With the ROG ALLY coming out soon, a lot of attention has been placed on its screen. The jump to a 1080p with better colors is a real boost for a device like this and probably one of the biggest pros I have for the ALLY, but this could change very soon! FX Technology Limited, a company that creates smartphones and accessories, has taken it upon themselves to develop a new screen for the Steam Deck which pushes the resolution possibilities to 1920x1200!
The left side is the Deck stock screen while the right is the DeckHD screen.
Under the name DeckHD, this screen will not only feature the higher resolution listed above, but it will also have better color accuracy for richer hues and deeper contrasts, as well as anti-glare coating. All of this while sticking to the 7 inch dimension with 400 nits of screen brightness and a 60hz refresh rate, the same as the base Steam Deck screen.
We have been talking to the founder of FX Technology Limited, who reached out to us last week to offer sending us the screen to review once it is ready, which we accepted. We have also asked about battery life impact and will be updating this article once we get a response!
Personally, I am cautiously optimistic about this. For a device like this, I feel higher resolutions are a bit unnecessary and can cause unnecessary battery drain, but the increased color accuracy is something I desperately crave as I love OLED screens and vibrant/defined colors. Ease of install and battery impact will be the 2 biggest aspects I look at to see if the screen is really worth it, but I am willing to give it a shot!
You can join the Waitlist over on the DeckHD website and they list the estimated price to be around $99. They are also estimating a late June or July launch, but this is subject to change as production continues!
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I have absolutely no issues with the stock Panel on my SD. I just got it so I have one with all of the changes that have already been made to the handheld gaming PC.Gimme a break people the SD is damn good I can play RE4 on near max settings while maintaining a solid frame rate....SD USES A CUSTOM APU,ITS MORE "DOWN TO THE TRANSISTOR"THAN THAT STUPID POS ASUS USING OFF THE SHELF APU. I HAVE TRIED 2 VERY EXPENSIVE ASUS ROG GAMING LAPTOPS AND BOTH BURNT UP WITH NO OVERCLOCKING BUT WHAT IT HAD ALREADY HAD OVERCLOCKED FROM THE FACTORY.How close to your face do you hold your SD? I have an OLED Switch and can't touch it since I got my SD, haven't touched my Xbox Series X either.I am also 37 and an IT, I can't make out a damn pixel on the screen unless I hold it so close you can't see anything else on the screen. Teraflops don't mean what they used to. It's how that computational capability is put to use that matters. The ASUS is going to have a mass effect rate I can guarantee that, have you read about ASUS mobo's and the problems they themselves are causing on AMD Ryzen CPUs on AM5? They are pushing unsafe voltages to the processor causing them to burn up not OVERCLOCKED, wow, both my ROGs were AMD that FRIED, I wonder why? The laptops would get burning hot playing a game....I will never buy another ASUS product, and like hell if I want a regular version of Windows 11 running on a handheld Gaming PC, you realize how much resources Windows 11 uses compared to the desktop mode on SD, and game mode uses even less.....and it's an extremely fast computer just to use as a computer if you familiar with Linux and the KDE Plasma desktop environment, download thunderbird for your email, keep using Firefox as your browser....Ive already ordered the dock and am going to use it as my home computer when docked hooked to monitor keyboard and mouse, I only will game in handheld in game mode. But seriously people the APU in the ASUS white handheld that has stupid glowing joysticks, that's a gimmick by the way.....just something using battery that doesn't need to. 2 smaller fans instead of one, at least mine is, very acceptable noise level fan cooling Valve's custom APU that actually says Valve powered by AMD on the APU heat spreader itself. I don't care how much more powerful the ASUS sounds on paper, it's not going to be a game changer because this APU is not SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO DO EXACTLY WHAT ASUS WANTS IT TO BECAUSE THEY HAD NO HAND IN DEVELOPING IT. And again, it's running on A REGULAR VERSION OF WINDOWS 11! I KNOW HOW CRAPPY ARMORY CRATE IS, IT HAS NO TRACK PADS, AND ITS UGLY AS SIN, AND MADE BY A CORPORATION HAVING SEVERE QUALITY CONTROL PROBLEMS AT THE MOMENT......HMMMMMMM.....
