Valve surprised fans of the Steam Deck on Thursday with the announcement of the new OLED model. According to Valve, the Steam Deck OLED not only features a new high-dynamic range OLED display, but also a larger battery, faster download speeds, and a bigger fan. Plus, it’s 30 grams lighter than the LCD model due to the OLED screen.
Valve says the HDR OLED display has “more colors, pure blacks, and amazing motion rendition” to improve upon the original LCD display. The upgraded display also draws less power, and that combined with its bigger battery means the Steam Deck OLED should last 30-50% longer than the LCD model. The OLED model also ships with Wifi 6E for increased bandwidth and lower latency. Downloads should be up to three times faster.
Going forward, there will be three Steam Deck models available: 256GB LCD for $399, 512 OLED for $549, and 1TB OLED for $649. Valve is retiring the 64GB and 512GB Steam Deck LCD models, but they are both permanently discounted to $349 and $449, respectively, until they’re out of stock. If you don’t care about an OLED display, those are great deals.
Steam Deck OLED will be available in the US, Canada, European Union, and United Kingdom, as well as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
In addition to the standard OLED models, Valve is also launching a Limited Edition Steam Deck OLED in a unique red colorway. The company says that quantities are highly limited and will only be available in the US and Canada while supplies last.
“Steam Deck Limited Edition is an experiment for our team, and we were only able to make a small quantity,” Valve explained. “That said, we hope this is a successful experiment and customers are excited – if we see there is a large demand for this kind of product, we will definitely continue to explore more colorways in the future.”
If Valve runs out of stock for any new models, it will switch to a reservation queue and customers will receive invitations to purchase in the order that they entered the queue. That said, the company doesn’t foresee supply constraints like the original launch suffered. Additionally, customers can only purchase one Steam Deck OLED per week at launch.
