The steam deck review is better than the other ones

Valve Revised Deck: a Game-Changing, Powerful, and Fun-Efficient Gaming Platform for PCs and Switches

But while the original Deck was shoved out the door months before it was ready, I feel far more confident recommending this one, and I’d argue Valve has more than earned the benefit of the doubt. It’s shipped over 300 updates to the original Steam Deck over the past 21 months, transforming it from a glorious mess into a genre-defining handheld. I now trust Valve more than any other company, as a result of those updates and hardware customer support.

Valve’s first Deck was a bit of a shock to behold at first, with its, shall we say, utilitarian design. It was big, it was wide, and it was chonky. But in use, it was also a winner, giving you a lot of control over a wide variety of games. The layout, size, and shape of the new model are the same as before. It has a touchscreen, twin thumb sticks, D-pad, buttons, and dual touchpads that you can use to play games. The design details for the new model have been changed. The legends on the keys have a darker tone, the sticks have a grippier design, and the bumpers up top have been tuned for better responsiveness. The engineers of the company told me that the twin touchpads are more precise in the revised Deck.

Good things can come to those who wait. The PS4 or XBOX are always slimmer and more power efficient. There is an attractive new combo of size, screen, color, and battery life for Nintendo’s Game Boy, DS, and Switch.

It fixes my biggest complaints about the original PC and then some, without a new catch. If you want a bigger capacity, it costs more than last year’s model but you can still get 1 tbs for $649.

Why would I want to play Cyberpunk? Or Why are I going to play Faster, Cooler, Quiet, and Brighter?

You might be able to tell if this is true by looking at the word for word from my test notes. Cyberpunk is running faster, more stable, cooler, quieter, while drawing less power from a larger battery and looking brighter and clearer.

That’s what I want for all of my games, and that’s what I want for you. I only meant four frames per second when I wrote “faster.”

When I finished playing Duck Game and Speed Runners I had used up all my battery, but I chatted with my friends again and had 84 percent left in the tank. With 70 percent remaining as I write these words, my Deck OLED review unit is telling me I can play Slay the Spire for seven more hours since it’s consistently drawing just 5.3 watts now. The eight hour total for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is up from five or so previously.

I tried to avoid writing a 4,000-word review but I am focused on what’s new. If you’re wondering “What is this thing, and why would I want one,” check out my original review video and my long-term Steam Deck review.

For example: in 2022, I was able to play the graphically intensive Control for just under two hours on my original Steam Deck review unit at 60 frames per second. I played the same game for two hours, 11 minutes over the past week.

I also played over three hours of Nier: Two hours at 60 frames per second is what automata played at over the course of two days. When the Deck said that I would only have 30 percent battery left and 37 more minutes to play, I simply lowered the frame rate to 45 frames per second and played for an hour and 10 minutes before the deck shut down. (At 45fps, three hours of Control is also definitely within reach.)

Source: Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster

Mirror’s Edge, Starfield, and the OLED Screen: Some Remarks on Valve’s Switch and OLED Devices

Valve pointed to power savings as the main driver of the game rather than performance, just like Nintendo and Nvidia did with the red box Nintendo Switch.

Even though I have an OLED TV in my living room and an OLED phone in my pocket, I don’t play PC games on them — and OMG does Mirror’s Edge look so good on this gadget. The reds, the blues, the yellows — the entire game’s art direction just explodes off the screen even though it’s not an HDR game. I can say the same thing about him. I can’t wait to try Hi-Fi Rush, particularly since Valve’s also made the speakers noticeably louder here.

Because of the thinner screen, Valve was able to fit bigger fans, a bigger battery pack and a stronger heatsink into the same space.

I am seeing big games draw less power on the steam deck screen than on the steam deck LCD, for example the original drew about 26 or 27 watt on the steam deck screen. There are exceptions: Nidhogg consumed 7.2W on OLED versus 6W on LCD at the same 60fps, and Max Payne 2 drew roughly the same 10W on each on default settings.

The bigger battery makes games last longer. And the new OLED screen, die-shrunk “Sephiroth” chip, and a slight bump to 6400MT/s memory often make them play better, too.

There’s no need for me to say that Starfield still runs like shit. I absolutely did see the mysterious stutter in other games. I saw a higher frame rate and lower frame time spikes in Elden Ring, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Starfield than in the OG Deck, and I think that is related to less intensive games. (And if you ask me, playing an old game at a buttery smooth 80 or 90 frames per second definitely counts as more performance than the old Deck’s 60fps maximum.)

