This is the best coverage of the new Deck that I’ve seen yet.
Upgraded:
-
7.4" OLED HDR screen with a 90hz refresh rate and 600 nits brightness(with 1000 nits peak brightness), (old screen 7" LCD with 60hz refresh and 400 nits brightness). Touchscreen accuracy and responsiveness is reportedly improved.
-
Longer battery life. Improvements to software and hardware are supposed to increase the battery life by 30-50%. New battery is 50wh vs original 40. Original decks will see some of this improvement thanks to software/bios updates, but not as much as the new Decks. The new Deck charges faster as well, charge from 20 to 80% battery in 45 min.
-
6E wifi module for improved wifi speed.
-
Dedicated bluetooth module, allowing better audio quality over bluetooth and the option to wake the steam deck from a bluetooth controller. Will also support more controllers at once for multiplayer.
-
Faster RAM, 6400 MT/s vs 5500 MT/s on original.
-
More repairable. The screws are now torx, and all thread into metal screw holes. Should prevent stripped screws that were the most common issues with SSD replacements.
-
New carrying case, for the 1TB model, there’s an insert case inside the full size case. The insert can be pulled out and used as a slim carrying case when you don’t need full protection.
-
Weighs 5% less.
Prices:
$649 - 1TB OLED
$529 - 512GB OLED
$399 - 256GB LCD
For a limited time, Valve will sell a special edition 1TB OLED with a translucent shell for $679, only in the US and Canada. Expected to sell out quickly.
Note: I’m updating this as I get more information, so the written out info will change as I learn more.
I cannot use the oled screen, it hurt my eyes. Unfortunately the original steam deck screen also flickers.
Interesting. I think OLED is meant to be more comfortable to the eyes actually.
It is an improvement over the original steam deck screen. But I wish Valve could use some non-PWM screens to protect my eyes better
Gotta check whether iFixit already did a teardown on this. Repairability is improved, but I’m wondering by how much, especially when it comes to screen and battery replacement.
Reading more details on the repairability, they’ve changed the screws to torx and they all thread into metal thread now. Should prevent screw stripping. They also say internal components are easier to access, but that might just be with the new heat shield design that was already present in recent Steam Decks.
According to LTT, Valve went a bit easier on the battery glue this time. So that will be easier to replace.
However according to Dave2D, the dimensions are slightly bigger so the new 50 Wh battery won’t fit in older Decks.
Didn’t Valve release their own teardown of the Deck before its release?
IGN review video said
Screen is HDR certified and 1000 nits.
Others are bigger fan, lower temperature (5 to 10 degree C diff)
For battery, Cyberpunk 2077 runs 1 hr more than LCD one.
It’s peak 1000 nits with HDR. The base full-panel max is 600 nits. Still, it’s a big jump over the 400 on the previous LCD model.
And 5% lower weight!
Does anyone know if this is going to be a replacement or a sibling to the current model?
The now lowest end model (256 GB) still is the old model, so it’s a sibling.
Hard to get excited about this when Valve still won’t release the deck in my country and it’s now out of date hardware.
Really kinda disappointed with Valve on the deck.
it’s now out of date hardware
What? It’s not the fastest APU around anymore, but it’s hardly outdated.
It’s two generations behind the current handheld offerings.
Now if you were going to buy something to last you the next few years would you pick the already old product or the fresh new one with modern components?
It’s outdated.
Is it though? It’s targetting 5-15W, the other APUs are terrible at lower wattages and only good if they’re blasting through energy.
The software beats the shit out of any other handheld.
Yeah. Unfortunately the hardware doesn’t run last gen games as other options but the need to deal with Windows is a nono for me. Also I don’t understand why people want to play AAA games on a handheld.
Honestly I use it as a desktop more than I play games on it.
It’s lack of availability world wide is unfortunate, but unless Valve agrees to start letting retailers officially carry and sell it I doubt we’ll see that change.
I hope you get one one day, but that really has nothing to do with this.
It directly relates to the product and the producer.
There are different ways to buy it I bought it year ago using mailforward from US
I’m just hoping once the new screen goes up on ifixit that it’s compatible with older models. That way I don’t have to buy a whole new deck if I want the screen, I can just upgrade my launch model.
