OLED vs. LCD: Early Access & Shrinkflation – A Comparative Review

[kilésengati]

G’day everyone,

I’ve got some time with my OLED now and wanted to write a little review. Unfortunately, Valve still doesn’t have reviews on physical sales, which is why I write it here. Also, I think I didn’t got enough time with the Steam Deck OLED, because of some device-breaking issues I ran into.
I’ll compare it to my early-revision LCD (“OG”) model anyway, because that’s the state I got my OLED at.

The OLED is the 1 TB model. The LCD is an early 512 GB model.

Delivery:

In Europe, Valve still uses GLS. Bottom-tier parcel service. Simple as! Didn’t rung the bell on delivery nor left a pickup notice. Later I found out they moved the parcel to a shop on the other side of town. Wasted some good time on a sunny Saturday I would’ve liked to work in the garden. But alas, I got mine. Could’ve been worse.

The Carry Case:

The new carry case is quite similar, but the liner can be removed and is attached with hook-and-loop fasteners on three points on the inside. I don‘t see myself using that feature, the Deck seems more protected in the whole package anyway. But it saves some space in a bag.
One thing that annoys me is this flap on the front. It gets in the way when opening the case and I‘m extra careful to not let it slide over the screen when opening.

First Startup:

Obviously, I was first greeted by downloading system software. With a prompt notifying me mine is one of the first Decks ever produced. First batch? Let’s find out if that’s a good thing.
Everything went smooth. But I connected to the Internet through my phone and not the home router.
I think however, at first startup, the device should be on mute, or at least not as loud. And on boot in general, the screen should be at the least brightest setting, because that OLED can really flash you if you are in a dark environment (in both a positive and negative sense).
But those are only minor criticisms. First startup took a while, but was fine.

Internal Hardware:

There’s not much to say really. In that regard, almost everything is as advertised. However, I don’t find the speakers to be of higher quality or anything, they are just different, a wee more bass-biased. I think this renders the sound muddy and not truthful at all, but that’s totally subjective. If you like kiddie headphones like Beats, you sure will like those. I think a configurable software EQ could help out with that a bit. Similar with the haptics, which even on the lowest settings act way too strong and sudden, making it tiresome to use and the entire device feel unrefined, contributing to the cheapness impression.
The Steam Deck OLED is somewhat lighter. I really enjoyed it running much quieter, particularly on low-power applications, like watching videos. The true blacks of the OLED are quite nice to have. And the battery doesn’t drain as fast as well.
But I think they could’ve done better: All-analogue buttons, faster SD card reader, more RAM, PCIe connectivity, etc. Hopefully, we’ll see such upgrades with the next Steam Deck.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really benchmark it, because of device-breaking issues I’ll close in later on.

Software:

Well, it’s still SteamOS 3. It works most of the time, but sometimes crashes. Not the best Linux distro I’ve ever seen, but it’s doing its job, and that this device is made with Linux in mind is still great.
I also found out that you can transfer game data between Decks. Which is great and should save time, but I couldn’t use it due to connectivity issues.

Ergonomics:

It still has the same shape as the OG Deck. Not much to add to that.
Again, not enough analogue buttons, but everything else, in concept, is still superiour to any other handheld device and controller I know. I still love the departure from making controllers for tiny hands that need to claw onto the hardware. It sits well into mine and I can reach everything easily. I barely have to grip it and can use it for hours on end. In that sense, it's the best handheld and controller I've ever used, period. I hope they never change that.
Unfortunately, that amazing design is only ruined by the…

Build Quality:

This is were the problems start.
Overall, I think Valve seriously cut corners and in the wrong places, too.
The buttons feel hollow and the plastic shell feels worse than some Tupperware knockoffs now. On top of that, edges around the screen and SD card slot are simply too sharp. In the case of the SD card slot they’re almost cutting edge. I know, the plastic shell never was that great, but this is even worse. At least the seams between the front and back panel on the grips are smoother now, which is were you touch the Deck most of the time. But the plastic still feels cheaper than it already was on the OG model.
Analogue back buttons giveth or taketh, those smooth rubber caps feel pretty disgusting, which turned out to be much more important to my experience. I not only like the material of the OG Steam Deck’s caps much more, I seriously dislike the OLED’s. They just don’t feel right, they feel wrong. *barf*

Connectivity Issues:

This is were the problems grow big.
The Steam Deck OLED simply doesn’t work with my home network setup. It’s all standard vanilla stuff. Nothing fancy, just the router my ISP provided. Totally standard issue stuff. I think it’s a Sagemcom router, and I don’t have much of a choice but to use that either. All other devices, including my old Steam Deck work with it out-of-the-box.
Connecting the Steam Deck OLED to my home network appears to brick the internal network device and renders the Deck pretty much useless.
It’s a real shame and it shouldn’t happen at that price point and coming from a company that has a fair bunch of experience with hardware now. As my network works with all other devices, including the old Deck, I don’t see a reason to change anything about it. At almost 700 eurobucks, it’s fair to expect the OLED Deck to work as well. Changing anything about the otherwise working network would be like buying a new car, because it doesn’t have an AUX-in.
Massive blunder, Valve.

