I legitimately feel bad for anyone who bought a Steam Deck right before Valve’s surprise reveal of the new and improved OLED model. The announcement came out of nowhere and the Steam Deck OLED is a better version of the original LCD, at around the same price. So I understand why r/SteamDeck The forum was immediately flooded with new homeowners regretting their life choices. For these people, and for anyone who owns the first hardware, I want to make it perfectly clear: the Steam Deck LCD is one of the best portable PCs on the market.
Valve still thinks it’s pretty good too. The company continues to sell the 256GB LCD version of the Steam Deck at a reduced price of $399, with two OLED models on top. This is the review for people considering Valve’s entry-level handheld and for any original Steam Deck owners who could use a little peace of mind these days. (OK dude).
My review of Steam Deck in February 2022 began with a delusional metaphor: “Steam Deck is what happens when Vita and Wii U get drunk on Linux and make a big baby together.” Almost two years later, I fully maintain this feeling. The Steam Deck is portable and supports multiple input methods, much like the Vita, but it’s so bulky that it never leaves my house, like the old Wii U. It also runs Steam natively, which is a huge boon for gamers who They value ease of use.
The 256GB Steam Deck is powerful enough to run most Steam games, even AAA titles like Elden Ring, Armored Core VI and Cyberpunk 2077. It has a custom 7nm AMD APU, 16GB of fast RAM, a 40Wh battery, and a 7-inch 800p LCD display with a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz. The handheld offers a maximum brightness of 400 nits , which is about the same as the Switch OLED.
The Steam Deck LCD screen works like a champ. Visually stunning games like The Brotherhood of the Cosmic Wheel, Dave the diver and Rollerdrome looks and plays beautifully on the screen. It has its limitations: the blacks aren’t as black as they could be, and the dark backgrounds stand out from the bezels with a gray tint. The Steam Deck LCD’s limited color gamut is noticeable, but it’s not tragic and it’s not even a consideration in the middle of a good game.
In addition to the standard dual analog inputs, the 256GB Steam Deck has a touchscreen, two haptic pads on either side of the screen, and four buttons on the back panel that have a nice, bassy click. I tend to play indie games, which generally range in size between 200MB and 80GB, and I currently have 22 titles installed on my Deck, with 9GB of breathing room. Storage space has not been a major issue.
The heat, on the other hand, has been a problem. The Steam Deck LCD screen generates enough heat that my palms get clammy after about 30 minutes, and I feel like a lot of heat builds up on the grips. Everything gets a little warm while running games, but it never gets unbearably hot or overheated for me. The fan blows hot air persistently from the top of the machine, but not unpleasantly so.
Battery life on the Steam Deck LCD isn’t great, but it’s also not a big deal for a device that stays in my house. Valve says the Steam Deck LCD can last up to eight hours on a single charge, but in practice, the longest runtime I’ve achieved is four and a half hours. Of course, reducing the brightness and refresh rate can help, but honestly, I’ve never had a battery emergency with the Steam Deck LCD – it’s always home, near a charging cable, safe and warm (probably thanks to thermals).
I’ve used several adjectives to describe Steam Deck, including monstrous, massive, strong, well-built and bestial. All of these words are still accurate and I may introduce some new ones today. The Steam Deck LCD screen measures 11.7 inches long, 4.6 inches high, 1.9 inches thick, and weighs 1.5 pounds. For comparison, the Switch Lite and Vita each weigh about half a pound, and the Wii U gamepad weighs a little over 1 pound. My hands are smaller than average (but I’m not the size of a toddler) and the Steam Deck looks and feels strange when I hold it. My palms hurt after just 10 minutes of playing, and even mid-game I regularly look for more comfortable ways to hold it. This also applies to the OLED model, which uses the same chassis and essentially has the same weight.
To counteract the weight of the Steam Deck, I’ve developed a strange habit. I have a variety of stuffed animals (I like claw machines, sue me), and some of them are perfect accessories for the Steam Deck, allowing me to rest the device on my lap without straining my neck. Stuffed Roast Chicken is particularly useful in this regard and is rarely far from the Steam Deck.
