Valve Software announced the Steam Deck today. This is a handheld gaming PC comparable in power to a PS4. Shipping OS is Arch Linux but it can be wiped and be replaced with a different OS if you wanted to. Reservations to pre-order start tomorrow, Friday. I think I will try and snag one. Valve is being smart about it, only accounts which have a purchase history before June 2021 and are willing to pony up a refundable reservation fee can pre-order one during the first 48 hours. This will completely defeat bot scalpers. I posted this here because even though only IGN and a few others have seen it in person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLtiRGTZvGM , the anti-glare etched glass for the premium model is of interest to me and might be good. We'll find out later! Edit: And this thing will probably have custom video drivers too which will be interesting.

Yeah this will be interesting. Also apparently Nvidia are working with ARM processors now too. So hopefully different driver / software mashups might help some of us out.

Has anyone received a Steam Deck yet? Curious to hear an impression of the display.

Nobody here has received it yet.. but Linus from techtips said that the screen is 68% sRGB. So, better than the first Switch displays, but not at all comparable to the OLED Switch display. People have complained about fan noise whine which will get better at an unknown point in time, whether that is with using Win 11 instead which has more sensor support, or Linux getting more support for the sensors so the fans can control the ramp. I have an old NUC as my main PC, and I do hear the fans ramp-up from several feet away with some sites, etc. so I imagine it'll be the same with the deck.

I had a Steam Deck (anti-glare screen) for a couple of days and unfortunately had the same eyestrain issues I have with my other LED devices (iPhone/iPad/LED TV). My main issue is a burning sensation that kicks in after a few minutes of usage, luckily I don't have any other symptoms even though this is already quite annoying.

eyepainsilverberry All LED devices? Dang. What devices are usable for you currently? I'm hoping the steam deck works for me even though the battery life won't be great.

Clokwork Yeah, all LED devices unfortunately. I am using an old Apple Cinema Display, which has a CCFL backlight, and I can look at it for hours and hours without problems. The Sony LED TV is also tolerable, the eyestrain is not as bad, I guess because I sit farther away from it.

eyepainsilverberry sounds like a spectrum issue. The Sony TV might have, at least partly, a Quantum dot backlight ("Triluminos"). I, too, can't really use White LED (only if the brightness can be regulated down to extremely low levels like let's say < 10 cd/m²), and the spectra I seem to tolerate is AMOLED and "Quantum Dot" (technology varies). Provided there is no flicker or only very minor flicker, and also not what we suspect is temporal dithering. It is difficult to find devices which have all 3 of those factors right.

I can't watch any OLED television. I have not tried Samsung's latest iteration which isn't fully relying on white light like the LG OLED panels, but the quantum dot implementation means a much brighter image which is part of the problem for me. The rabbit manufacturers are chasing is brightness to meet some of the HDR standards. The last thing I want is a super bright panel. Yay UST projectors.

KM I had an LG OLED TV and an iPhone 12 (with OLED screen) once and my symptoms were terrible. Is there a difference between AMOLED and OLED? The Sony TV is an X900H and it doesn't use Quantum Dots apparently. Anyway, this is kind of off-topic. Clokwork I also turned off HDR on the Sony TV and reduced the brightness as much as possible. Even without symptoms, I don't get the appeal of HDR and super high brightness levels.

eyepainsilverberry yes, there is a difference: Today's OLED TVs typically use White OLED. I have the X800G, I think. Setting the brightness too low on this TV is a bad idea if you're sensitive to flicker. My advice is to use Game Mode and brightness 5+ (with brightness sensor disabled) or brightness 35+ (with brightness sensor enabled). There are also other settings to take care of which are found in one of the TV threads I posted in. The Steam Deck's usability might depend a lot on its settings, too. You can't change the spectrum, but there might be a setting that has the least amount of flicker and temporal dithering. You can check a display or lighting for its spectrum with a cheap handheld spectrometer. I got mine from eBay for $7 or so. My experience so far is that if the spectrum has thin distinct lines, then, in terms of brightness issues, it is potentially much better than White LED (which shows a rather continuous rainbow spectrum). AMOLED, Quantum Dot, CCFL, they all have those thin lines in common.