Conclusion:

Overall, the changes are incremental, and given the many issues it has the new Steam Deck OLED is not worth the price. The new OLED Steam Deck seems a bit like an early access title and falls in line with current AAA games being released unfinished. It obviously suffers from the current economic “shrinkflation” situation as well (mid-to-late 70s cars were pretty rubbish, too). If this would be Valve’s first handheld PC, I would have had some understanding for it, but this is the x-th revision of tried-and-true hardware. The connectivity issue makes the entire thing unusable to me. For almost 700 eurobucks and being a recreational device, I don’t see a reason to adapt my network to it, when everything else works fine. It’s clearly the Steam Deck OLED that’s the issue here. As of now, compared to the LCD, it’s one very expensive paperweight to me.

If I could I’d give this one a thumbs-down. I will return my Steam Deck OLED. Maybe I’ll re-order one in half a year or so, when there hopefully be a sale or something.

As of now, however, I’m in the market for an OLED, SSD and battery upgrade kit for my current Deck. The better screen, greater storage and longer battery life are truly the best things about the new Steam Deck. An upgrade kit seems much more reasonable than what the OLED has to offer for its price for now.
But who knows what stuff third-parties come up with soon or never.

If you haven’t had a Steam Deck already, it’s the best Deck you could get from Valve now, though the Deck’s initial success spawned some mainstream competition to take into consideration first.
But if you already have one, it’s an incremental upgrade at best and likely a waste of money better spent on a larger SSD or aftermarket screen… or a really nice bread from your local bakery.


Feel free to discuss. Cheers!

[kilésengati]

Nguyên văn bởi PopinFRESH:

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

...but since Gamescope is only supporting 800p and 1200p is not an integer of that, I decided against it and am not interested still. It would need a 1600p screen for a pixel-perfect image, otherwise it would result in a blurry image. Just using desktop mode with Big Picture is only a quick and dirty fix to this, but it produces much more overhead and lacks certain features of Gamescope. The best solution would be for Valve to just implement other resolutions to Gamescope, but for some reason they don't, despite this being a much-requested feature because people want to turn their PCs into DIY Steam Machines.
As long as Valve holds on to the fixed resolution in Gamescope, I'd rather take an 800p OLED kit rather than a higher-res but non-integer LCD kit....

Not sure where you are getting that Gamescope only supports 800p. Gamescope supports other resolutions including 1080p and 1200p.

Gamescope in docked mode apparently does let you change resolution, but not that easily on the internal screen.

You need to do lots of software-sided tinkering including BIOS flashing to make it work at 1200p, that gets reset after every OS update and has good potential to brick your device:

https://www.deckhd.com/setup

Would much prefer an 800p OLED kit that only needs a different controller.

Nguyên văn bởi PopinFRESH:

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

As of now, however, I’m in the market for an OLED, SSD and battery upgrade kit for my current Deck. The better screen, greater storage and longer battery life are truly the best things about the new Steam Deck. An upgrade kit seems much more reasonable than what the OLED has to offer for its price for now.

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me.

OLED Display would be about $99-$130
Bigger battery would be about $110-$120
1TB SSD is about $95

So an upgrade kit for $304 - $345

Sell your current Steam Deck (LCD) for $300
+ $345 that you'd spend on an "upgrade kit"
= Steam Deck (OLED)

I get you had the WiFi issues that people are having but that is definitely something that will be resolved and reading your OP it really seems like most of it stems from your frustration in dealing with the wireless connectivity issue. Temporarily disabling 160MHz channel width isn't that great of a sacrifice while they get things sorted out imo.

Yes, an upgrade kit like this wouldn't be cheap, but I wouldn't sell my OG Steam Deck for a product I find it to be vastly inferiour in build quality and only marginally better spec-wise anyway. Besides, privately-sold used Steam Decks rarely sell for that price, as the market is well-saturated now and Valve has their own b-stock AND the 256 GB model at a new and reduced price with warranties and all on sale.

