My issue with using the Deck as the benchmark is that it is designed for 720p. Even connected to a 4K TV, the Steam Deck by default will force the game to run at 720p, and upscale it to 4K.

If you're okay with a bit bigger, AM5 APUs are rumored to be coming out soon with BIOS updates that added support recently. I expect those to have RDNA3 like the laptop 7840HS and other chips. It'll be the first GPU update to desktop APUs since the 5600G. I'm excited and might build a new mITX to replace my own HTPC

If you had a good experience with the steam link would you use it instead? Game streaming from desktop beats any small gaming computer.

Definitely would. I tried to use my PS5 controller linked to my Apple TV 4k and it was super laggy and looked bad.

You could use the Steam Deck, and for more demanding games you can use Steam Remote Play from your main PC (it's great!).

I hadn't heard of Steam Remote Play so I googled it and it looks like it's using Steam Link. I tried Steam Link to my Apple TV and it was a terrible experience. Is the Steam Deck going to be a better client than the Apple TV?

Steam Deck has RDNA2 architecture which is pretty old now. They're probably getting rid off the last chips currently. I'd get at least Zen4/RDNA3 or, if you're in no hurry, even wait for what they release in the coming year. Especially if you want it to drive a high resolution screen...

In your opinion, are the mini pcs even worth considering? I kind of hesitate because I don't want another computer. I want a console experience that looks decent on a 55" tv (probably 1080p). The Steam Deck seems a little lo-res.

> What I want is a console that plays PC games.

Yeah, the Steam Deck is exactly that and I've been extremely happy with mine.

Just be aware of some caveats:

- It's not powerful enough for the most demanding games

- Some games have evil anti-cheat or is otherwise not supported by proton yet (unless you install Windows, which you totally can)

Why not get a minipc with the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS or Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU? Both of those have an integrated Radeon 780M GPU which should be better than steamdeck. Price wise they will be come out similar. The HX99G is more expensive than something like the UM780 (7840HS)

Valve may be working on a console based on SteamOS, so I'd wait and see.

Didn't they already do that a while back? I'm sure this time around would be different given their traction now.

I think that rumor was mostly based on an old screenshot from a documentary and the korean filings for a new WiFi6e device, which turned out to be this deck revision, so I'd put less weight on those now.

Are there any other clues about them working on the console?

I did a quick search for this and didn't find much. Is it a serious rumor? I'd probably preorder if I could...

I have been very happy with my Minisforum Venus UM790, though I use it as a mobile computer since I can just throw it into my backpack. It's been great to have access to AVX512 on the go.

I have been really happy with my steam deck - I would strongly consider it if you don't mind that the hardware isn't cutting-edge. I rarely use it connected to a TV, so the relatively weak GPU might look worse than it does on the small screen, but otherwise it has been fantastic.

It "just works," like a console. Which would be another good option.

HX77G is a LOT cheaper than the HX99G ($650 barebones instead of $740 for basically identical performance).

> * Exclusive startup movie

Guys, c'mon, I know that you have to have a longer bullet point list for the premium, more expensive option, but you're making your actual advantages sound stupid by including this one.

Pretty sure you can mod in any startup movie of your choice these days. The startup movies just seem to be a way to get me to waste steam points I don't have any use for on some variety of startup visual without any effort. You're not wrong.

You can even go to the point store, get a url of the preview, download it from Steam servers, put it in an appropriate Steam subdirectory and set in Steam settings to be the default.

People pay 5 bucks for an avatar skin. You're just a bit out of touch with the times.

Hey, the filmmakers need there work listed as well!

There is a performance improvement as per [0][1] the memory speed went up from 5500MT/s to 6400.

[0] https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech [1] https://www.steamdeck.com/en/tech/deck

I have the current 512. I won't be upgrading as I can't afford right before Christmas (got to get the kids things) But I will say I love love love my steam deck and I've bought so many more games because of it. Esp indie games. I think it's been great for everyone involved the gamer, the small developer and Valve. I really hope we see them continue to innovate. They're killing it. I honestly think they could make a tablet with SteamOS that just lets you use Bluetooth controls my kids and I would freak out.

