Steam Deck

New one's here. Impressions after about 30 minutes:

- Takes a little while to get started first time because of a fairly lengthy firmware update.
- Predictably, the screen's really nice. No dead pixels that I've seen, though I haven't run a proper check. First game I tried was Disgaea 7 and not only did it look really nice because of how colourful the game is, but it also just ran at 90fps no problem.
- The default colour space for SDR does overcook colours a bit but if you back off a bit it looks terrific while being more accurate. Note - if you have an OLED display, you don't need to jack up the saturation; an accurate picture with that contrast looks even better and you still get that 'free HDR' look. I'm also really happy with the brightness boost, it's significant and that'll be really useful.
- There's a bit of electronic noise on the headphone jack that wasn't there on the original model. It's not too bad, and I think any kind of outdoor/travelling noise or noise cancelling function on earphones/headphones would defeat it fairly easily.
- Not too sure about the speakers - it sounds like the output's being compressed so you'll hear the game audio duck a bit when you hit the Steam/QAM buttons.
- Very impressed with the HDR output on the internal screen. Lies of P looks terrific and with the frame limit disengaged it gets very close if not hitting 90fps quite a lot.
- Same with the fan noise - even at 15W it's much less intrusive. Combined with the larger battery it's now a TDP I'd use more readily, where previously I'd back off to 11 or 13 if things are too slow. In that sense it really is a performance upgrade.
- Dpad doesn't feel any better; still that weird non-tactile mushy mess that they've used previously. Apparently it's actually possible to hit diagonals on it so we'll see about that later.
- Not having any more joy with wireless network speed but it is getting up to about 70 megabytes a second when transferring over LAN. I'll have to try and diagnose that at some point.
- It really did feel lighter as I got it out of the case. I think the thing they've done is shift the weight about a bit because purely numerically the weight difference isn't much.

I read somewhere else that the OLED screen is lighter than the LCD, so the weight distribution is more toward the back of the device, which feels better in the hands than before.

(Mine arrived this morning so will be getting tested tonight.)

Think I've managed to get hdr working on hitman, at least I think it's hdr where there's blinding light coming through an Italian doorway.

Still loads of judder though, and I've followed other people's suggestions for the settings.

Download speeds seem much better than before, but are still peaking at 80MB/s for me. Would've expected it to saturate my connection, but that's close enough I guess...

First world problems.

512 is fine. Everything's all on the same partition but the install's not that big, you'll get something like 480GB for game installs, and you can install stuff onto the SD card as well, which isn't as slow as you'd think.

Yeah, woth the current Currys price drop (£550) I have been tempted too, if only for easy access to Windows store ganes and GOG/Epic/Origin/Uplay without hurdles. Extra power and VRR screen being a nice bonus. Biggest concerns are battery life and the fact that an SD card isn't safe to use (they fry apparently as next to a hot area) I can deal with windows on touch screen as I got by with a Linx Vision long before my Steam Deck (think slightly lower spec than GPD Win 1 but with bigger screen and removable tablet). I am also concerned still about how much I would use it...

Steam Deck OLED also on radar for bigger battery and nicer screen but as I have a Steam Deck already of conparable spec... (original 512) Resisting at the moment.

What's the point in buying one then??

How easy is it to get non steam games running on the deck?

I have loads of games I think I'm going to want to play as a backlog surf when I pick up a deck in the new year but I'm realising that loads of them have been freebies or really cheap pickups on egs/gog/prime/UBI etc.

I'm not adverse to rebuying some stuff on steam for ease especially since loads of it is stupid cheap but if I don't have to then that would be better obvs

egs, UBI, gog and gamepass in that order if possible.

Only really have burnout paradise on EA that I might've wanted to have a go at

Game pass works on the streaming from the internet mode.

I would say Steam games work much better and more seamlessly. Heroic works pretty well though and doesn't require too much fiddling with.

Nice. Pity you missed out on the Steam sale that ended last week to stock up on games to play, particularly if you don't already have a library full.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is probably the best show-off for the OLED in terms of visuals. It has (good) HDR. It has ray-tracing. It runs at pretty much high settings (with RT on!) at about 40 FPS on the Deck.

Obvs you mentioned Ori.

Doom Eternal is always a good one too I think.

I don't have an OLED, so can't say from experience, but I would expect Hi-Fi Rush would look great on one