It’s officially not compatible. gamers nexus video
I am sure it can be done, as people also solder other memory onto steam decks
Damn, I’ll have to watch that when I get off work. Hopefully there’s a simple fix, like a ribbon cable adapter or something
That would be sweet, hopefully the larger battery as well.
I wouldn’t count on it. They’re different sizes
Yes but they accomplished that by reducing the size of the bezels, like what Nintendo did with the OLED switch. The screen unit itself has the same footprint as the old one
If it has the same footprint why would they need to make the bezels smaller? The screen is 7.4". I think the old one is 7.0". If we can replace the whole front and the glass then we should be able to upgrade.
The glass and the screen itself are one cohesive piece. What I’m trying to say is that the glass on the new screen is the same size as the previous screen, and the glass is how the screen is adhered to the front of the case so as long as there’s nothing crazy going on on the back side and it uses the same connector it should be interchangeable. That’s my hope anyway.
Ahah! I knew the sales were pointing to some sort of new version incoming.
God I want it but all I play lately is Stardew Valley
167h of Stardew on the Deck here so far and probably wouldn’t even play it if Deck didn’t make playing games so comfy.
I’ve seen people get 8-10 hours out of the battery playing Stardew on the standard deck, so you could maybe squeeze up to 15 hours out of it on the new Deck. What more can you ask for?
It’s so nice being able to have mods on the steam deck though. I had stardew valley on my switch, and while I enjoyed it, I missed so many of the quality of life mods. Now I can have my cake and eat it too lol
Sustained brightness is 600 nits, 1000 nits is peak brightness for HDR content. Still an improvement of course.
I’m wondering whether the charging circuitry is largely the same except for the quicker charging to 80 %. I’d love to be able to use some higher-powered USB-C hubs with PD passthrough, where currently a hub using 15 watts leaves 30 watts for the deck, and using a higher wattage charger won’t change that because the Deck only requests 45 watts (15 V @ 3 A). Would be great if the new Deck could do, say, 60 watts (20 V @ 3 A), because leaving just 30 watts to the Deck is right on the edge under full load with an external display, meaning it has to fallback to battery momentarily, which isn’t great.
Another nice thing to have would be a low-power standby/download mode, for which they’d probably have to tweak the hardware a bit. I don’t use my Deck too often (great device, but it only fills specific gaps in my gaming needs), and every time I pick it up it starts downloading quite a few game updates.
The OLED model is tempting, but I don’t use the Deck enough to justify upgrading I think.
A bit sad for these guys who made a display upgrade for the original Deck released a few weeks ago (the 1920x1200 one), as most people who really care about display quality will probably just upgrade to the OLED model instead. The higher resolution seems rather pointless (the Deck doesn’t have enough oompfh to run modern games in this resolution), especially compared to a bigger, brighter, higher refresh rate OLED screen.
Translucent is USA/Canada only. So sad :(
Attention> the $399/256GB is the same old model with no improvement, only cheaper price. Just to be clear.
That’s an excellent point, I updated my summary to show that. Sorry for any confusion.
👍
Wonder if they’ll release the OLED screen as it’s own part so previous owners can upgrade themselves.
I’ve no interest in the third party 1200p screen since I don’t need the hardware to struggle even more more resolution but a 90hz refresh rate would be great
I’ve read it’s a different connector from mobo (?) To screen, so the OLED will not be backwards compatible.
I hope they continue making oem replacement parts for when I need to replace something on my original.
Hmmm. Disappointing.
They’ve seemed rather committed to replaceable parts. I think they’ll keep supporting it. Guess I’ll have to keep hoping a third party higher refresh rate screen comes out sometime. Im sure higher capacity batteries will eventually too
It says 6nm vs 7nm APU on the store page. Is this a new APU?
It’s supposedly considered the same APU according to the different leaks we’ve seen. The 6nm is supposed to increase power efficiency but that’s it.
It’s also potentially slightly faster but never slower. According to Valve anyways.
The speed boost is from the faster RAM, which is a pretty big bottleneck in many cases. Up to 11% faster. In many cases not faster though, just depends on the game and settings.
While it seems that the new startup movie is exclusive to the 1TB OLED model, is that model’s exclusive keyboard theme the same as the prior 512GB Steam Deck (DEX-85) or a new one?
Timeline?
