I just think it looks ugly, TBH. YouTube’s implementation isn’t the worst I’ve seen, like sometimes on the news they show vertical phone video and fill the screen with something similar but with less of a blur and it’s really distracting. YouTube’s isn’t as bad, but I just don’t think it looks good. Glad there’s an option though as clearly some people do!
I’d do a 40 or 45 FPS target for most games. Still looks good, more likely to get a steady framerate instead of jumping up and down, and easier on the battery than trying to push as many frames as possible all the time.
So are we calling the OLED Steam Deck 1 Episode 1? Or Steam Deck Opposing Force?
I have a PC but I love my Deck. I do travel a decent amount, visiting my wife’s family is reasonably common, so I love it for that, but it’s also great at home. I play in bed quite a bit, and even more demanding games that don’t run as well as I’d like on the Deck, I can stream from the PC. As others have mentioned, the (mostly) non-game-breaking sleep feature is brilliant for enabling short sessions, there’s definitely times when I play something on my Deck where, if I didn’t have it, I’d never have gone up to my desk and fired up the PC, I’d have just doomscrolled on my phone for a bit.
Have you checked ParcelForce tracking? Mine was picked up by GLS on the 22nd, got to Parcelforce early in the morning of the 25th, delievered 27th. GLS did update after ParcelForce got it, but it took a while.
I wouldn’t trust it at the moment, no. It may improve as they get away from the launch rush and Black Friday, but on the other hand we’ve got Christmas coming up so it could even get worse.
I ordered mine on launch day while it still said 3-5 business days, and it took 7 (11 days total). And some people still seemed to be stuck waiting for theirs to dispatch when I got mine. So expect it to take at least a few days longer than estimated.
Run through Aperture Desk Job or just the controls test in settings to make sure all the inputs are working correctly.
I always pause the game, then sleep. Occasional audio issues, but mostly those have been when I forgot to pause, and once or twice I’ve had bigger issues where I had to restart the Deck. But those are very infrequent and haven’t happened at all for ages so might have been resolved with a software update at some point.
64GB and 512GB LCD will be as long as stocks last, presumably along with refurbished units of the same. How long that will be is impossible to predict without more info on what sort of stocks they have and how many are being bought.
256GB will continue to be available for the foreseeable future as it’s still in active production as the base model. That £349/$399 price point seems to be something Valve values. If over the next, say, year or so, they can get the price down on the OLED, I wouldn’t be surprised if before the next holiday season they do another, smaller refresh of the lineup, maybe bringing OLED to the base models and bumping the storage again.
Any 1TB buyers have a shipping status update? So far all the ones I’ve seen have been 512GB, so I’m hoping they’re doing those first and I might still have a shot of my 1TB being in the first batch!
One guy posted saying it had progressed to ‘Picked up by carrier’, but is not answering questions and the account seems to be inaccessible, so not sure if it’s real or a troll.
They said a few days ago that they’d be shipping 1-3 days after ordering. Presumably that only applies to those who got in before the shipping estimate went up, but might mean we start to see people getting theirs shipped this evening/tomorrow morning depending on region.
No idea but even if it doesn’t I’m going to replay it - replayed Blind Forest on my OG Deck and that was IIRC my third time through that game, I’ve only played Will of the Wisps once and I want to see that HDR OLED goodness!
Yep, I’ve loaded up my Steam Wallet with cards I got at an 8% discount via work benefits.
I don’t understand what you’re asking…
The Steam Deck is brilliant and the OLED model is even better. It’ll be most likely a couple of years before a true next-gen.
It is not, however, without its limitations. There are newer games that don’t run well on it, and with devs focusing more on the current-gen consoles, we’re definitely going to see more such games in future. Some of the competitors do a bit better in this regard, but they all have their own sets of trade-offs.
So you’re going to need to evaluate what exactly you want from a handheld, why you waited this long, and how much longer you’re happy to wait.
FWIW,I loved mine for the time I had it, and I will be ordering the OLED day one (stocks permitting). The only reason I don’t still have my original Deck is because I sold it to help finance the upgrade.
Yep it definitely seems to take at least one step back for every step forward. Most recently I’ve been annoyed by it deciding that ‘grams and cups are not compatible’ is a suitable answer when I ask for a conversion - for a specific ingredient. I get that they’re not directly comparable but they are if you know the material, and Siri used to be able to do that! Not for everything, but for a lot of common ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, oil, etc. I used that all the time when cooking from recipes that use volumes, it was really handy and it’s so annoying that it doesn’t work anymore.
I kind of doubt we’ll get full PS5-level power in a handheld in any reasonable timeframe, but what’s more likely is something like the power needed to run PS5-level games at the Deck’s resolution. The Deck already has the same CPU and GPU architecture as the current consoles, just smaller and with lower power budget, so a couple of generations of chip advancements should hopefully give enough of a boost to come into the ballpark.
If that’s really all you use it for, I personally wouldn’t. But I use my Deck a lot more than just when travelling. I have a decently powerful PC - nothing range-topping, but 5900X + 3070, so no slouch either. But I use it a lot less since I got my Deck, it’s just so convenient for playing on the couch, in bed, or wherever I happen to be. I have an older LCD TV and decent but unremarkable IPS screens for my PC, so the OLED Deck will be by far the prettiest display I’ll have for gaming - I suspect I’ll be streaming from my PC more often where I might have played on it directly before.
In my case the Deck (OLED) has one major advantage over my PC besides the portability - its screen. My PC screen is a perfectly competent 1440p panel with decent colours, but it’s also a 60Hz IPS. Some games the power of the PC (5900X, 3070) is going to make games look better on there, others the Deck’s OLED is going to give it the win. Or there’s always streaming to get both!