Steam Deck OLED Australia review

I love my Steam Deck 512GB LCD. I love it so much I was willing to impatiently grey import one in 2023, lack of warranty be damned. Since then, I’ve put in hundreds of hours of time playing dozens of optimised games. Then along came the Steam Deck OLED, finally available in Australia without having to worry about international chargers or warranty woes. By Valve’s admission, the Steam Deck OLED isn’t a sequel to the popular Steam Deck LCD, but it is a refinement of the original handheld that has plenty to write home about.

Valve was kind enough to send me an OLED model to review now that the Steam Deck is officially available Down Under.

Nowadays, there are three Steam Deck models for sale from Valve. You can nab an entry-level Steam Deck 256GB LCD model for a very tidy $649. The leap to tweaked performance on an OLED screen starts at $899 for 512GB of internal storage. The range then maxes out with the $1,049 model that comes with 1TB of storage and an anti-glare etched screen. Thankfully, all Steam Deck models ship with a carry case these days, but you will still have to fork out extra for a dock and any other peripherals you may want to connect.

Compared to the market, the Nintendo Switch OLED is still cheaper at $539, but that doesn’t have as many games or as much versatility as the Steam Deck. Word is the Steam Deck does a great job of emulating, too, so there are even more potential games to play. The real competition for full-fledged gaming handhelds comes from pricier contenders. Expect to pay at least $999 for the MSI Claw, $1,299 for the Asus ROG Ally, $1,499 for the Lenovo Legion Go, or $1,599 for the Asus ROG Ally X.

The massive edge that every Steam Deck has over other gaming handheld PCs is SteamOS. Windows 11 isn’t optimised for handhelds and it’s a nightmare to control in desktop mode without a touchpad. As with the Steam Deck LCD, the dual front touchpads return for the Steam Deck OLED.

In fact, the at-a-glance design of the Steam Deck OLED is so identical to its LCD predecessor that the main way I can tell the old and new versions apart is by looking at the orange power button on the OLED. I recently chatted to two Valve Steam Deck engineers, and they confirmed that the OLED version is what they wish they could’ve launched originally, so the lack of a design overhaul makes sense.

Effectively, you’re still working with a generously sized 800p display, two joysticks, one D-pad, two dedicated Steam Deck buttons, as well as start, select, and four face buttons on the front. On the top and back is where you’ll find bumpers and triggers, the USB-C charging port, a 3.5mm audio jack next to volume up and down buttons, plus four programmable macro buttons on the back. The Micro SD card slot is still underneath, too.

What’s changed outside of the screen, which is obvious once you turn it on, is the innards. Namely, better battery capacity, faster RAM, speedier WiFi (a welcome change for Steam network transfers), and more performance potential thanks to the same chip on a smaller die. Practically speaking, I noticed the slightly zippier and smoother menu performance during setup and everyday menu navigation, helped along by the 90Hz screen (vs the 60Hz on the original Steam Deck).

It’s more evolution than revolution, so it’s not worth rushing out to upgrade from a Steam Deck LCD just yet. That said, if you play a lot of Steam Deck, you’ll likely appreciate the little improvements. Overall, SteamOS on the Steam Deck is akin to the user-friendliness of the Nintendo Switch operating system, which makes it a great starting point for any console devotee looking to branch out into the versatile world of handheld PCs.

There’s no going back to my Steam Deck LCD after playing with the Steam Deck OLED. I’m a sucker for OLED screens and, in recent years, I’ve upgraded my TV, Nintendo Switch and main computer monitor to OLED. Sure, the old fears of permanent burn-in persist, but modern OLED technology has much better ways of dealing with that.

Besides, on handhelds, you’d be doing well to have a static image on screen for dozens of hours to even worry about that. Initially, I was miffed that Valve didn’t offer a straightforward way to transfer my games and, more importantly, my desktop tweaks from Steam Deck LCD to OLED. But I treated it as an opportunity to start over and get rid of some of the bloat that’d built up on my Steam Deck OLED. In fairness, Steam network transfer is the gift that keeps on giving, particularly when I’m reviewing gaming products, as I can easily transfer titles between the half-dozen devices I seem to have on rotation.

