This should just be an open discussion. I don’t want to bash the OLED Steam Deck.

Don’t get me wrong. OLED in general is a nice display type for gaming. Low responce time, true blacks and vivid colors. I own several OLED displays among my gaming devices including a Switch OLED, a Alienware ultawide monitor and a LG OLED TV. But after playing with the OLED deck for couple days I’m underwhelmed. Let me explain why.

Shortly after the Steam Deck OLED was announced I watched close to all the reviews and for me it was the perfect Steam Deck I ever could have wished for (besides a more powerful SoC). I sold my LCD Deck and preordered the OLED one right at launch.

When it arrived I threw in my 512 SD card I had for my old Steam Deck and installed everything I used before like Battlenet, Emudeck and a couple of games. After that I spent over 20 hours playing with it and I just don’t feel it.

The display: Black is black. The contrast of OLED is unmatched by all other display types (besides Micro LED) and you also can feel the higher refresh rate in games that can reach the 90Hz. But overall the display looks a little fuzzy and not as crisp as the LCD. Mura is only a minor problem on my unit but it’s very faintly still there. (Samsung OLED- 512GB)

HDR: When HDR works it’s great. But for many games it’s really washed out. Also for the screensize HDR really doesn’t pop when it actually works. I normally play games with HDR on my other bigger displays and it just feels better there. Just my personal opinion and maybe I’m just used to bigger OLED panels.

Quality issues: We all have seen multiple posts of green tints, Mura or dead pixels. And while many got a decent OLED panel others are not. And such a screen lottery is just not fun. Especially for cases where you got a decent one, may have to RMA it down the line just to enter the screen lottery once again.

Burn in: I already can see the comments like “Burn in doesn’t happen while gaming” and “Have you seen the Switch OLED from Wulf Den?”. First of all his Switch showed early signs of Burn In way earlier. Also it always depends on the usecase. I love to play retro games on my Steam Deck and most of them in their intended aspect ratio. And here screen uniformity can happen easily. And for burn in in general I haven’t seen things like pixel shift or other preventive methods.

I know Valve would replace my deck If I would find burn in but that would only enter me again into the screen lottery to revieve a decent OLED panel. I just hope Valve can somehow use Micro LED for their next Steam Deck.

Buttons: I really love the new sticks and they really feel like an improvement over the older ones. But the X,Y,A,B bittons sadly not. They somehow feel really mushy on my OLED deck.

All in all. The little improvements they did are awesome but some of them are just underwhelming or not as great as they were praised for by countless reviewers. I may return mine and maybe get either a cheaper LCD Steam Deck which was pretty similar for my overall play experience or look out for something else. I also dislike feeling like a Beta tester after each update hoping they have fixed something or that they haven’t broken something else.

What are your opinions so far? Would love to hear some more down to earth opinions rather than just hype.