The Steam Deck is a nifty little handheld gaming PC, but it does come with its share of wrinkles. The 800p display, however, isn’t one of them. If you ask me, the Steam Deck 2 (or whatever Valve ends up calling the Deck’s successor) doesn’t need a higher resolution display. Here’s why.
Before I begin, a disclaimer: I’m not trying to say that Valve shouldn’t put a 1200p screen on the Deck 2 under no circumstances whatsoever. If the company manages to equip the thing with a powerful APU, remedy most of the common downsides found on the original Deck —average battery life, poor haptics, stiff paddle buttons, subpar wireless performance, loud fan, USB-C port located at the top, etc.— and include a 1200p screen that covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut, great! I’m all for it. But if the price of having a 1200p display is a weaker APU or not addressing some of the more jarring issues with the console, I’m all for Valve keeping the 800p resolution on the Deck’s successor.
Steam Deck Has Display Issues, But Resolution Isn’t One of Them
Many Steam Deck owners rant about the Deck’s screen, but most don’t mind the resolution, myself included. First of all, a 67% coverage of the sRGB color gamut is the most critical issue with the panel. Narrow color gamut results in washed-out colors that are far from the color saturation overload we have on the Nintendo Switch OLED, or even other handheld gaming PCs such as the AYANEO 2, the GPD Win 4, or the ROG Ally.
And while there’s a Decky Loader plugin —vibrantDeck— that makes colors more saturated, the said add-on doesn’t magically increase the color depth. If anything, making the colors pop more hurts the color accuracy. It’s because the more saturated the colors, the less pronounced the difference between different shades of each color, with different shades coalescing into one. In other words, you get punchy colors but worse color accuracy and fidelity.
Another issue I, and many others, have with our Steam Decks is poor contrast and (very) noticeable backlight bleed. This makes playing dark games on my Deck during nighttime less than ideal because you start noticing the backlight bleed in every scene that’s even slightly on the darker side. Also, playing games that only support the 16:9 aspect ratio means you have two thin yet definitely noticeable patches on the top and bottom of the screen, which can be pretty distracting. My Switch Lite, on the other hand, also suffers from poor contrast, but it doesn’t have noticeable backlight bleed, making dark games look better than on my Deck.
What I want to say is that, personally, I’d rather see an 800p, 100% sRGB display on the next-gen Deck that features at least an average contrast ratio and reined-in backlight bleed instead of a 1200p display with poor color gamut and contrast, and enough backlight bleed to turn blacks into semi-dark shades of gray. Also, I’m pretty certain that most Deck owners would rather have an 800p OLED display than a 1200p LCD one, especially if it doesn’t feature improved color gamut and contrast.
Steam Deck Doesn’t Need to Match Smartphones in Pixel Density
Another thing I’ve noticed while reading through the Steam Deck subreddit and online forums is that some people care too much about pixel density. It’s like the Steam Deck having a pixel density of “only” 216 DPI somehow makes it utter trash. In reality, 216 DPI is pretty darn good for a handheld gaming console.
For example, the PS Vita has a pixel density of 220 DPI, and no one talked about Vita’s poor display sharpness. The regular Nintendo Switch has a pixel density of 237 DPI, with the OLED version featuring a density of 210 DPI. But no one batted an eye when Nintendo released the OLED version with the same 720p resolution and worse pixel density because the OLED display knocked the IPS panel on the regular Switch out of the park.
Further, the Steam Deck and its successor, whenever it comes out, aren’t smartphones. You don’t spend time on these devices looking at photos, browsing the web, and visiting text-heavy websites; you play games. And while, granted, games don’t look that impressive on the Deck without anti-aliasing (looking at your GTA IV), any form of anti-aliasing makes any 3D game stunning, even on the current 800p display. We don’t need the “Retina-level” 300 DPI or higher to enjoy games on our Decks.
In newer games, temporal anti-aliasing takes away virtually every sign of roughness. And in older games, even 2X multisample anti-aliasing does wonders. Even the feeble fast approximate anti-aliasing (FXAA) makes games quite sharp and great to look at. And when talking about 2D and “2.5D” (2D games with 3D models), they look great @800p, even without anti-aliasing. Many 2D games look pretty darn fine even at 600p and with AMD FSR turned on.