Looks fantastic. I wish Valve would take another go at steam controller and steam link.

I have a Steam Deck, Steam Link and the Steam Controller (it does work) among other controllers. The ability to use any controller is awesome (Wireless DualSense is my fav RN). Steam Controller itself wasn't all that great, and I like the . And Steam Controller with a Dock acts as Link (unless I'm missing some other functionality).

I love everything about the Steam Deck except 1 thing.

I love that its Linux based, and that you can doc it and turn it into a real PC. The interface is polished and its fast. And it's Steam, so I have all my games!

The one thing - I can't play it for more than an hour without getting hand cramps. The ergonomics just aren't very good for me.

I play games all day for my job, and I know I can play an xbox controller or a ps5 controller for 8 hours straight without problems.

Lucky, because its a Steam Deck, I can plug any controller I want into it.

Despite the bigger overall size, the buttons on the Steam Deck aren't bigger than the buttons on a Nintendo Switch joy-con. That's why I like the Asus Ally more for having buttons that aren't too small for my big hands.

Trade-off is no space for the touchpads

I think the touch pads are unnecessary, especially when you can touch the screen directly.

There are some aftermarket attachments that supposedly help with this. I haven't tried any of them myself, but I get the same problem as you and I will probably try some out next week.

I'm super tempted by it but I just bought my Steam Deck this year. I love it and have played almost daily (all handhold) and I've got a vast backlog of games to play (that will play well on the deck).

Resolution not changing is both a pro and a con but more-so a pro I think. OLED would be really nice as would the battery life but I don't need it.... OTOH that special edition looks really cool...

>This item is not available in your country

I'm in the US, so that seems kinda strange.

> I'm in the US, so that seems kinda strange.

I love this comment :-) So much to appreciate here.

As someone who sees the "not available in your country" quite often, I'm delighted with this mistake (it must be a mistake).

I'm in the U.S. and am getting the Available on Nov 16 button, but worth noting this note at the bottom of the Deck homepage:

> Steam Deck Limited Edition is an experiment for our team, and we were only able to make a small quantity. That said, we hope this is a successful experiment and customers are excited – if we see there is a large demand for this kind of product, we will definitely continue to explore more colorways in the future.

Also being in the US, I do not see that message, I only see the Nov 16th release date.

I'm getting that same message, but am in Australia.

From memory it's actually not available here, due to our government level consumer protection people not putting up with Valve's bullshit a few years ago.

> Available November 16 at 10am Pacific

Very excited for future hardware from Valve. Especially excited for the rumored VR headset that'll double as a set-top-box for your TV (at least that's what I've heard).

As a related aside: does anyone know of any companies or processes by which one can get low volume (think prototyping volume, i.e., single digit quantity orders) custom OLED screens? Bonus points if the OLEDs are able to be custom laser cut (the same process as the "hole punches" that are in smartphone screens).

What's your use case?

(can't help, just curious)

Can anyone comment on how using OLED might affect total power consumption?

Edit:

>Steam Deck OLED has 30-50% more battery life. We fit a bigger battery into the case, and the OLED display draws less power.

My understanding of OLED vs LCD displays is that LCDs are more consistent in power draw, but OLEDs draw less power with darker pictures, but more power with brighter images. So it depends on the brightness and the colors in the scene.

Apparently there’s also a die shrink on the SoC, which is otherwise the same but should draw less power.

From the link:

> We fit a bigger battery into the case, and the OLED display draws less power.

How does OLED make sense for the steam deck when to my knowledge Linux does not support HDR?

I wish I could install Linux on my laptop, but without HDR what's the point!

It is not as a simple as "Linux does not support HDR".

The kernel's graphics API does expose functionality to use HDR. What is not there (yet) is Xorg and Wayland compositors using that functionality as well as programs written to target those being able to use whatever HDR Xorg/Wayland functionality would expose. For gaming Wine also lacks HDR support.