Steam Deck

hayder1983

artdyl I have no eye strain with my steam deck. I have the 256GB with glossy display.

artdyl

hayder1983 Just curious, what devices is usable for you and what is not, I mean laptops, phones, TV's etc?

hayder1983

artdyl good devices:
mate 10 pro, my NON-LED Samsung syncmaster s2494hm, Amazon fire Tablett 2016, iPhone x, steam deck.

My work laptop screen for some reason is usable too but gives me very mild pain. Still usable. HP Laptop from the year.

But there are a lot of monitor screens i cant use. Mostly nausea but some give me hammering pain in my eye. Eizo, benq, dell, iiyama, AOC, MSI, LG, doesnt matter, nothing new works for me, tested 20+ new screens.

My TV is moderate pain. I can only watch TV for 3 hours before i go to bed, otherwise my eyes feel super dry. Normal LG ips TV with 120hz pwm.

Sunspark

Just a note.

Game mode uses a Wayland compositor named gamescope which uses the digital rendering manager directly so it can access hardware KMS planes, etc. It doesn't sit inside another compositor.

Desktop mode is x.org (X11) using KDE's compositor kwin.

My observation is that game mode works pretty good both on the internal screen as well as external screen.

Desktop mode, not so much. Sucks. I find it much more straining on the external screen compared to Windows (and especially my other PC). It was better in version 3.3 of steamos, but got worse in 3.4. The converse is true for game mode and I actually found some games better in desktop mode in 3.3, but probably not now.

I have also tried the Windows drivers. They are so-so, but I don't care for them. Will probably be better later though.

3.5 of the OS will have a new kernel, more mesa updates, etc. Will be interesting to see how it changes over time. I don't think Windows support will be touched much this year. Maybe next year.

machala

Sunspark

You seem to be happy with the Deck's picture even on the built-in screen, right? Do you think you could do me a favor? Do you have a phone (or a camera) that can record slow motion videos? Could you make a recording of the steam UI as shiwn on the Decks 7" screen in slow motion and see if there are slightly darker lines going from left to right? You should have your Deck screen brightness set to max to have better chances of spotting it. Many thanks!

@ludwig I saw in another thread that you too have the Deck. Could I please kindly ask you to do the same? Thanks!

Sunspark

You're asking to see PWM lines.. but at max brightness that's when they're least visible.. One guy did measure it with a radex lupin, and at max it was at 8.5% or so.

Another person made this comment: "I tested a pwm flicker meter on screens (radex lupin) and used it on the screen of the Steam deck, I can inform you about the quality of the screen in terms of its level of protection or how tiring it is for the eyes. To summarize, to measure the flicker the device uses a measure from 1 to 100%, between 1-5% is ideal and means that the level of flicker is so low that it does not tire the eyes and protects them during long gaming sessions. Between 5 and 15% is still a pretty decent flicker, but more than 15 and especially from 30 a screen starts to be annoying for the eyes. I tested all brightnesses and it gave me 5% flicker in all but 30% brightness which already goes up to almost 10% flicker and below 10% brightness the flicker goes up to almost 30%. In short, if you use the Steam deck above 30% brightness and especially above 10%, it will tire your eyes very little and will not give you a headache. It occurs to me that maybe my screen is like this because it is the 512 GB if yours is the 64 GB or that yours is defective."

To be honest, I haven't used it much handheld.. it's almost always docked to my monitor (easier to see a larger screen, and it's lighter to hold a controller than an entire system). I did put in about 30 hours handheld tho.

machala

Sunspark

Hi, I am not so sure it is PWM. My phone is able to spot it the most at max brightness and the flicker is tied to refresh rate you set (I am sure of this), which PWM as a backlight flicker has no reason to be.