Finally, some might say that most other handheld gaming PCs feature 1080p displays. However, most of those are way pricier than the Deck. Secondly, despite their beefier hardware, the 1080p resolution is too big a bite in many recent AAA titles for even the most powerful handhelds unless you’re ready to settle for low visual options or use AMD RSR, a driver-level upscaling filter that looks a bit worse than AMD FSR. Which brings me to my next point.
A 1200p Display Would Lead to Weaker Gaming Performance
The communal raving about 1080p resolution on handheld PCs is similar to the push MS and Sony made with 4K resolution. Sure, games rendered in native 4K look great, but the performance is often limited to 30fps. I’d rather play games at 1440p and at 60fps than at 4K@30fps. Or, in the case of the Steam Deck 2, I’d rather play games at 800p and medium or high details and 60 frames per second than at 1200p, south of 60fps, and with low details.
The thing is, even if Valve decides to equip Deck 2 with, for instance, an RDNA 4-based iGPU, you shouldn’t expect an astronomical increase in performance compared to the original Deck. At 15W —the max TDP of the Deck’s Van Gogh APU— the ROG Ally, which packs a 12-core RDNA 3 GPU compared to the Deck’s 8-core RDNA 2 GPU, is only about 30%-40% faster on average than the Deck.
Next, the RDNA 3-based Radeon 780M iGPU is only about 10-20% faster than its predecessor, the RDNA 2-based Radeon 680M, with the two having the same number of graphics cores, 12. If we’re generous and assume that the RDNA 4 architecture will bring ~25% performance increase over the RDNA 3, and if we also assume that the Deck 2 will pack an 8-core GPU and faster RAM, the performance increase from the Deck to the Deck 2 should be enough to play current AAA titles with 60fps and medium to high details, but at 800p resolution. At 1200p, the performance should allow only for a 30fps-40fps experience with low details.
A higher TDP could push the performance higher, but, remember, the team behind the Steam Deck has made it be as light on the battery as possible while still having decent enough gaming performance. In other words, I don’t believe the Steam Deck 2 will have a higher TDP. Maybe if Valve decides to equip it with a solid-state cooling setup, but that’s a story for another time.
Anyway, even with an RDNA 4-based 8-core GPU, the Steam Deck 2 will only be capable of 60fps at 800p gaming performance with medium-high details in AAA titles. And I’d rather enjoy games at 60 frames per second at 800p than settle for 30fps at 1080p with low details.
And while upscaling 800p image to 1200p with AMD RSR doesn’t look perfect, even on a 7-inch screen —native resolution always looks better on LCD screens— I’d have no issues with that in case Valve manages to equip the Deck 2 with a 1200p screen and a beefy APU while also fixing issues found on the original Deck, as stated at the start of this piece. But considering the performance-on-a-budget nature of the Deck (which reminds me of Google’s philosophy with Nexus series of smartphones and the good old Nexus days), I doubt we can have it all.
A High-Res Screen Brings Higher Manufacturing Costs
A higher-resolution screen on the next generation Steam Deck would mean a higher manufacturing cost of the device. And considering Valve’s determination to bring the cost of the original Deck as low as possible, I reckon the company will do the same with its successor. In other words, no matter how low the cost of putting a 1200p instead of an 800p screen on the Deck 2 might be, Valve will have to make a compromise by not equipping the console with some other feature, fix, or upgrade.
The thing is, I’d rather pick a number of small but important upgrades on the second-gen Deck over a higher-resolution screen. Stuff like better haptic motors, larger battery no matter how minuscule the bump in capacity might be, hall effect analog sticks, a higher quality Wi-Fi chip, the aforementioned 800p screen with 100% sRGB coverage, and the list goes on.
Having the latest and greatest tech in our gadgets is always cool, but we should be realistic in our expectations instead of wanting stuff only because they sound better on paper. The original Steam Deck’s screen resolution is more than sharp enough for gaming purposes, and while a 1200p display in its successor would definitely be a “nice to have” feature, it’s far from an essential addition.
Steam Deck’s “handheld PC gaming on a budget” design philosophy means a number of compromises that have to be made in order to give us the best possible gaming experience at an unbeatable price point. And with Steam Deck 2, I’d rather compromise on screen resolution than on screen quality, gaming performance, and a number of other features and improvements that can genuinely enhance my gaming experience. More pixels at a screen diagonal that already looks fine as it is isn’t one of them.
