The Steam Deck OLED improves much more than its screen

polygon.com:

In early 2022, Valve released my favorite video game console. But even I had some gripes. With the Steam Deck, I could — for the first time — play the bulk of my sprawling collection of video games wherever I’d like. But I tended to bundle it with a huge portable power supply. I also couldn’t quite shirk how much better games looked on our family’s OLED TV.

And yet, for me, an adult with limited time to play video games alone in a quiet room, nothing could beat the Steam Deck’s freedom. Barring the occasional diversion, Valve’s handheld PC served as my preferred gaming option ever since I published our review. Then, last week, the Steam Deck OLED arrived. It’s as if the Steam Deck team collected a laundry list of complaints about the original, then responded to all of them one by one.

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It appears, at first glance, that Valve cribbed Nintendo’s playbook with the Switch OLED, which upgraded the screen but not its guts. In terms of raw power, the Steam Deck OLED is identical to the original Steam Deck. Valve says this synchronicity is in part to continue to provide developers a single goal when optimizing their games — though it promises the Steam Deck 2 (which the company hopes to release in two to three years) will have a generational power leap.

For those who haven’t tried a Steam Deck, though, I wouldn’t