Valve is bypassing the above by using their own Wayland compositor (gamescope) which is designed to run X11 applications (mainly Wine/Proton) via XWayland and -IIRC- they hacked in a way to take over XWayland's output to force HDR so that Windows games running under Proton using Windows' HDR APIs will work under gamescope.

The reason they can do that is because they can modify and ship the entire stack, but it its otherwise a very gaming-oriented gamescope-specific hack (you can't use the same functionality to get a window with HDR content under an otherwise "SDR" desktop).

FWIW if you do have an HDR monitor (and perhaps an AMD GPU, not sure if this is a requirement) you should be able to use it on your own PC to run Windows games with HDR support - you'll just be limited to running them in fullscreen mode in a separate virtual terminal (i mean those you switch with the Ctrl+Alt+F<n> keys). I haven't tried it myself though because i'm using my own gamescope fork with some modifications i made and my code is a couple of years behind (long before the HDR stuff were added). Also while i technically have an HDR monitor, it isn't basically a somewhat brighter SDR monitor, not true HDR.

SteamOS supports HDR, VRR and Raytracing.

Joshua Ashton (Valve Developer) gave a talk called "Rainbow Frogs: HDR + Color Management in Gamescope/SteamOS" at XDC this year where he explained how they improved colour management on Linux when other people have so far failed.

https://www.youtube.com/live/Gg4eSAP1uc4?feature=shared&t=40...

Melissa Wen (Igalia) talked more about how they're gonna try and upstream the work, but there are lots of moving upstream parts and they all move very slowly in "The rainbow treasure map: advanced color management on Linux with AMD/Steam Deck"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg4eSAP1uc4&t=4010s

There is also a talk by Friedrich Vock called "Improving the World's Slowest Raytracer" about how they're slowly making RT viable on Linux.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg4eSAP1uc4&t=27361s

Overall, a very interesting set of talks for anybody interested in Linux gaming.

Valve has that side, too: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-HDR-Linux-Gaming-Begins

You don't need HDR for OLED to look better. The Switch doesn't do HDR.

Considering how Valve has managed to turn the Linux gaming world upside down with Proton, I imagine they can figure out HDR too.

Well I'm just happy there will be more second hand units on the market to buy

I hope they include a proper rumble pack this time, the haptic trackpad things were a little anemic. Very happy with it otherwise though.

Good, good. I have two gaming desktops and don't need it. What I need is something like the Legion Go. Not for gaming, mind you. Reading. A laptop is too big, a phone too small. I think it hits the spot real nice and people managed to get Linux working on it right away, which was to be expected. I wonder how much it weighs without the joypads

The reduced LCD Steam Decks are a steal now and you’re getting a marginally worse device. The 64 GB one is essentially the price of a Nintendo Switch, and you can emulate Nintendo Switch games on it as well as play AAA Steam games. No brainer.

Wow! This seems like a really good upgrade just for that screen and longer battery life. Time to finally buy the SD to play that ever-increasing backlog of games in my Steam catalog.

What’s the weight of the new models?

The increased battery capacity sounds good, but I wonder how does it affect the handheld’s weight - which is perhaps just as important for comfort.

It's actually ~20g lighter.

~640 grams, compared to ~669 grams for the previous model

Lighter by a few tens of grams.

Is the APU update notable? From 7nm to 6nm process

Performance isn't really better but RAM speeds are a bit better which boosts things a little. Digital foundry says it runs cooler and quieter. It does have better battery life but it also has a larger battery and more efficient screen.

Pretty underwhelming sales page, they should probably showcase the screen more?

Edit: Nevermind, the link in the HN post is not the actual landing page.

Looks cool, gives me a slight pang of regret given the model I purchased 3 months ago is now the entry level and £120 cheaper than what I paid. But I guess I knew I was playing with fire a bit.

It’s good to see Valve is staying committed to the platform though, it’s an excellent machine and very cool to see active changes towards increased repairability.

