1 full week now into having my OLED LD. Previously sold my LCD.
Assuming one buys a Steam Deck because of daily responsibilities and life alone. Then consider the total time you would spend on the deck. After a long day of work. The few hours left after kids asleep. The few hours after partners content.
You deserve the superior OLED screen considering this is likely a full time substitute of a PS5/PC
Gaming experience and speed is far superior and noticeable than LCD
Heat and fan noise is reduced compared to LCD
Battery is superior and so important considering we primarily bought this for the purpose of mobility.
We’re all going to die one day.
You deserve the OLED! Don’t buy LCD as first timer. LCD remnants, seriously consider it!
Not saying the OLED probably isn’t great. I’m sure it is. Congratulations to the OP on enjoying their new OLED Deck!
I’m a “first-timer”. I’ve had my deck for like 2-3 months. I got the LCD on the last big sale they had before announcing the OLED. I’ll admit that it stung at first when the thing was anounced - it took months of saving and budgeting to make the deck happen at all for me… so it was sort of dirty move there, Valve… but I understand liquidation and marketing…so forgiven I guess… ANYWAY -
In hindsight, I don’t feel like I NEED an OLED when it’s all said and done.
I do play daily, but while I do play some newer games I’m mostly tackling my backlog or running rounds in a fighting game like Killer Instinct, MvC3 or Injustice 2. Nothing that needs an absurd amount of power or graphical output.
Screen/Graphics - As I said I’m digging into older games right now, catching up on an absurd (200+ game) backlog (and honestly, I fell into an emulation pit for about two weeks early on). Older games on an OLED don’t strike me as a huge deal… and the newer ones that I am playing I’m not super bent to not have a slightly higher resolution on. The larger screen size would be appreciated, but my last emulation handheld was a Retroid Pocket^(2). The LCD Deck is a deity in comparison.
Fan Noise - I have learned when playing more demanding games how to tweak the settings for them to optimize the experience and the fan never really has been an issue since then, nor is overheating a thing I really run into. It may not be running max settings for every game every time but like I said before, I don’t NEED that, personally.
Storage & Processor Speed - This is the ONE area that I’m a bit sore on with the OLED. As I said I have a huge backlog, no amount of storage is too much as far as I’m concerned. I have a 1tb micro SD card and I bought the 512 model originally. The thought of having almost an additional 500gb is HUGE for me, especially with games like BG3 and MK11 rolling in at over 100gb each. That said - I know I can upgrade my SDD and I probably will after my warranty expires… it would just be awesome to have it out of the box at 1TB. Also the processor speed would always be welcomed. My deck isn’t slow by my summation but there are some times when I’m downloading in the background that a game cinematic will hiccup or freeze - it only happens when I’m doing multiple processes at a time though… so I could tweak settings around that as well. Just nice to know there’s an option where that probably doesn’t happen.
All that said if the OLED had launched at the same time as that sale I would’ve dipped for the OLED no questions asked. I’m sure it’s amazing, but also it doesn’t have to be a thing that people feel like they’re totally missing out on, either. In the current market, sure go for the OLED especially if there’s no real price discrepancy… but if you’re like me and you got the LCD right before OLED dropped… it’s not the end of the world.