The Steam Deck OLED is a lighter, brighter, longer lasting PC gaming handheld sequel
On sale starting November 16 for $549 and up
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Steam Deck OLED
📺 Larger 7.4-inch OLED screen supporting HDR colors and 90Hz
🏃🏻♂️ Not faster, but more efficient 6nm processor
🔋 Larger battery boosting playtime to 3-12 hours
🤑 Higher $549 starting price, ships November 16th
The Steam Deck 2 Steam Deck OLED is finally here. It’s got a better screen, more battery, lighter weight, and almost everything we want for $549, and it’ll start shipping on November 16th.
As its name might suggest, the main feature of this new Steam Deck is its OLED display. The new screen is still stuck at a 1,200 x 800 resolution, but it’s a bit bigger at 7.4 inches and runs at a faster 90Hz refresh rate. Lastly, it’s now an HDR display capable of hitting a 1,000-nit peak brightness and rendering 110% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
Valve has also upgraded the chipset to a more efficient 6nm AMD “Sephiroth” APU, though, it still runs at the same original 2.4-3.5GHz speeds. The OLED model also upgrades its memory with faster RAM running at 6,400MT/s (versus 5500MT/s).
All of this plus the larger 50Whr battery, allows the OLED model to last for 3-12 hours over the original Steam Deck’s 2-8 hours of run time.
The Steam Deck OLED is also lighter at 1.14 pounds, making it 5% lighter than the original LCD model. Lastly, the Steam Deck OLED features faster connectivity with Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E, the latter of which promises 2-3 times faster download speeds.
The Steam Deck OLED comes with a higher 512GB of starting base storage for a higher $549 starting price, meanwhile, the 1TB model runs for $649. The 1TB model is also available in a limited transparent shell for $679.
Valve has also knocked off $50 from the price of the original Steam Deck, bringing it to $349. The 1TB model’s price has also been dropped from $529 to $449.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.