I bought the 512 deck pre-order when it was released, remained sealed in the shipping package for 5 months on my desk, I am not a gamer, but had plans to use it as a portable ground station for robots and drones, got busy and never had the chance to do so, until one day my brother visited me and I gave it him.

Anecdotes tend to be over valued on HN so my distaste for them may come across as rude but man, this is a particularly boring story to share. Did your brother enjoy it at least? It starts off like a product story but winds up being irrelevant to the product. You don’t hate this product, you don’t love it, you are indifferent about it and didn’t even buy it for its stated purpose!

He did enjoy it being a gamer, and he got all sort of accessories as I knew later. I honestly had big plans for it, I even have few 5G Quectel modems and planned to integrate one, and add the SDR I have too so it’s truly a portable ground station, but that happened during a big project I didn’t have the time for any of that, I still might do it, or maybe inspire someone in here who’s into robotics to do it!

You must be rich. Can we be friends?

I don’t think few hundred bucks will make you rich, but sure we can be friends!

It'll never happen but I'd love if Valve could wack an M1 / similar apple chip on one of these

Why? The AMD chip they're using has comparable performance-per-watt to the M1, and I'm not sure Proton knows how to run games on an ARM processor.

Good luck porting all the DX12 to Metal as well.

With Zen 2?

Doubt an ARM chip would work well with Valve's approach of using Proton (Wine) to run the x86 binaries. And also not sure if the iGPU really measures up to RDNA (since Apple doesn't build their chips for gaming.)

It's mostly going to be bound by the GPU, which would be a wildcard, but i reckon you could match the existing performance for the same power draw, but then you also have a properly fast computer to plug into a monitor in your bag.

I was really hopeful seeing this announcement, but they're not releasing this in Australia.

I wonder why?

We're a small market, but high income & high disposable income, no language barrier, similar business environment. I'd assume it was easy-as to also do business here.

I wish there was a developer workstation in this form factor (with split keyboard insted of joysticks, of course). Plus the holes so I can strap it around my neck like we did with cameras many years ago.

How important is storage space on this device? Is 512GB or 1TB worth waiting for?

Between SD cards and M.2 drive upgrades being pretty painless, you can start small and upgrade.

I think it just depends on the games you play. Check to see how much space they'll use. Personally, I don't play a lot of "AAA" type games, I play more indie games, so 256GB has more than enough space for me. You can always upgrade the SSD or use a microSD card.

Space 100% comes down to the games you expect to play.

Also the 256 GB model isn't the new OLED model being highlighted by this post. You can still get the now-discontinued LCD 512 GB model at a discount if you're concerned about space and don't care about OLED.

I somehow managed to nearly max out my 512GB deck and 512GB microsd card. I was surprised to see storing stuff on the SD card had negligible impact on speed.

It really depends on the games you play though and size of your library.

> I was surprised to see storing stuff on the SD card had negligible impact on speed.

Yes this seemed to be the consensus on post-launch tests. There was virtually no difference in game loading times between internal drive and SD card, so everyone was recommending to just get the cheap model + a large SD (matching the highest SD card speeds that the Deck supports).

Depends on what you do, play, consider doing. I'm using it as my PC and love more storage. Once I finally buy a NAS I would care less.

256G+512G SD card and both are around 90% full.

mine might have to become a hand-me-down and make this my christmas present...

I'm quite happy with my steam deck. I use it as my personal laptop and do some web development on it. I just wish they'd support ROCm so that I can run stable diffusion on it.

how is ROCm ecosystem from training pov? is it good enough to switch to prototyping with the latest generation of desktop gpu?

"This item is not available in your country"

The country in question is Switzerland, probably the richest country in Europe, where many people would have bought it on spot.

Regional restrictions are so stupid.

If it makes you feel better, it's not available in any country yet.

But regional restrictions aren't really "stupid" they are because doing business globally is hard to do.

Maybe join the EU, that would make it easier for them because the regulations would be the same!

This looks phenomenal. I love my current deck, but I'm buying gen 2, and I barely game anymore. For all their ineptitude, Valve sells products they obviously use.

