Valve upgrades Steam Deck with OLED screen, bigger battery, more storage

While the Steam Deck has been the hot ticket for PC gaming for almost two years, there’s no denying that it’s little behind the times on some of its hardware. The 7-inch touchscreen, for example, leaves a lot to be desired — it’s since been bested by competition from companies like Lenovo and Asus. In the first major renovation since the Steam Deck’s launch, you can now order one with a dazzling 7.4-inch OLED screen. The updated model also comes with a bigger battery and more storage.

The Steam Deck OLED (the official moniker of the new version) comes in two flavors, a 512GB model for $549 and a new 1TB capacity for $649. Both of them get an upgraded 50 watt-hour battery with somewhere between three and twelve hours of playtime, highly dependent upon which games you’re playing, of course.

There seem to be a few more subtle changes, like a new 6nm APU setup (possibly helping boost that battery) and Wi-Fi 6E, but the external dimensions remain the same. The screen is ever-so-slightly bigger at 7.4 inches, but has the same 1280×800 resolution. The whole thing is 30 grams lighter than the original model.

If you’re looking for something a little extra, Valve is selling a Limited Edition Steam Deck OLED in “a small quantity.” This 1TB version gets a spiffy semi-transparent black housing and red accents on the thumbsticks, screws, and the air intake and exhaust grilles. It looks, to use a technical term, spiffy, like a grown-up version of a 90s Game Boy Color. This limited edition will cost $649, the same as the non-special 1TB model and will be available to order starting November 16th along with the other OLED models.

For a limited time, the original 64GB and 512GB versions of the Steam Deck (retroactively christened the “Steam Deck LCD”) both get a $50 discount.