Life with a Steam Deck OLED - HONEST Review (2025)

you know when I was a kid all I wanted were handheld devices in fact if I was a kid nowadays I would probably wait for that Nintendo switch too but maturing is realizing that all you need in your life is a steam deck don't don't come at me like I spent like hours okay trying to emulate games on this thing I legally downloaded all the games I played Spider-Man on this thing too cyber Punk man I missed GTA San Andreas and then I went out of my way to play Red Dead Redemption then I thought I broke my console well I've never seen this to the point that I just went to go grab an R Alli X and I started gaming on that it's great don't get me wrong but I came back to the steam you see I'm getting old I barely play on my PlayStation 5 I barely play on my custom PC just want to grab something turn it on and game right away and then when I'm bored 30 minutes later just put it down and this my friend is exactly what it's for it's been a great 45 days I don't know why I stress so much about buying this let me show you guys oh my God this room's a mess yeah okay this is it I swear I think I was probably like one of the first people to literally buy this December 5th the day I unboxed this and set it up you want to know why I got this sleep function I buil a habit of keeping my gaming sessions to no longer than 30 minutes to an hour at a time mainly because I get bored easily now and so that's why I got this like look I hate closing all my software making sure the gpus is up to date because I barely game then loading the game it only makes me want to do that if I know I'm gaming with friends and so with the deck knowing that people were able to hop on and off from where they left off that really made me want to give this a try and so for the past like 45 days that's what I've been doing but from the day I unboxed this I never imagined it would become so much more than just that this is limited edition White theme deck with an OLED screen I want by model not cheap eh I'm like more excited to see what kind of mods I can do to this thing and to spend some time with it play with it today is December 5th and to be honest I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this video look second reason I got this emulation not that other consoles like the RX can do it but the simple console style interface ol Leed with a bigger screen the touchpads with haptic feedback the button layout that directly translates into Game Boy GameCube PSP and PS two titles and the fact that again I can get up and running extremely quickly was a huge Plus for me so knowing that playing the latest AAA games wasn't a priority for me the steam deck is what suits me the most yeah just a quick update I I just got carried away I started a career mode on FIFA Street man that I missed that game but uh what I'm going to do is that I'm going to put all my legally obtain emulators okay into my steam deck and just give it a try for a week yeah obviously I went a lot longer than just a week why well this became like a drug to me it's like so accessible I actually traveled with it and the first time I did I realized how comfortable it is at hand but it it took a bit of time to get used to it I'm not going to lie because this has two parallel thumb sticks and I wasn't a fan at first but I got used to it it eventually made me realize that since the middle of the device is thinner and the grips are larger it became easier to sit more comfortable like easier to hold in any position like in a plane for example with a trade table or in bed when I was traveling abroad and even though this is larger than most handhelds out there it fits nicely within the plane's storage pouch traveling to Toronto for our precs event really made me realize just how much potential this had in my L I guess we can say that today's like officially my third day with the console I just used it on the plane for a while man I missed GTA San Andreas I used to play like game so much no but honestly this is one of the coolest things you can bring around with you when traveling literally I used it for the whole plane ride the departure everything and this thing is still really good on battery life amazing I just brought it with me to Toronto because I'm here for an Asus conference but yeah just want to just keep playing with it and see how how it [Music] goes today's uh it's I think it's been a week since I've had the steam deck been more than a week it's a great portable console I have to keep reminding myself that yes although it feels big for me I come from a PSP that was the last time I had a portable console and I was using it all the time on the plane it was absolutely amazing to have this is like your best friend I've been using it with the emulators aot I have to admit that I still need to dive into steam and actually use it as a a steam deck and the one thing that really surprises me is just the battery life it's absolutely insane I often just put it like in sleep mode and it chills in sleep mode all the time as you guys can see I'm I'm still playing GTA on on sleep mode it does eat a bit of battery like battery dissipates a tiny little bit every day if you just leave it like so I've realized that um other than that great console the week I changed to the Vivo X200 Pro as my daily that was the last day I only played emulator games on this by the way because this is OLED emulator games can look a tiny bit off nothing major but they just look like they are trying to be upscaled and it can deliver that to you up until that point though my favorite things were sleep mode the color of this thing I learned to love the layout I love the olded because it is plenty bright but I felt like because I wasn't playing demanding titles with the fans not kicking at all up until that point I wasn't really taking advantage of having a steam Deck with an OLED screen look a few days passed by and I had finally started playing some recent games and this this is where I fell in love with the battery life and OLED off the bat I want to point out that the accuracy with this display while using it as a touchcreen is a 10 out of 10 now OLED on a game like Spider-Man for example is absolutely incredible I remember a few weeks ago I was at like 90% battery life at around 6:45 p. m. I game for almost an hour or so by the time I put this down I was at like 63% by 7:38 p.