Wondering why Microsoft wouldn't enter this market or why Sony would leave it wide open despite each having deep expertise or assets in this area.

Microsoft makes money by forcing the competing manufacturers to buy Windows. So far, it's actually worked; all of the Steam Deck competitors I've seen to date ship with a copy of Windows presumably paid-for by the OEM.

Introducing their own competitor would require them to invest deeply in doing so, and then subsidize their moneymaker (Windows) to compete at Valve's price point. It stands to reason that Microsoft would rather pocket AYANEO and Asus's OS fees and not even bother.

> Will replacement parts be available

> Yes, we will be working with iFixit again to provide replacement parts and repair guides for Steam Deck OLED.

Excellent news.

Tested review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfoLRmKwnSI

That's cool! It takes them a while to refresh the APU though to Zen 4 / RDNA 3. I guess it's harder than for laptops?

I think this might be an early step into the concept of people building portable devices like they build custom PCs and I love it.

I was about to cancel my order for a Playstation Portal after seeing this. Considering a bit further though, I really think remote play is the future as long as you aren't concerned with using the device on the go. My PS5 can handle games way better than a Steam Deck, the device is lighter, and the battery lasts significantly longer. Still a bit torn though, the Steam Deck appeals to the side of me that loves gadgets. It's a tough call.

You can use Chiaki[0] to stream PS5 games to your Deck, best of both worlds =)

[0] https://sr.ht/~thestr4ng3r/chiaki/

The Portal can only stream games over your local network, though, right? I think the SD would be a better use of money because it offers the ability to play outside for the home but it's definitely personal preference.

Have you tried playstation remote play?

I found it still feels too laggy to be acceptable even at home with the console on ethernet

Like trying to play a multiplayer FPS is so much harder with the latency

why don't have both? SD for indie games such as Factorio/Stardew Valley etc. and PSPo for AAA Sony exclusive games!

I’m actually kind of shocked Valve is releasing a gen2 product. And so soon. I guess pigs can fly after all.

It isn't. The Steam Deck 2 is still being worked on, and some time away.

Damn, I wish they did an APU upgrade as well (I mean generation upgrade, not just node)...

DDR speed bump, from 5500MHz to 6400MHz. Some games are definitely gonna run faster.

That’s sexy. Too bad I bought one this year. And it’s an amazing device.

Up to 90 Hz screen? That must mean it's variable refresh rate!

Disappointing APU upgrade, I've been waiting for them to refresh the device but this new version is significantly slower than the already available Asus ROG Ally.

They've been very explicit about not changing the performance in multiple years. Making this faster would have been a very bad decision, muddying the compatibility so soon after the original launch.

Sorry, but I don't understand your logic. Why would it have been a bad decision? and how would it have "muddied comparability"? PC games support granular improvements; support for a game doesn't discern anything. I also can't find anything referencing their "explicit" performance requirements.

Oled means it will burn out one time...

True, but the new model lets you replace the entire screen assembly without even removing the backplate IIRC. It won't be like damaging your Switch or Macbook's display.

i will definitely be there when they sell out the old stock and release a cheaper variant under 400.

Neither this nor the original is available in Australia from Valve. They make it hard to be a fan.

But what about VRR?

at what voltage do devices like this tend to operate? I was trying to estimate the ah of the batteries so I could then be frustrated at how they pack the cells in there.

well you can just look at the specs from an official supplier of replacement batteries like ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/products/steam-deck-battery this will give you specs for the old old battery, I'm sure valve would've gone with a bigger battery that runs at the sameish voltage for simplicity

Watt Hours: 40 Wh

Voltage: 7.7 V

Milliamp Hours: 5200 mAh

Really helpful, thanks. When it comes to building something smaller than a shoebox it's a "don't know what I don't know" situation over here

So annoying how hard they are marking up the storage upgrade. I get the pricing model where they gouge the power users to make the entry level unit cheaper. It just sucks when every product is gimped on storage just for this idiotic structure.

