Steam Deck OLED Review

The Steam Deck OLED is a revision that behaves like a new machine. The screen is the headline, larger inside the same body, running at 90Hz, with the contrast an OLED gives and a high dynamic range mode that actually earns the label. Everything else is quieter improvement: a battery about a quarter larger, a die shrink that cuts heat and power draw at once, a fan that no longer whines under load, wireless fast enough to change how long a big download takes, and about thirty grams less to hold up in bed.

Valve charged a hundred dollars less than the outgoing model with the same storage. The performance grade sits two tiers below the overall because that is the honest reading: the chip is essentially the same one, so a game that struggled on the original struggles here, and this is a screen, battery and thermal revision rather than a faster computer.

Windows handhelds with newer silicon do run ahead of it on raw frame rates. What they do not have is SteamOS, which remains the actual reason to buy one, and the enormous verified library that comes with it. The best handheld PC anyone had made when it landed, and still the machine the rest are measured against.