Which do you feel is better, sRGB or OLED?

[CSDX]

So, I'm trying to find a 2nd job to try to save up for the Steam Deck OLED, even though I at the same time feel I shouldn't try to cause I've already got a Deck and even gave it a bigger SSD. However, it's looking unlikely, so I'm trying to convince myself that I'm better off not trying due to Steam Deck 2 likely having an OLED screen, even though I admittedly feel I've been spoiled by my OLED Switch.

Then I saw Steam Deck got an update that adds its own version of VibrantDeck with something called sRGB. I've tried it out, but admittedly am unsure if it looks much better. Some games look better with vibrant colors, though, while others(namely pixel graphics) look best on the OLED screen. Just in case I'm just being a stubborn little fart, I thought I'd ask here to get 2nd opinions and also cause I can't figure out what proper subreddit to ask.

Do y'all think sRGB is good enough, or do you feel OLED is supreme? Hell, let's throw in QLED while we're at it since that type of LED monitor/TV is starting to gain traction, as I'm sure QLED has its fans.

So, sRGB, OLED, or QLED?

Oh, and please keep things civil, obviously.

Edit: Oh, and I'm also curious if y'all feel the burn-in woes of any of these 3 is worth it.

[♥♥tutor♥♥tαrα♥♥]

CSDX a écrit :

What do you feel is the best setting for the sRGB update then, if I may ask?

I think that you might find this post to be helpful "With the OLED Deck on the horizon, let's go over some measurements of the LCD display as well as display settings coming up in SteamOS 3.5" https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/17wbkp0/with_the_oled_deck_on_the_horizon_lets_go_over/

Summary
The "Color Temperature" setting values are fairly accurate. On my Deck, they measure about 200K cooler than the setting value. The "Color Vibrancy" setting can cause colors to clip and/or change in hue as saturation increases. The LED display is pretty ok. Personally, I'd set my color temperature to 6500K and vibrancy to a couple clicks above Native.

As an aside, the "Color Vibrancy" setting will have different settings on an OLED deck, but it will have the opposite saturation problem - you may want to clamp the gamut to sRGB since it can display colors way outside the sRGB color triangle (into DCI-P3 space).

[CSDX]

♥♥tutor♥♥tαrα♥♥ a écrit :

CSDX a écrit :

What do you feel is the best setting for the sRGB update then, if I may ask?

I think that you might find this post to be helpful "With the OLED Deck on the horizon, let's go over some measurements of the LCD display as well as display settings coming up in SteamOS 3.5" https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/17wbkp0/with_the_oled_deck_on_the_horizon_lets_go_over/

Summary
The "Color Temperature" setting values are fairly accurate. On my Deck, they measure about 200K cooler than the setting value. The "Color Vibrancy" setting can cause colors to clip and/or change in hue as saturation increases. The LED display is pretty ok. Personally, I'd set my color temperature to 6500K and vibrancy to a couple clicks above Native.

As an aside, the "Color Vibrancy" setting will have different settings on an OLED deck, but it will have the opposite saturation problem - you may want to clamp the gamut to sRGB since it can display colors way outside the sRGB color triangle (into DCI-P3 space).

It was quite helpful, thank you.

[CSDX]

Oh, I forgot to mention, I found a post on reddit comparing the 512GB OLED vs 1TB OLED, and apparently the anti-glare etched glass somehow hurts the OLED display.

So, that's unfortunate.

[leo60228]

I think you're misunderstanding what "sRGB" means. A color space is a way to represent colors. The sRGB color space is a standard specifying what precise color given values of red, green, and blue will produce. Most screens will not precisely match it, so the sRGB option tries to perform correction in software to make the displayed colors closer to what the sRGB standard specifies.
sRGB is an SDR color space. The Steam Deck OLED has an HDR display, which can display far more colors than encompassed by sRGB. Because of this, the screen will natively target the P3 color space, and to ensure SDR content is playable it'll have to perform correction anyway when converting from the sRGB colors used by games to the P3 colors used by the display.