Damn I just purchased a 256 GB steam deck a month ago :(

You should consider asking the support for partial refund.

Though a month might be stretching it.

This looks like a fantastic upgrade. Here's a info dump of all the differences between this and the LCD one that I could find:

64 and 512GB LED models are dead

Wi-Fi 6E

10Whr more battery

it's a larger display. 7.4" vs 7"

6nm APU vs 7nm

256GB LCD now $399 (INSANE price)

30-50% more battery

screen resolution is the same

just OLED + HDR

1000 nits peak/600 typical vs 400 typical

90hz refresh rate

"high performance touch"

dual ambient light sensors

640 grams vs 669 grams

deck dock now $20 less

limited edition color way available too

This is just copy-paste from the steamdeck site:

GENERAL

Updated APU to 6 nm for better efficiency

Updated memory to 6400 MT/s, improving latency and power management

Increased thermal module thickness and performance

Increased active area to 7.4" (from 7.0")

UPDATED DISPLAY

Updated refresh rate to 90Hz (from 60Hz)

Updated peak brightness to 1000 nits

Updated touchscreen polling rate to 180Hz, improved latency and accuracy

Updated WiFi / Bluetooth module

Added support for WiFi 6E

Added support for Bluetooth 5.3, supporting newer codecs such as aptX HD and aptX low-latency

Added third antenna near the top of the device for better Bluetooth performance, including when docked

Added support for wake from Bluetooth controllers

AUDIO

Improved bass response for an overall flatter sound profile

Added support for using onboard microphone array simultaneously with the 3.5mm headphones connector

CONTROLS

Adjusted analog stick top material and shape for increased grip and dust build-up resistance

Adjusted analog stick post material to improve interaction feel with front cover and reduce wear

Improved reliability of analog stick touch detection

Improved responsiveness and tactility of shoulder buttons switch mechanism

Adjusted D-pad snap ratio and diagonal interactions

Redesigned trackpad for improved fidelity and edge detection

Greatly improved trackpad haptics feel and precision

POWER

Improved battery capacity from 40Wh to 50Wh

Improved battery chemistry for faster charging, from 20% to 80% in as little as 45 minutes

Changed charging LED to WRGB

Added support for waking up from initial unboxing by long-pressing power button instead of requiring AC power

Adjusted power supply cable length from 1.5m to 2.5m

Added logo to power supply

FRAME Reduced total system weight to ~640g, or ~5% less than Steam Deck

Rear cover screws now thread into metal

Adjusted rear cover screw heads to Torx™, as well as other materials and geometry tweaks on the heads to reduce stripping risk

Lowered number of screw types throughout system

Reduced step count required for common repairs

Improved bumper switch mechanism drop reliability

Moved bumper switch to joystick board for easier repair

Improved display repair/replacement to not require taking rear cover off

SOFTWARE

Greatly improved memory power management firmware

Added preliminary support for open-source BIOS and EC firmware

Improved resume time by roughly 30%

I like how it reads like patch notes, no BS

Imagine if apple releases had this

Strange to be using Wifi 6 when Wifi 7 is right at the door. They could've waited a bit more and made something that has 4x the bandwidth over Wifi 6E.

Lost me when I realized the resolution is the same.

1080p is a minimum in 2023

Based on what assumptions? The Deck struggles enough to get decent FPS on many titles without careful tweaking - how do you think it's going to do if it has to push twice the number of pixels.

Not for a small screen like the steam deck. LTT complained 1080p made things way too small on Asus ROG Ally handheld while also hurting performance.

If you want bigger numbers i believe there are windows handhelds available now.

The rest of us who want something that just works might get a steam deck.

Interesting... how come Linux just works and Windows is iffy in the handheld gaming space?

Yes. That is why no one has purchased a Switch since the beginning of the year.

I just bought a switch last week. The switch and steam deck are fundamentally very different, despite ultimately both being for playing games.

The switch is great for party, co-op, and social games, while the steam deck is a decent approximation of a desktop PC.. sans keyboard and mouse.

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