Valve on Thursday announced the Steam Deck OLED, an upgraded version of its hugely popular handheld gaming PC, Stem Deck, featuring an HDR OLED screen, longer battery life, and faster downloads.
“An OLED screen with larger picture, better battery life, faster WiFi—on top of world-class ergonomics and an intuitive console-like experience,” said the company about the Steam Deck OLED.
Specifications And Features
Steam Deck OLED features a 7.4? OLED HDR display with a 1,280 x 800 pixels resolution, a 90Hz refresh rate, and covers 110 percent of the P3 color space with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. It measures 298mm x 117mm x 49mm and weighs approximately 640 grams, making it 5% lighter than the LCD models.
Further, the Steam Deck OLED is equipped with a new 6 nm AMD APU that includes a Zen 2 4c/8t 3.5GHz CPU, an 8 RDNA 2 CUs GPU at 1.6GHz, and 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM on board. It comes in two storage options: 512 GB or 1 TB, which includes a high-speed microSD card slot for expanding your library.
There is a D-Pad, two full-size analog sticks with capacitive touch, A B X Y buttons, L & R bumpers, L & R analog triggers, two trackpads, and four assignable grip buttons on the back. It runs on Arch-based SteamOS 3, optimized for a handheld experience.
On the connectivity front, the Steam Deck OLED comes with Bluetooth 5.3 (support for controllers, accessories, and audio), a dedicated Bluetooth antenna, and Wi-Fi 6 for faster downloads and lower latency. It also comes with a 3.5mm stereo headphone/headset jack and a USB Type-C port that can be used to output the display on a TV or monitor.
Valve claims the Steam Deck OLED provides an estimated 30 percent to 50 percent improvement in battery life over the launch model. It comes with a 50Whr battery (up from 40Whr on the LCD model), which Valve says will last for 3-12 hours of playtime over the current models’ 2-8 hours, depending on the games played.
The handheld gaming PC also has a longer 2.5m charging cable that can charge the OLED model from 20 to 80 percent in “as little as 45 minutes.” It is also touch enabled and has an ambient light sensor.
Price And Availability
Steam Deck OLED is priced at $549 for the 512GB NVMe SSD model and $649 for the 1TB NVMe SSD model. Valve is also releasing a “Limited Edition” Steam Deck OLED in limited quantities for $679, exclusively for customers in the U.S. and Canada. The Steam Deck OLED model as well as the limited edition run, will be available for purchase on November 16th.
Valve is also slowly phasing out two of the LCD Steam Deck variants. The Deck’s store page on Steam reads: “The 64GB and 512GB Steam Deck LCD models are being phased out. We have permanently discounted these models and they will be available until they are out of stock.”
Going forward, the LCD Steam Deck models in storage options of 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB will cost $349, $399, and $449, respectively.