Nice to see someone doing this. Would have rather had a 900p screen but oled and slightly larger taking up more of the black border.
Maybe mention fxtec's track record in your article. It's "not good".
Even if you were interested in the product it would be a very good idea to stay as far away as possible from that company. Check community.fxtec.com or their indiegogo campaign to get an idea of how bad it gets..
Will check it out! Thank you!
When I glanced about this on Twitter yesterday, I thought Valve was officially coming out with 1080p. Which was kinda weird knowing SD is only 1yo++. Guess not.
How hard is it to change the screen on SD? I once changed my Switch's R-JoyCon stick coz it was drifting so bad. Boy,was was no easy task for me. A number of parts that don't like to stay in place (those damn buttons for example), and small-ish - hard to hold with fat fingers, that's what annoyed me. Almost threw in the towel and just buy a new JoyCon replacement instead. 😅
Res gain means you will need more power, or, your going to be turning off features and probably dropping the res anyway, so at the end of the day, does it matter?
I've not had an issue with the colors on the deck, so for me at least that's a non issue. For others it is. But at least for me, again, I'm having a hard time finding the point.
And nobody had said anything about cost, if it's around $100 that could be a maybe if it had gains I understand it being around for. But once you get anywhere close to half of what I paid for the deck your in very strong nope range.
Horizontal OLED would be nice
Useless considering Deck's hardware. Just gimme 800p OLED.
Shame they didn't use the Samsung AMS767KC04-1 or AMS767KC06 panels. They're OLED and are a bit bigger but in theory can fit in the glass frame of the deck with a bit of room to spare. They're 800p too. On top of that they're actually full RGB not Pentile, which is important for OLED. The only real downgrade is they're 200 nits (maybe can be pushed to 250/300 nits according to some camera monitors that used these panels), though the higher contrast ratio wouldn't make that so much of an problem.
There are a few potential issues though. It's a panel from 2012 that's been discontinued, so they'd be looking at limited stock. Apparently Shenzhen Jinsheng Electronics still has some, and you can find them on AliExpress, but they already have the Samsung Galaxy tab 7.7" glass panel attached.
The other issue with it being a bit larger is it might mean some possible manual modification to the Steam Deck's internal plastics and stuff to install it.
Finally, not sure if this would be an actual issue, but the screen is MIPI, which might make connecting it to the Deck complicated as well, but I'm not sure.
But yeah, this is basically the only existing OLED screen that can work for the Deck atm it seems. I hope if SDHQ gets the chance they might be able to ask them about OLED options, and maybe about these panels.
And what about the poor touchscreen ?
This seems like it fixes all the wrong issues. Brightness, contrast and smaller bezels would a all be way more impactful than 1080p or color accuracy.
Could you get the screen upgrade for it's better colors, brightness and everything else without using it's native resolution and sticking to 800p without causing performance issues or issues with display quality? Or will it look degraded because it's not the native resolution or maybe something else??
Can we use the display for the upgrades colors etc but keep the resolution down to 800p without issue?
I'm pretty sure that ya just turn it down in the settings but still paying full price
I'd probably get this and still run games at 800p. The higher resolution would just be for really light games or desktop mode/web browsing.
Curious to know if its an horizontal panel or vertical rotated like the current one.
Would hate to see The Phawx on YouTube in any more agony over vertical rotated screens... /s
I will be getting more information tomorrow, in which I will verify this as well!
I worry if the display will be able to also manually variate the refresh rate to marry with the FPS. If it's a locked 60Hz-only panel, that's going to be more of an issue.
I agree. I feel on the steam deck hardware I'd rather have a 800p display with better performance than a 1200p. Even for the future I don't mind them sticking to 800p, I'd hope that they just use a more colour accurate panel.
If Valve puts in an OLED panel, I will throw my money at them wildly. That's my #1 requested feature. But for this, I am willing to stay open-minded. If battery life can be preserved, to some extent, I will be extremely happy.