One issue with the original is now solved by whisper-quiet fan. The handheld runs cooler than the rest. Even after draining the battery with an intensive game, it doesn’t get uncomfortably hot. The battery charges faster, at least relatively speaking: while the OLED model actually took over 30 minutes longer than my LCD model to completely top off, I saw it take its larger battery from 2 percent to 80 percent in just 71 minutes — compared to 99 minutes for the LCD model. According to my wattmeter, the new Deck takes full advantage of its 45W USB-C PD charger right up to the 65 percent mark.

A fancy two-in-one case is a must for the 1TB model of the Steam Deck, and the longer power cable makes it easier to charge. The small version is useful, even though it is a tad harder to zip up.

There’s also Wi-Fi 6E for faster downloads, with two antennas for 2.4GHz and either 5GHz or faster 6GHz simultaneously. My home network’s still on Wi-Fi 6, but I’m still seeing respectable 500Mbps-plus downloads straight from Valve’s servers. The Deck also has a dedicated Bluetooth antenna now — and while I haven’t yet tested Valve’s claim that it better supports multiple simultaneous wireless gamepads for couch games, I am so happy to confirm the Deck finally supports Bluetooth microphones for chat. You will need headphones or earbuds if you wish to avoid game audio lag.

Physically, the new Deck is actually 29 grams lighter, enough that I can notice the difference blindfolded when picking them up. The shoulder buttons and Quick access buttons are clickier. The thumbstick tops are taller, wider, and grippier, making it slightly easier to make your character keep running in one direction; they’ve got a tackier, more recessed smooth divot on top that’s a lovely (and hopefully easier to clean) perch for your thumb.

High Definition Video on Steam Deck OLED: Better, not faster, and why I am unhappy with the way Valve has made a new HDR screen

They’re not Hall effect magnetic joysticks, by the way, just normal ones. “We have not seen very many complaints at all with joystick drift,” says Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat.

I don’t prefer the amazing response time, clarity, blacks, and color of a screen compared to the competition, but there is still something to be desired from the screen’s refresh rate.

You can have real light in your games if your games have real light because the Steam deck will always be brighter than the steam deck liquid. The neon lights in Cyberpunk 2077 look like actual neon tubes! The jump jets and laser blades in the Armored Core VI are realistic. Elden Ring’s magical bolts of fire come alive, and after some in-game HDR brightness adjustment, the golden light of the Erdtree starts to feel blindingly divine.

Without the screen being dim like I saw in my recent gaming review, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is one of the best made-for-hgs games, it’s constantly burst with glorious light. It would be great if it was displayed in 16:10.

There are a lot of games that come out on this system but you will not be able to find high definition video to play on it. On Linux, there aren’t any other high definition streaming services that have anything to do with it. My rough understanding is that HDR on Linux is a bit of a Wild West, and Valve is helping build some of the first settlements out there.

Jeremy Selan, a tech expert with Valve, tells me that the variable refresh rate did not make it into the revision, so it can stutter when you don’t pick the correct refresh rate. And while you can now select from an incredible range of frame rates all the way from 10fps to 90fps, some of which divide nicely into the refresh rates Valve’s new screen supports, I’m finding it takes a lot of trial and error to see which games work with which refresh options. I only see that 30 frames per second scale well to 90 frames per second in some titles. Even 60/60 wasn’t perfectly smooth in everything I’ve tried.

Source: Steam Deck OLED review: better, not faster

Unravelling Valve Hardware: What’s New at the HQ of a Game Console (Invited Talk at Valve)

I keep the very best versions of every game console that I own. The 60GB PS3 “Phat” with PS2 backward compatibility. A channelhacking the Wii for GameCube games. An Xbox 360 Elite with the swappable hard drive and supposedly Red Ring of Death-proof “Jasper” motherboard. A Nintendo DS lite can play a Game Boy advance game with English translations on top. An original PS2 with a hard drive rigged to load games faster than disc.

As for the Steam Deck 2: “We’re confident that in the next couple of years we’ll have something we can call a proper Steam Deck 2,” Valve designer Lawrence Yang tells me.

It’s an overhauled version of Valve’s handheld gaming PC but not one that’s focused on performance — the company is sticking with its plan not to produce a faster handheld for the next couple of years.

But say you don’t have the time to read a full review right now and just want the specs and some FAQs. That is what this post is about. Here’s a monster list of what’s new, what’s the same, and a few other things I learned at Valve’s HQ.

“Our hardware warranty covers issues with all Steam Deck components, including the display,” Valve product designer Lawrence Yang tells me. We’re continuing to ask if that means it covers burn-in specifically because companies sometimes need chased on that.

Overdesigned Power Regulators – A Remark by Aldehayyat and many other Pseudo-Relativists

If you want to have a product with an ability to handle the mode, you have to design it. You have a bunch of stuff in your bag and you can only use it in Turbo Mode. Aldehayyat says overdesigned power regulators are one example.