I didn’t encounter any negative gaming examples in my dozens of hours of testing, even if I didn’t push too far into AAA territory. I typically use external sites (or just good ol’ plugins) to determine if a game is playable before I waste my time, and with thousands of verified games—including popular titles like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and God of War Ragnarök—the biggest challenge is the old-school Netflix-like problem of having too much choice.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor continues to be my go-to game, and while performance has suffered in recent updates on the Steam Deck LCD, I was getting at least 40fps in some of the most demanding areas on the highest difficulty (where enemies are basically all over the screen) on the OLED. Older point-and-click adventure games like Day of the Tentacle Remastered were not only very playable with a choice of joystick, touchpad or touchscreen inputs, they also reaped double-figure battery life. Go even older with titles like The Curse of Monkey Island with its stylised low-impact graphics, and you’re looking at 12+ hours of gameplay, which is a great companion for a long-haul trip.

Speaking of stylised graphics, any game with those visuals looks particularly gorgeous, like Hades, Hades II or the Ori games. I also enjoyed hours of smooth, responsive gameplay in Windblown, the latest roguelite addiction from the creators of Dead Cells (which also looks and plays great on Steam Deck OLED). I spent a couple of hours with Red Dead Redemption and was impressed with how I got around 50–60fps in a very playable game that looks great with HDR, plus offers about 2.5 hours of battery life. The better optimised and/or less demanding the game, the better the overall battery life, but a minimum of around two hours for the most demanding games is comparatively decent. You can also go from 0% to 80% battery in just over an hour of charging (before the wattage lowers)

When I reviewed the Steam Deck LCD last year, I enjoyed going down rabbit holes to discover solutions for expanding the versatility of SteamOS. Some of that was rediscovering beloved childhood games via emulation. But most of it was about finding a simplified way to get non-Steam games running on the Steam Deck, ideally in a way that makes them show up in the main interface without having to rely on desktop mode.

Like its Windows-based peers, the Steam Deck also has a desktop mode, but it’s not the first port of call. Every time you restart the Steam Deck, you’ll be in Game Mode, which is a very user-friendly place to find new games, browse your library, and get to the business of gaming. Desktop mode is where you can install a bunch of programs or add-ons that make the Steam Deck even better.

There are little things, like handy add-ons that offer Steam Deck compatibility scores from external websites, a highlight for free games, or game lengths via How Long to Beat. More recently, I found one that lets me add different digital platforms and their respective games from within the main interface, eliminating the extra busywork of configuring and tweaking those in the Steam desktop mode before jumping back to Game Mode.

Valve is improving SteamOS, too, which is a big help (most recently with the addition of Steam Family Library), but the community continues to not just remove pain points, but streamline older systems into newer, more convenient forms. I highly recommend using Steam Link on a separate PC for easier navigation in Steam Deck’s desktop mode, but the touchpad controls and joystick-controlled keyboard are easy enough to use without workarounds.

Outside of Steam Link, you may also want to get a Steam Deck dock. There’s an official Valve offering, but the 5-in-1 JSAUX one I bought does the trick for more than just the Steam Deck, offering a way for more USB ports, faster Ethernet-based file transfers, and an HDMI cable if you want to connect to an external monitor. At the end of the day, thanks to the popularity of the Steam Deck, if you’ve encountered a hurdle, the chances are your solution is a Google search away.

While the Asus ROG Ally X has bragging rights to the most powerful handheld gaming PC, it’s also $550 more than the top-of-the-line Steam Deck OLED model. Yes, the Steam Deck is built to play Steam games, but it’s easier than ever to play non-Steam games. You can even dual-boot into Windows if you like. Unless you already imported a Steam Deck, if you’re in the market for a Steam Deck, the OLED is the best way to play an ever-growing list of supported games that already measure in the tens of thousands (and grow every week).