[Mahjik]

CSDX a écrit :

Oh, I forgot to mention, I found a post on reddit comparing the 512GB OLED vs 1TB OLED, and apparently the anti-glare etched glass somehow hurts the OLED display.

So, that's unfortunate.

Any "etched" screen is going to hamper a little bit of the pop of any color. OLED or LCD. If you will never play in a situation where you cannot control the lighting, then don't get an etched screen. If you ever want to user your Deck outside or other situations where you cannot control the lighting, you'll want the etched screen even if it diminishes the colors a bit.

I tried using my LCD (256gb) Deck outside once, and stopped pretty quickly. No matter what angle I tried, there were too many reflections.

[deaddoof]

CSDX a écrit :

and also cause I can't figure out what proper subreddit to ask.

Do y'all think sRGB is good enough, or do you feel OLED is supreme? Hell, let's throw in QLED while we're at it since that type of LED monitor/TV is starting to gain traction, as I'm sure QLED has its fans.

So, sRGB, OLED, or QLED?

Oh, and please keep things civil, obviously.

Edit: Oh, and I'm also curious if y'all feel the burn-in woes of any of these 3 is worth it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the OLED deck. Can you wait 3-4 years? Yes or no?

If yes, then you do not need the current OLED deck. If no, buy it. The current OLED deck will be cut short because games are coming out with mesh shaders. The current APU does not have mesh shaders. More and more mesh shader games will come out because Xbox X and PS5 have mesh shaders. The Switch 2 will also have mesh shaders too and it will come out next year.

[CSDX]

deaddoof a écrit :

CSDX a écrit :

and also cause I can't figure out what proper subreddit to ask.

Do y'all think sRGB is good enough, or do you feel OLED is supreme? Hell, let's throw in QLED while we're at it since that type of LED monitor/TV is starting to gain traction, as I'm sure QLED has its fans.

So, sRGB, OLED, or QLED?

Oh, and please keep things civil, obviously.

Edit: Oh, and I'm also curious if y'all feel the burn-in woes of any of these 3 is worth it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the OLED deck. Can you wait 3-4 years? Yes or no?

If yes, then you do not need the current OLED deck. If no, buy it. The current OLED deck will be cut short because games are coming out with mesh shaders. The current APU does not have mesh shaders. More and more mesh shader games will come out because Xbox X and PS5 have mesh shaders. The Switch 2 will also have mesh shaders too and it will come out next year.

Mesh shader? I've never heard of that before. That's not like a ray tracing thing, right?

[TristanMike]

Mahjik a écrit :

CSDX a écrit :

Oh, I forgot to mention, I found a post on reddit comparing the 512GB OLED vs 1TB OLED, and apparently the anti-glare etched glass somehow hurts the OLED display.

So, that's unfortunate.

Any "etched" screen is going to hamper a little bit of the pop of any color. OLED or LCD. If you will never play in a situation where you cannot control the lighting, then don't get an etched screen. If you ever want to user your Deck outside or other situations where you cannot control the lighting, you'll want the etched screen even if it diminishes the colors a bit.

I tried using my LCD (256gb) Deck outside once, and stopped pretty quickly. No matter what angle I tried, there were too many reflections.

What's interesting is I watched THIS video and @ 2:24 or so, he starts his discussion on the screen where he talks about exactly what you're saying and shows the difference. I found it actually shocking. But then he makes the entire problem go away by putting a screen protector on it. He shows the comparison and it very noticeable.

[deaddoof]

CSDX a écrit :

deaddoof a écrit :

I wouldn't worry too much about the OLED deck. Can you wait 3-4 years? Yes or no?

If yes, then you do not need the current OLED deck. If no, buy it. The current OLED deck will be cut short because games are coming out with mesh shaders. The current APU does not have mesh shaders. More and more mesh shader games will come out because Xbox X and PS5 have mesh shaders. The Switch 2 will also have mesh shaders too and it will come out next year.