m. that is an hour of spider man on an OLED screen looking this damn gorgeous with battery life dissipating for a total of like 27% I remember I had pretty much stopped playing that day right then and there and while I had put it in sleep mode a few days later I had picked it up and it was at like 38% that day I kept gaming for like 45 minutes and Battery did go from 38% to 9% so this is the type of battery life you can expect while playing a game like Spider-Man with emulators it totally depends what you are playing but till this day when playing games like FIFA Street or San Andreas I do find myself actually getting around 5 hourish of play time on a single charge literally up until that day nothing has changed Red Dead seems to deliver a bit more than 2 hours of play time but I'll talk about that later right now I want to talk about this screen because when I started playing Spider-Man on this I was hella impressed look my First theme deck had an LCD display to be honest I barely used it but with this a few weeks ago when I started installing AAA games on it I realized how insane this OLED screen is from my own perspective it's got a 7. 4 in 800p 90 HZ display with HDR support for enhanced visuals it's really bright capable of to a th000 nit has great contrast no backl bleed and low latency compared to the LCD model okay it has a larger screen with thinner bezels for a sleeker design and combined with the OLED screen efficient so SOC and larger battery the battery life is now at least 50% longer it's also a more responsive and precise touchcreen for smoother interactions paired with upgraded trackpads with improved accuracy enhanced haptic feedback and a much better click mechanism but up until that point to be honest I hadn't used them that much the one thing thing I still have yet to properly use are these trackpads which are amazing they feel so nice there's like this little tingling sensation I don't know if you guys can hear it very very clean I I like that it really helps when you're like actually navigating Steam OS and what I mean about that is that well you actually have a switch to desktop mode that goes a bit into the actual OS of steam and then you can control a lot of the things right in here steam de OLED has better speakers compared to the LCD version with like clearer sound quality of course the new chip also lowers heat generation I can at least a test to that and because of it it runs quieter thanks to its improved fan overall this thing is like 60 G lighter now look Steam OS is great it really feels like a console I can be playing a steam deck game one moment and then emulator game the next but up until that point with all the days and progression I had done in multiple games using the steam deck I wondered how this would compare to the r Alx so I actually ended up getting one it's almost like Christmas came a few hours early for me so this my friends is the Rog Ali x correct me if I'm wrong but for the past 3 weeks I've been using my steam deck and it's been absolutely amazing but it does seem like a lot of people like to compare both of these to see which one is the best and that my friends is what we're going to do in this video I just got to unbox this set it up installed my emulators and uh all that cool stuff a few days before leaving to CES that's what I did okay I set this up exactly the same way I had set up my steam deck of course this being Windows based the steps are quite a bit different however I was able to transfer my RS and my save data to my Rog Ali X without a single hiccup no that's actually not true I did run into a few hiccups trying to locate these folders in Steam OS but because the community for Steam OS is so damn big I was easily able to find the answers yeah yes sir it works thank you Lord but turned out that my button layout didn't really work RG allyx of the bat doesn't directly translate my buttons for all the emulated devices so I had to spend some time trying to find the solution for that click the r i like command center button make sure the control mode is sent on game pad R game pad oh it works I love the internet overall though on my way to CS I spent some time with the r Alx it is phenomenal I absolutely love the design and off the bat it has a very comfortable grip very similar to like an Xbox controller the console also delivers so many different ways you can tweak its performance just to make gamep playay smoother I did run a quick battery test on this and playing Spider-Man within my flight here's what I noticed from 100% at 11:00 a.

m. to 87% at 11:34 a. m.

all the way to 45% at 12:24 p. m.