Surprise in Las Gaunas. You will surely remember that less than two months ago we told you that if you were expecting an evolutionary leap from the Steam Deck, you would have to take it easy, because the arrival of its second generation is not expected for at least two years. Nothing changes in this prediction, at least for now, but until its arrival, Valve decided to surprise us, with the powerful Restore current generation.

So as we can see on their website, Valve just announced a new Steam Deck with an OLED screen and it also delivers other interesting improvements to the original model. Furthermore, there are important movements in the catalog and as a result of them a unloading which translates into the possibility of purchasing some of the initially introduced models at a lower price than they have had so far.

All the news we found as a surprise They come at a particularly opportune time for sales, with Black Friday already active in many stores and of course Christmas is practically around the corner. So let’s go in parts. And to add a little more excitement, they also announced a limited edition of the new top model of the family. Of course, it wasn’t all good news, this model will only go on sale in Canada and the United States.

Steam Deck OLED

This is without a doubt the most important thing of all that Valve announced today. As you may have already deduced from its title, we are talking about the Steam Deck review that we already knew, but in which The LCD screen gives way to a very promising OLED panela technology that, as you already know, provides more than remarkable image quality that works particularly well in delivering brighter colors and deeper blacks.

This new panel also brings some new features. The resolution of models with an LCD screen is preserved, 1280 x 800 pixels, but its size increases to 7.4 inches, compared to 7 in the original. We also see an increase in its refresh rate, which jumps from 60 to 60. 90 hertz and a spectacular development in terms of brightness, as it goes from 400 nits in the version with LCD to 600 nits in SDR mode, which can be increased up to 1000 in HDR mode.

There are no changes in the APU, but there are changes in the RAM used. 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory remains, but it now reaches 6400 MT/s, up from 5500 MT/s of Steam Deck models with an LCD screen. And if you are wondering if there is also news regarding its storage capacity, the truth is that there is, as a new model is added with no less than a terabyte of NVMe SSD storage.

Connectivity is an increasingly important aspect in the gaming world, so Valve has decided to take a step in this direction to improve the experience. So the new Steam Deck OLED is compatible with WiFi 6E, which is a big advantage for cloud gaming. And if you thought that these performance improvements might affect its autonomy, the truth is that Valve must have thought of this too and as a result its battery capacity has increased. 40 to 50 watt hours.

The new OLED Steam Deck will go on sale next year on November 16 at 19:00 (Peninsular time, 18:00 Canary Islands) with the following models and prices:

• Steam Deck OLED 512 GB: 569.00 euros.
• Steam Deck OLED 1 TB: 679.00 euros.

Catalog edit

Hand in hand with these new console models, Valve has gone through the process of retooling their catalog which surprised me somewhat considering their prices. So for starters, all Steam Deck models with LCD screens are seeing a price drop like this:

• Steam Deck LCD panel 64 GB eMMC: drops from 419 to 369 euros.
• Steam Deck LCD panel 256 GB NVMe SSD: drop from 549 to 419 euros.
• Steam Deck LCD panel 512 GB NVMe SSD: drop from 679 to 469 euros.

I’ve been looking at the console’s price drops throughout its history, and while we’ve seen some close value in some cases, such as when it reached a year old, it seems We’re facing the lowest Steam Deck prices yet. And it’s even more striking if we look at the prices of Valve’s refurbished units that went on sale a few months ago, because although the refurbished 64 and 256 models are cheaper than these new prices, the same is not the case with the 512 gigabyte version, whose refurbished price was 539 euros, compared to 469 euros for a new unit with an LCD model, which is offered to date.

And of course, as expected, although not fully, Valve will not be producing more units of two of these three models: the version The 64GB eMMC and 512GB LCD will remain on sale only while supplies lastand when that time comes It will disappear from Valve’s catalog for good.

How’s the catalog?

Well, at this point it’s time for a recap to stick with the “photo” of Valve’s new proposal for its portable console:

• Valve announces OLED Steam Deck with 512GB and 1TB capacities.
• At the same time, they are announcing the discontinuation of the 64 GB and 512 GB LCD models, once stocks are sold out.

So we can conclude that once the warehouse is completed, the catalog will be configured as follows:

• Steam Deck LCD 256 GB NVMe SSD: 419 euros.
• Steam Deck OLED 512GB: €569.00.
• Steam Deck OLED 1 TB: 679.00 euros.

To this we must add that We can temporarily take advantage of offers on discontinued models:

• Steam Deck LCD panel 64 GB eMMC: 369 euros.
• Steam Deck LCD panel 512 GB NVMe SSD: 469 euros.

If in the initial generation Valve marked the difference between the entry model and the higher ones based on the type of storage (eMMC vs. NVMe), we see that in this refresh it removes this difference and begins to segregate based on the type of screen , LCD at the entry level compared to OLED in the two top models.

Regarding the prices, we see it Both the entry-level model and the top-of-the-line model are retained.. The only one experiencing a variation is the middle model, which is experiencing an increase of 20 euros. An increase which, however, is more than justified, as it is reflected in the improvement of the new model and also doubles the storage capacity.