There’s another padding-free solution for your Steam Deck neck and sweaty, crampy palms: the docking station. Simply put, it’s brilliant and I love it. With docking station and recent software updates, Valve is leaning toward the home nature of the Steam Deck, allowing players to connect the device to external displays, such as gaming monitors and televisions. On external displays, the Steam Deck LCD supports HDR and VRR, although the device’s display cannot support these features. I’ve mostly used the docking station in the living room, turning my Deck into a revamped Steam Machine, and every game I’ve launched looks beautiful on the larger screen. In docked mode, there is no difference between the OLED and LCD Steam Decks: they have the same performance goals and both can handle external HDR and VRR.
Bluetooth is hit and miss on the Steam Deck LCD screen. In my recent tests, I was able to easily pair an 8bitdo Ultimate Controller and my old Galaxy Buds Plus with the handheld, but I still haven’t been able to connect my new Galaxy Buds2 Pro. This has been an issue with the Steam Deck LCD screen since the first day, so while it’s no longer surprising, it’s still frustrating at times.
The biggest difference between the Steam Deck at launch and today is Steam itself. There are four labels for games that indicate how well they will run on your handheld: Verified, Playable, Not Supported, and Unknown. When the device first landed, only about 10 percent of my Steam library was verified to run on Deck, and it was hard to know what that meant anyway. Today, 30 percent of my library is verified and 74 percent is verified or playable. Verified titles work perfectly on the Steam Deck, and playable games aren’t far away – they often have small optimization requirements that don’t interrupt actual gameplay, such as the need to use the on-screen keyboard. According to a quick search on Steam, there are currently 11,229 verified or playable Steam Deck games. It’s a larger library than any console released to date.
Nowadays, most mainstream games are verified or playable on the Steam Deck upon release (RIP star field and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor). Generally, if a new game supports gamepad input, it tends to translate well to the handheld. Having a robust, integrated game store is huge for people who just want to buy a portable PC and start gaming, and it’s an advantage that Steam Deck specifically has over the rest of the portable market.
The laptop PC segment has exploded in the last two years and there is now a constant flow of new devices from companies like Ayaneo, Lenovo, Ayn and ASUS. The Steam Deck has traditionally been cheaper than the others, and the $399 model offers unbeatable value. At the initial launch of the Steam Deck, Valve offered just 64GB of storage at that price, making the current offering even more attractive. While competitors are closer than ever in price (and at the high end, ahead in performance), a handheld like the Steam Deck LCD still costs around $600.
Its clearest contender is, of course, Steam Deck OLED. I’m not trying to undo all the work I’ve done here, but if you have the extra money, go ahead and get the OLED version. The Steam Deck OLED comes in two versions: 512 GB for $549 and 1 TB for $649. These are fantastic prices, especially considering that the new model features a 7.4-inch OLED display with native HDR, faster frame rates, pure blacks, and a maximum brightness of 1,000 nits. The new model has improved Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, better thermal and weight distribution, longer battery life, and nice orange accents. The OLED version is the same size as the LCD edition and offers no improvements in terms of actual processing power, but it’s simply better inside and out. Just remember: this doesn’t mean the LCD model is garbage.
Compared to the portable device sector as a whole, the Steam Deck LCD offers a fantastic return on investment. It’s easy to use out of the box, offers a variety of input methods, and is cheaper than anything comparable in its category. The main drawbacks are its size and battery life, but if it’s not too big for you and you plan to play at home more often, it’s great hardware.
Two years later, I still use my Steam Deck LCD the same way, as a portable device at home. My Steam Deck travels from the living room to the office to the bedroom and back again throughout the week, just as it did when I first put it in my hands. The main differences are that today their library is much larger and I always carry an appropriately sized stuffed animal.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/steam-deck-lcd-review-2023-still-one-of-the-best-handheld-pcs-140044516.html?src=rss