Nguyên văn bởi TheWolf_Brigade:

Well written, but calling it a paperweight is a bit drastic. I think you are comparing it to the LCD version too much. It's only a refreshed model, but a damn good refresh, one of the best refreshes I've ever seen:

Better battery life, better screen, upgraded fan/noise reduction, 7nm > 6nm processor, faster Ram, upgraded joysticks, upgraded wifi/bluetooth module, faster charging, improved resume time by 30%, new torx screws on back panel, and weight decrease.

If you already have a Steam Deck then obviously you don't need the OLED refresh, but the device itself is pretty amazing as it stands.

Digital Foundry has a good review on it too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1KLj06fn2s&ab_channel=DigitalFoundry

It is drastic, but those connectivity issues are pretty drastic as well and render the OLED Deck useless to me. And at that price point, that's simply unacceptable.

Yes, those updated specs are a nice improvement, but unfortunately nullified by the build quality. If it would be a desktop or even laptop that is wrapped in a cheap case to reduce cost and deliver better performance at a competitive price, I could get past that, but with a device I'm holding in my hands all the time and having the OG Deck as reference, it is not something to be overlooked.

[PopinFRESH]

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

Nguyên văn bởi PopinFRESH:

Not sure where you are getting that Gamescope only supports 800p. Gamescope supports other resolutions including 1080p and 1200p.

Gamescope in docked mode apparently does let you change resolution, but not that easily on the internal screen.

You need to do lots of software-sided tinkering including BIOS flashing to make it work at 1200p, that gets reset after every OS update and has good potential to brick your device:

https://www.deckhd.com/setup

Would much prefer an 800p OLED kit that only needs a different controller.

You're attributing things to Gamescope which have nothing to do with Gamescope and are not limitations of Gamescope.

The need to flash the BIOS is because of the MIPI display interface and needing to reprogram it to support the 1200p resolution.

The majority of that DeckHD setup guide has nothing to do with the micro-compositor. The only step that does is the last one, Step 5, to set the game resolution which is what is passed to Gamescope when launching that game.

I do concur with you however that it is not a great solution (DeckHD that is). I'm just pointing out that this is not because of a limitation of Gamescope.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

...

Nguyên văn bởi PopinFRESH:

This is the part that doesn't make sense to me.

OLED Display would be about $99-$130
Bigger battery would be about $110-$120
1TB SSD is about $95

So an upgrade kit for $304 - $345

Sell your current Steam Deck (LCD) for $300
+ $345 that you'd spend on an "upgrade kit"
= Steam Deck (OLED)

I get you had the WiFi issues that people are having but that is definitely something that will be resolved and reading your OP it really seems like most of it stems from your frustration in dealing with the wireless connectivity issue. Temporarily disabling 160MHz channel width isn't that great of a sacrifice while they get things sorted out imo.

Yes, an upgrade kit like this wouldn't be cheap, but I wouldn't sell my OG Steam Deck for a product I find it to be vastly inferiour in build quality and only marginally better spec-wise anyway. Besides, privately-sold used Steam Decks rarely sell for that price, as the market is well-saturated now and Valve has their own b-stock AND the 256 GB model at a new and reduced price with warranties and all on sale....

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Steam+Deck+256&LH_Complete=1

The 256GB LCD model has been selling on eBay for anywhere from $220 - $427; with many selling for about the $300 price point. (Not sure who got suckered into paying $427 for a used Steam Deck 256GB LCD when they could buy a new one from Valve for $399, but that is beside the point). The Steam Deck 512GB LCD model has been selling fairly consistently for around $380-$400.

You're certainly welcome to your opinion in regards to the build quality; however, I'd have to agree with Haruspex in that regard. It feels largely the same, other than being slightly (albeit noticeable) lighter. I think the sticks are an improvement, however, that isn't to say the original sticks were problematic or not good. The new sticks are just slightly more concave and grippier so my thumbs feel a bit more comfortable at rest on the new sticks. Overall it still feels like a premium and solid device.

Also, if you haven't ever tried them you may want to consider looking into one of the dbrand skins. I'm personally waiting for the matte black skin to arrive for my Steam Deck OLED LE, as I wanted the orange accents but would rather have a solid matte black finish instead of the smoked translucent shell; and the feel/texture of their case sinks feels nice when properly applied.

[NordVPN]

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

One thing that annoys me is this flap on the front. It gets in the way when opening the case and I‘m extra careful to not let it slide over the screen when opening.