Do you think you could check for me if you spot those lines? If your camera cannot show the flicker at 60 hz, please try to change to 40 hz and theoretically you should be able to see that then by just pointing your phone at the screen (please be advised the refresh rate setting only applies to games, steam user interface is always 60hz, 60 fps). If there's any chance to upload the video of it somewhere even better, but I'll be grateful for a verbal confirmation too.

The reason I am kindly asking you to do this is that I have a suspicion that there's either different screens for different Deck models (mine is 64GB) or different Deck batches received different screens. Steam support denies that but I have my doubts (for many people if two screens are both 800p 60hz then it is "the same" screen)…

Thank you very much!

And just as a note for the audience here: Deck's internal screen is giving me one of the worst headaches I ever had from a display… and I suspect it is not any "hidden" dithering flicker this time, but the plain PWM-like flicker you can spot with a simple phone camera. 60hz is a really low frequency unfortunately… 🙁

Sunspark

I won't do the 40 because I already know that it will do the black flashing scan-out thing which doesn't happen at 60. A lot of people have complained about this and the panel wasn't really designed to operate at 40. There is no point for me to use anything but 60. Read this thread, a guy here is complaining about it: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/3838802451903250491/

There are multiple screens already, but not necessarily from different manufacturers.. but like monitors they've already incremented the part number revision 3 times. No information if a new manufacturer has been brought into the mix or not yet. It's possible, but I haven't seen evidence yet.

If you're getting a bad headache from it, there might be something wrong with the unit.. I've seen a few complaints. Neither Ludwig or I got a headache from it but I (probably him as well) haven't been using 40. It would be better if you could see someone else's unit in person instead of videos. Honestly, the SD's screen is not actually bad. I won't say it is perfect because it's not, but it's not bad.

machala

Sunspark

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply. I am part of that thread so I know very well what's written there. I increased my refresh rate to 70 thanks to a post there (and it seems to improve it a bit).

But the point here is the flicker (the black line) is not there at 40 only, it's there at ANY refresh rate, only at 60 it is in sync with your camera so it makes you believe it's not there. You have to record it as a slow motion video to see it.

Could you please try it on your unit? If you have a phone capable of recording slow motion it should take a few seconds. Thanks a lot, this will really help!

Sunspark

https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/17yf90o/analysis_of_the_pwm_of_the_steam_deck_lcd_screen/

No way this was done by someone not from this forum, lol. Great work though!

For me, video output to external monitor has improved slightly with the most recent batch of firmware and OS updates. I still prefer my regular machine though. Among other things, Valve's desktop is somewhat on the minimal side, their new colour management features (slider for colour temperature and slider for colour saturation) are only for gaming mode.. desktop mode has nothing.

Sunspark

Sunspark He has now reviewed the non-limited edition Samsung OLED panel version. Result, very bad display. https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1882kys/analysis_of_the_pwmflickervisual_fatigue_of_the/

The BOE panel from the LE I've seen video of it.. it does have flicker as well that I'm pretty sure won't be appreciated.. so I am glad I have the LCD version even if I do miss the good blacks and colours that my oled phone has.

Sunspark

With firmware 119 and dock firmware 121 on 3.4.11 of the OS (uses 5.13+patches kernel), the device is comfortable enough to use on the monitor.

3.5.x has issues with a lot of things so I'm staying on 3.4 for now.. good thing the device has A and B partitions so I don't have to worry about losing a good partition.

One thing that is too bad though, I don't actually like Linux's desktop environments much, and I can get better colour and gamma on my older Windows PC so I will still be using the Windows PC for everything except more demanding games.. but hey, I have a backup computer in the form of the SD!

Update: Ok, I got the gamma a bit better by lowering the gamma slider in the display settings from 1.00.

jordan

Sunspark with the older software it's not comfortable to use with built in screen but is if you connect a monitor to it?

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