Mesh shader? I've never heard of that before. That's not like a ray tracing thing, right?

No. Its a new way to draw triangles in the graphic pipeline.

Your game can either use mesh shaders or not use mesh shaders. There isn't an in between because the feature is deep within the graphic pipeline.

Pretty much all modern GPU uarch needs to support it.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10162/

Yea. OLED deck doesn't have a long shelf life. Almost every other game after the deck 2 release will probably support mesh shaders.

Edit: Nevermind the current deck has mesh shaders. Scratch my words. RDNA2 is the first AMD uarch with mesh shaders. Deck barely made the cut off.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-22.3-RADV-Mesh-Shader

It explains why AMD needs a new uarch for RDNA series.

[CSDX]

deaddoof a écrit :

CSDX a écrit :

Mesh shader? I've never heard of that before. That's not like a ray tracing thing, right?

No. Its a new way to draw triangles in the graphic pipeline.

Your game can either use mesh shaders or not use mesh shaders. There isn't an in between because the feature is deep within the graphic pipeline.

Pretty much all modern GPU uarch needs to support it.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10162/

Yea. OLED deck doesn't have a long shelf life. Almost every other game after the deck 2 release will probably support mesh shaders.

Edit: Nevermind the current deck has mesh shaders. Scratch my words. RDNA2 is the first AMD uarch with mesh shaders. Deck barely made the cut off.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-22.3-RADV-Mesh-Shader

It explains why AMD needs a new uarch for RDNA series.

I see. Well, either way, I'm opting to not get an OLED Deck now, as I think I found a decent setting with sRGB and the color temperature that I like. 2-4 ticks above sRGB itself and 9000k temperature seems to be good for me.

[shimsham29]

CSDX a écrit :

PopinFRESH a écrit :

sRGB is a color space? OLED and QLED are display panel technologies.

Yes, and I am asking what people feel is in their opinion the go-to one, especially since I can't really go to a Best Buy or whatever to compare them all myself.

As stated, srgb is a colour space and has nothing to do with the display tech in the way you ask. Almost all sdr content is mastered in srgb/rec.709 so to have a game look as it is intended, your display should be in the srgb colour space. Every time someone plays a game or watches a movie or TV show, it is created to look a specific way as the people that make this stuff don't throw a dart at a wall and choose a colour. They also grade their content on actually calibrated displays to a standard which is known as d65. It's not subjective but objective.

Oled and srgb are not mutually exclusive. An oled display will be in the srgb/rec.709 colour space when displaying sdr content unless someone chooses to use a wider colour gamut which then makes colours oversaturated. I have a Samsung S90C qd-oled TV and it's in rec.709/srgb for sdr content but I could choose to use a wider colour gamut but I wouldn't because I'm not crazy and actually want my content to look how it is supposed to.

As an example of a device using the wrong colour space, the Legion Go defaults to the dci-p3 colour space so colours are oversaturated and wrong if one actually cares about things looking as they are supposed to. On the other hand, the ROG Ally is srgb only and it is very colour accurate but some people on the internet now claim it looks washed out compared to the Go because they think oversaturation is correct. Again, it is not because again, content is created in srgb/rec.709.

The oledeck here can output in dci-p3 as well which is a colour space mainly used for hdr content but it will still output in srgb for sdr content unless one chooses to set it higher.

If you're asking if oled is better than lcd (which is what qled is) then yes, of course it is. QD-oled is the best then oled then the lcd choices like qled.

[CSDX]

shimsham29 a écrit :

If you're asking if oled is better than lcd (which is what qled is) then yes, of course it is. QD-oled is the best then oled then the lcd choices like qled.

Kinda surprised, cause I HAVE seen people prefer QLED, but then again part of why they stated it was due to OLED being very susceptible to burn-in.

Still, as stated, I'm opting now to wait on the Deck's successor. I just gotta figure out how to set up color vibrancy on the Windows side of my Deck. I have it set to dualboot, mind you.

Edit: I'm also surprised QLED is a type of LCD screen.