Upgrading your Steam Deck screen to 1200p is a bad idea

The higher resolution Steam Deck screen mod from DeckHD may seem like a good idea, but it could create problems for your portable PC.

[Gwiz]

Well yeah, the system was not designed with such an upgrade in mind.

[KeeseToast]

It is still awesome that options like this are going to release for the steam deck. Makes me hopeful we are going to see more 3rd party upgrade options in the future

[SpacedDuck]

Side bar is how awesome the next version of Steam Deck will likely be. The current one is amazing but my main gripe is for sure the screen not being a better resolution.

If Valve can just get it to 2K and OLED with minimum 4-6 hours of battery life that will be insane.

[TheEnigma313]

You still have to think about a consumer friendly price point.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Which luckily, Valve is able to go lower than other companies because they have Steam revenue that will allow them to put a Steam Deck v2 at a price that wipes away the competition.

[Ready4nxtgen]

The battery life is the Decks main downfall. Better visuals would nkt help that. They need to male tue deck have at least 10hrs playtime no charge. With AAA games on the Steam Deck 2. So if I can Get 1k Graphics and 10hrs playtime, I would be great with that. 2K resolution amd good battery won't happen

[blackblades]

Battery life on anything game related that's not plugged up to a wall is a downfall. Controlers, handhelds, phones like get a batterypack/power bank whatever.

[--Onilink--]

Putting aside the leves al absolutely massive efficiency required in a chip to achieve 1440p AND 4-6h battery life.. why do you want 1440p in such a small screen anyway? Its not like on a phone where increased ppi helps because its mostly for text.

1080p seems like the right sweet spot for a screen that size. I’d rather have them follow up on the Ally and make sure its 120hz with a wide VRR range rather than increasing the resolution.

I do agree on the next one needing an OLED. Even for the Switch 2 I will be incredibly dissapointed if they go back to an LCD screen for their launch model

[Guyfamily999]

If you want 4 hours to be the minimum battery, then with a 40 watt hour battery you have to be drawing 10 watts. That would leave like 6-7 watts of power for the APU as things like the screen need power too. The deck is designed to use 15W for the APU. It will always be a balancing act between performance and battery life because you can't put a wrist crushing massive battery in a handheld.

A theoretical RDNA 4 powered steam deck in a couple years could either be about twice the performance with the same battery life, or like 60-80% better battery life but the same performance (up to the user to decide basically).

[Tacoboto]

So, quadruple the resolution (2560x1440 vs 1280x800), move to a premium display tech, and double the battery life all at once?

Yeah that's not happening any time soon -> you want an APU that can actually run games at native 1440p with playable framerates and 6 hours battery life in a handheld, that's a pipe dream today.

Valve can release an OLED model of the standard Deck instead at a $60-$100 premium and that is all I simply ask for.

[GoodGuy09]

Battery life go ded, heating go extreme, and big drop in performance. Handhelds simply just aren't made for high performance and visual gaming.

[ZycoFox]

Yep, if you want performance you simply build/buy a decent PC. These handhelds are fine for medium to mostly low end resolution/performance gaming but don't expect more, and even then performance might leave more to be desired. It's fine for games with light requirements though.

[KeeseToast]

No one forces you to render games in 1200p if you use this mod. The ally also has a 720p mode. The increased dpi would be great for smaller 2d games. More color accuracy is also desperately needed on deck.
Battery concerns are valid, but I doubt a slight increase in resolution has such a huge effect here.

What I am curious is if the brightness is going to match since steam deck panels seem to be pushing more nits then they are actually rated for.

Overall I think this would be a welcome upgrade for a lot of people although I ofc would prefer a 800p OLED over this

[DylanWilby]

We await the Steam Deck 2

[anast]

I wish I had the cash to throw down on the S-Deck.

[TiredGamer]

So this article harps on the negative impacts of the screen upgrade, but the writer didn't even review/test the device... nice speculation piece.

[Ready4nxtgen]

Don't do it guys

[andy85]

Why bother? The frame rate is gonna be shocking and so is the battery life.

[UltimateOwnage]

It won’t be a problem at all. Deck handles 4K fine in the menu system, games will continue to default to 1280x800 when played in Gaming mode unless you specifically override the resolution setting for games that can run fluently at 1200P. I’m personally very excited to perform this upgrade.