How would you rate the OLED deck? Did you keep your LCD deck? Have you noticed any of the smaller improvements like a more responsive touch screen? Has the battery life improvement been noticable?
I bought a 512GB LCD on release and barely used it, maybe 50h at most. I just found the fan to be really annoying. Once the OLED was announced and reviewers mentioned it was much quieter, I bought it on a whim and sold my old Deck to a friend for cheap.
The fan noise is massively improved, I pretty much don’t hear it ever. I’m actually using the Deck now, probably already more than I ever did old Deck, and will look at the performance for games on it, before I buy something.
So, even though I’ve had a Deck since launch, I’m still pretty new to it, and can’t say too many other things about the differences. It was still worth it for me.
Not that it does you much good now, but you might’ve had a bad fan. My unit is a preorder one, and the fan wasn’t broken, but it was just… Noticable, when it was on. It wasn’t enough for me to say it was broken or anything, but I could just tell when it was running, especially at full speed.
It didn’t bother me, because I was like wow this game is really pushing the Deck hard, I can really hear the fan. Etc etc.
Well after a few months of hard use the fan developed a click, it was a bad bearing or something. You could make it go away by tapping it.
Anywho to make a long story short, after getting a replacement that was DOA, and then getting a second replacement. The new fan was noticeably quiet. So quiet that I thought I had another DOA. But no, it was working perfectly. I just didn’t realize how bad the original fan was.
So now I have a very quiet Deck, and I’m quite happy about it 😁
Maybe, back then I read that there are two fan models going around and one is better than the other, so who knows. Or how putting a bit of pressure on a certain spot could help, or things like that. I was toying with the idea of ordering a replacement, when the iFixit stuff was announced, but never did it and forgot about it.
So far my friend is mostly emulating older handhelds, so it doesn’t get too hot in the first place, and even if it gets louder it doesn’t seem to bother him for now.
I’d say it’s a mixed bag. The screen is great and battery life is better.
But I have serious problems with wifi just not working. I have to use a hub that has physical ethernet. Many USB-C devices have problems too. Seems like the connector is unable to provide power. It can only receive it.
I’m on the SteamOS beta train in the desperate hopes of getting a fix for these problems quickly but without the added problems of the preview builds.
The screen is way better particularly the 90hz upgrade, playing at 90 FPS is so much smoother than 60, since I mostly play indies and old games on the deck I hit that frame rate all the time. Also I used to love my Vita and Switch because of the Oled screen. I now can play my Vita and Switch games on a 7+ inches oled display with proper controls, plus all my pc games. The brightness increases makes playing games on the couch on plain day light feasible, previously I had to turn the blinds in order to properly enjoy a game. That’s no longer the case.
The battery upgrade is very nice, specially for more demanding games . I usually only play lighter games on a handheld as opposed to AAA and rarely play more than 2-3 hours per session so the battery has always been fine for me, however when playing games like Resident Evil the battery lasted about 2 hours, now it last 3.5 hours, enough for a full gaming session. Games like Hardcore mecha get over 10 hours which mean i could take the Deck on a Weekend trip and forget about charging it.
The sticks feel way better too, not as good as the PS4 controller, the middle part is still a little slippery but close enough.
All that said the games you will play are as as much fun in the Oled model than in the regular one. I sold my LCD Deck so the upgrade have been relatively cheap but if you have to buy a new one and find a sweet deal on an LCD model don’t hesitate, you will be able to upgrade to the Deck 2 in 18-24 months.
I got my original about a year after orders opened up and loved it. But I never realized the differences between the small versions of the deck. Mine was ordered on the day of release so the OLED version has nicer, more tactile buttons than the OG one. THe extra battery and bigger better screen is a huge plus as well. I love it. And I will with out a doubt order a next gen one as well.
If I hadn’t resold my original deck (to a friend, gave him a good price) an upgrade probably wouldn’t have been worth it for me personally. Although I’ve been using mine in handheld more often these days, OLED doesn’t do a ton for me and I don’t notice the weight difference some people have mentioned. However! The battery life is better, I feel like the touchpads haptics seem more prominent(?), and bluetooth-to-wake is a wonderful feature (highly recommend an extra dualsense if you’re a docked user).
