Valve likes the idea of an OLED Steam Deck, too, but says it isn't as simple as it sounds
The hardware in Valve's 2021 Steam Deck can run circles around Nintendo's 2017 Nintendo Switch, but there's been one point of comparison where Nintendo's had the upper hand for the last year: the screen. The Switch OLED model debuted just six months before the Steam Deck, and once you go OLED on a TV, phone, or gaming handheld, it's pretty hard to leave those rich colors and deep blacks behind. The Steam Deck has just passed its one year anniversary, and for the whole year I've seen one question about the Deck pop up more than any other: is Valve going to make an OLED model?
The short, polite answer, from Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais(opens in new tab), is that Valve «understands the limitations of the current tech that's in the Deck, in terms of the screen.»
«We also want it to be better. We're looking at all avenues,» he says. But the longer answer is that there's a lot more to swapping out a screen than just… swapping out a screen.
«I think people are looking at things like an incremental version and assume that it's an easy drop-in,» Griffais says. «But in reality, the screen's at the core of the device. Everything is anchored to it. Basically everything is architected around everything when you're talking about a device that small. I think it would be a bigger amount of work than people are assuming it would be. […] I don't think we're discounting anything. But the idea that you could just swap in a new screen and be done—it would need more than that to be doable.»
When Valve was designing the Steam Deck, the flexibility of the LCD panel was actually one of its top priorities—specifically making the backlight be able to go as dim as possible for playing comfortably in low light, and the ability to alter the refresh
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