You probably don't have to worry too much about something scratching the screen. Unless I'm wrong and the SD is different, most modern devices use hardened glass screens that won't scratch that easily. Generally the way I look at it, be afraid of sand and not fabric/metal. I've done it on old phones but typically you can take a knife to them without issue but a grain of sand getting slid across it will gouge it.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

I think however, at first startup, the device should be on mute, or at least not as loud. And on boot in general, the screen should be at the least brightest setting, because that OLED can really flash you if you are in a dark environment (in both a positive and negative sense).

Probably neither of those things should be done. The reason you'd want it like that (but let the user change it asap) is because that lets the user quickly find out if there is any issues. If you go on the lowest setting a user might be in a bright environment and think something is wrong when it isn't. If the speakers are muted by default then they might think the sound is broken. As long as you can change it quickly that's a good thing, just don't be setting up a device right next to a sleeping baby.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

But I think they could’ve done better: All-analogue buttons, faster SD card reader, more RAM, PCIe connectivity, etc. Hopefully, we’ll see such upgrades with the next Steam Deck.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really benchmark it, because of device-breaking issues I’ll close in later on.

Those all sound like great points but I'm with you on it for the next SD. I can completely understand them not making big changes to this one to make the "true" SD1 before moving the real jump to the SD2.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

that this device is made with Linux in mind is still great.

I'm with you there. IMO a mostly polished software experience is fine if it comes with the level of customization/flexibility a Linux Distro gives. Doesn't need to be crazy clean/integrated as long as it works and you can play around with custom software.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

Again, not enough analogue buttons

I hope analog buttons make a comeback, they seem, in principle, to be a good idea that offers people flexibility to customize actuation points and maybe map them to things they normally wouldn't be able to. Hall effect analog sticks seem to be popular too. I haven't looked into them too deeply but if they are more accurate, longer lived than regular pot based sticks then I'm all for a swap to them.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

Overall, I think Valve seriously cut corners and in the wrong places, too.
The buttons feel hollow and the plastic shell feels worse than some Tupperware knockoffs now. On top of that, edges around the screen and SD card slot are simply too sharp. In the case of the SD card slot they’re almost cutting edge. I know, the plastic shell never was that great, but this is even worse. At least the seams between the front and back panel on the grips are smoother now, which is were you touch the Deck most of the time. But the plastic still feels cheaper than it already was on the OG model.

That's odd, from what I had heard I thought that there weren't any real changes to the case. It'd be sad if it's true that they have swapped to cheaper plastic with less substance to it.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

The Steam Deck OLED simply doesn’t work with my home network setup.

It shouldn't be an issue in the first place but hopefully this is something that will at least only take a software update to fix since it seems like overall the Wifi/BT chip is supposed to be a major step up.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

It obviously suffers from the current economic “shrinkflation” situation as well (mid-to-late 70s cars were pretty rubbish, too).

This doesn't sound like a fair conclusion from what you've said. As it stands the OLED has overall increased what it's supposed to be providing for the price. More storage, battery life, better screen for cheaper than it was originally.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

As of now, however, I’m in the market for an OLED, SSD and battery upgrade kit for my current Deck. The better screen, greater storage and longer battery life are truly the best things about the new Steam Deck. An upgrade kit seems much more reasonable than what the OLED has to offer for its price for now.
But who knows what stuff third-parties come up with soon or never.

Not sure you'll ever get that. The changes that were made to let them fit a larger battery and different screen in there were pretty large from what I've seen. A third party doesn't seem extremely likely to produce some sort of upgrade kit at least for a price that would make it reasonable.

Regardless, it's unfortunate to hear people are having issues with the initial release for the OLED. It's a damned shame Valve didn't have it polished to a shine before getting it out the door since it sounds in general like this is supposed to be the definitive version.

[kilésengati]

Nguyên văn bởi NordVPN:

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

One thing that annoys me is this flap on the front. It gets in the way when opening the case and I‘m extra careful to not let it slide over the screen when opening.

You probably don't have to worry too much about something scratching the screen. Unless I'm wrong and the SD is different, most modern devices use hardened glass screens that won't scratch that easily. Generally the way I look at it, be afraid of sand and not fabric/metal. I've done it on old phones but typically you can take a knife to them without issue but a grain of sand getting slid across it will gouge it.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

I think however, at first startup, the device should be on mute, or at least not as loud. And on boot in general, the screen should be at the least brightest setting, because that OLED can really flash you if you are in a dark environment (in both a positive and negative sense).

