Valve announce the Steam Deck OLED with an upgraded screen and longer battery life

rockpapershotgun.com:

Valve love their surprise hardware announcements, and there’s just been a doozy in the Steam Deck OLED. It’s a "definitive" refresh of the existing Steam Deck handheld PC that swaps the underwhelming IPS display for a brighter, more vibrant OLED panel, while making numerous battery life improvements – up to and including a new, more efficient AMD APU – that promise significantly more time away from the mains. It’s not far off either: the Steam Deck OLED’s release date is November 16th, just one week away.

You can read my review right now, though, and lemme tell ya: this thing’s great. The Steam Deck OLED’s display looks fabulous, especially with its newfound HDR support enabled, and some of the game-specific battery life tests I’ve run have shown it can last for potentially hours longer than the original. There are also grippier thumbsticks as standard, and because the new APU isn’t as thirsty, the whole system runs both cooler and quieter. The rest of this article will stick to straight specs and prices, so go have a look at that review afterwards for the full scroop (and watch out later for our interview with some of the Valve devs behind the Steam Deck OLED).

Pricing for the new models is simple in itself: there’s a 512GB version for £479 / $549 and, for the first time on a Steam Deck, a 1TB version, set at £569 / $649. US and Canada denizens can also consider the $679 Steam Deck OLED Special Edition, which comes with translucent bodywork and some extra orange trim.

Compared to previous Steam Deck prices, the 512GB and standard 1TB OLED models appear to be even better value, as the ‘old’ 512GB Deck was also £569 / $649 – though the 512GB OLED no longer gets the anti-glare screen treatment, which both 1TB models do.