this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Steam Deck
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Would anyone recommend an LCD over an OLED model?
Over OLED? Probably not, but LCD is perfectly fine.
Unless you really care about OLED and slightly better battery, then a much cheaper LCD is a good choice.
Oh the OLED doesn’t have any performance boost?
As I understand it, it's the same engine under the hood, you're paying for better screen quality and a slightly longer battery life.
It has slightly different internal and external form factors in ... basically only esoteric ways that only come into play if you are doing certain kinds of physical mods or upgrades to it.
But yeah, the actual internal performance specs are the same, same chip, same shared RAM amount...
I think maybe the battery might have gotten a slight upgrade, either that or the power delivery / management may have gotten a slight upgrade / tweak, but I am not 100% sure about that.
A very minor one, but only in a roundablut way. Valve weren't targeting a performance boost, but a battery increase. They went for a newer generation of their processor with roughly the same processing power and slightly more efficiency. The thing is, because of the added efficiency it can sustain high loads without throttling for longer. Between that and the minute differences in processing power, it happens to have a tiny bit of a performance boost, but it's very very minor.
Not really. You can sometimes see a minor boost in some games, but nothing worth the price difference.
Completely disagree. The OLED is better is almost every way. Just go and look at the long laundry list of significant improvements they made with that model.
Such as (except the screen)?
I'm not going to list them all. But the most important items are significant battery life improvement through both a larger battery and more efficient processor, slight increase in performance due to faster RAM, 90Hz vs. 60, and significantly brighter screen for outdoor use.
And most of these won't make a difference for most people.
With the current promo the OLED is almost twice the price.
A little better screen and battery are nice, but performance is basically the same, it's within an error margin most of the time.
And 90Hz screen doesn't matter that much when 40FPS limit is preferable most of the time to keep the frametimes stable.
Those will make a huge difference for most people...
They are not a little better, they are both a lot better.
That depends entirely on what games you're running. Most of the games I play will easily run at locked 90FPS.
I've owned the first gen Steam Deck since the day it came out. (LCD)
No problems, greatly enjoy it.
I wouldn't say I recommend it over the OLED, but they both work great. My OG LCD still holding up strong, but the OLED is definitely an improvement in both screen quality and battery.
I mean, I am an OLED Deck owner, and at this price point, if I didn't already have my OLED Deck?
This is a fucking steal at this price, compare it to non OLED laptops of similar specs/capabilities, then just tack on the price of like a portable membrane keyboard or something.
Yeah sorry, didn't intend to discourage anyone from the deal - it's great hardware at an incredible price. If you're indifferent on the screen or it's not applicable to your use, you know who you are and should jump on it. If you can't reasonably swing the dollars for OLED, you should also jump on it.
I still wouldn't recommend LCD over the OLED, it's undeniably the better configuration for handheld gaming.
Oh no need to apologize, I too very much prefer the OLED for my own most common use cases...
... but yeah, just wanted to point out that if you maybe want a pretty rock solid mobile gaming device ma bob that is also a laptop when you plug K+M into it, maybe also your existing desktop mon if you have one...
$320 bucks is a fucking steal, if you are maybe, price concscious, in these uh, economic collapse times, yeah, dont go for the premium model, black out your windows and play under the bedsheet like the good ole days rofl!
In a specific use case: absolutely. If you want to dock it a large percentage of the time and use it as a "PC games console," plugged into power and hooked up to your TV / projector / monitor / whatever:
If you're that person, you should definitely go for it. And even if you find yourself playing handheld more than you thought you would, it's still not a big deal.
Many people don't need an oled. Like casual players or people with it hooked to the tv most of the time.
For the price? Yeah absolutely. I got mine really discounted and it holds up, my partner has an oled which looks great and I like the larger screen, but not sure if $300 more is worth it for everyone. You can get a solid case & screen protector, battery bank and upgrade the ssd for nearly that.
The two main advantages of the OLED deck are a drastically better screen, and much better battery life in demanding titles.
Games that max out the Deck's power draw (Cyberpunk, Bladur's Gate, etc) will typically get about 1:30 of battery life on the LCD deck, and 2:30 on the OLED deck, which is a pretty huge increase. It's less of an issue for less demanding games, and you can always get a high output battery pack instead.
I really appreciate the time frames on this. That’s really good to know. I mostly game sitting within reach of a charger, so it wouldn’t be a big deal for me. I think I’ll go for the Steam Deck LCD once I go for it.
I had both and I find the OLED massively overhyped.
I have an LCD Steam Deck which I got used for around 300$ since I already have a Ps5 and the Deck was my first time trying pc gaming.
Because of how everyone was praising the OLED, I thought the screen would be bad, but it is awesome to my eyes.
The battery management is the annoying part of an handheld, but you also have it, maybe less, with the OLED.
If the prices were the same, I don’t see why someone wouldn’t get an OLED model, but it ain’t the case and I wasn’t be ready to pay more than 300$, so an used LCD was perfect.