Probably neither of those things should be done. The reason you'd want it like that (but let the user change it asap) is because that lets the user quickly find out if there is any issues. If you go on the lowest setting a user might be in a bright environment and think something is wrong when it isn't. If the speakers are muted by default then they might think the sound is broken. As long as you can change it quickly that's a good thing, just don't be setting up a device right next to a sleeping baby.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

But I think they could’ve done better: All-analogue buttons, faster SD card reader, more RAM, PCIe connectivity, etc. Hopefully, we’ll see such upgrades with the next Steam Deck.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really benchmark it, because of device-breaking issues I’ll close in later on.

Those all sound like great points but I'm with you on it for the next SD. I can completely understand them not making big changes to this one to make the "true" SD1 before moving the real jump to the SD2.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

that this device is made with Linux in mind is still great.

I'm with you there. IMO a mostly polished software experience is fine if it comes with the level of customization/flexibility a Linux Distro gives. Doesn't need to be crazy clean/integrated as long as it works and you can play around with custom software.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

Again, not enough analogue buttons

I hope analog buttons make a comeback, they seem, in principle, to be a good idea that offers people flexibility to customize actuation points and maybe map them to things they normally wouldn't be able to. Hall effect analog sticks seem to be popular too. I haven't looked into them too deeply but if they are more accurate, longer lived than regular pot based sticks then I'm all for a swap to them.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

Overall, I think Valve seriously cut corners and in the wrong places, too.
The buttons feel hollow and the plastic shell feels worse than some Tupperware knockoffs now. On top of that, edges around the screen and SD card slot are simply too sharp. In the case of the SD card slot they’re almost cutting edge. I know, the plastic shell never was that great, but this is even worse. At least the seams between the front and back panel on the grips are smoother now, which is were you touch the Deck most of the time. But the plastic still feels cheaper than it already was on the OG model.

That's odd, from what I had heard I thought that there weren't any real changes to the case. It'd be sad if it's true that they have swapped to cheaper plastic with less substance to it.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

The Steam Deck OLED simply doesn’t work with my home network setup.

It shouldn't be an issue in the first place but hopefully this is something that will at least only take a software update to fix since it seems like overall the Wifi/BT chip is supposed to be a major step up.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

It obviously suffers from the current economic “shrinkflation” situation as well (mid-to-late 70s cars were pretty rubbish, too).

This doesn't sound like a fair conclusion from what you've said. As it stands the OLED has overall increased what it's supposed to be providing for the price. More storage, battery life, better screen for cheaper than it was originally.

Nguyên văn bởi kilésengati:

As of now, however, I’m in the market for an OLED, SSD and battery upgrade kit for my current Deck. The better screen, greater storage and longer battery life are truly the best things about the new Steam Deck. An upgrade kit seems much more reasonable than what the OLED has to offer for its price for now.
But who knows what stuff third-parties come up with soon or never.

Not sure you'll ever get that. The changes that were made to let them fit a larger battery and different screen in there were pretty large from what I've seen. A third party doesn't seem extremely likely to produce some sort of upgrade kit at least for a price that would make it reasonable.

Regardless, it's unfortunate to hear people are having issues with the initial release for the OLED. It's a damned shame Valve didn't have it polished to a shine before getting it out the door since it sounds in general like this is supposed to be the definitive version.

Thank you for responding to my review.

I can see where you are coming from with the sound/brightness thing. But I think it's unfortunate the Steam Deck OLED, on boot doesn't immediately switch to the previous brightness settings but at first goes full-brightness. Well, for some reason my LCD model doesn't even automatically switch to the previous brightness settings after a reboot anymore, despite the slider sitting there. Probably a software issue.
And part of the issue is, that unless you are logged-in or in desktop mode, you can't change brightness settings for some reason. So for the time until you can finally log-in, you are stuck with the brightest setting. I solved it by just putting on sunglasses. 😎

The remark on mid-70s cars being pretty rubbish obviously doesn't translate directly to the Steam Deck. It's just a comparison on how a recession can affect product quality. As I've said in the review, the stuff that was advertised it does well, but I'm not happy this had to come at the cost of build quality.

The SSD upgrade is already possible. For the LCD Deck, there are already third-party screen kits like the DeckHD. I wouldn't rule it out completely someone will either find a good way to get the OG OLED screen working with the LCD model, or even release a user-friendly upgrade kit. (If you know how to micro-solder and have no issues with flashing the BIOS, you can even upgrade the RAM, it's a computer after all).
A battery upgrade is obviously the most utopic of my kit wishlist as of now, but I wouldn't be surprised if advances in battery technology make higher-capacity batteries at a lower price point possible in the next couple of years.

It's indeed very unfortunate the OLED Deck I got isn't what I expected. As it's a quite alot of money, and I can't use it due to the connectivity issues, I have refunded my OLED Deck and maybe reconsider it in half a year.