GuliKit Releasing Hall Effect Joysticks for Steam Deck OLED This Month

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There aren't many issues I have with the Steam Deck, which really feels like the perfect device in most aspects, but one of them that I did wish had improvements is the joysticks. They feel nice, but getting drift on them is fairly common, and I had gotten drift within a year of having my original LCD Deck. The Steam Deck uses an analog joystick, which works fine but can cause drifting and deterioration over time, and we have been seeing that happen a lot more lately. But there is a type of joystick that doesn't deteriorate and has a significantly lower chance of drifting, Hall-Effect.

These joysticks use magnets internally to calculate position, which means fewer parts clashing together to cause friction and deterioration. And while the Steam Deck doesn't ship with them, third-party manufacturers are picking up the slack! In this case, GuliKit is one of those manufacturers! I reviewed their Hall-Effect joysticks for the Steam Deck LCD, which I enjoyed and found extremely nice regardless of the joystick's square-ish active zone. And soon, we will be able to get hall-effect joysticks into the OLED Steam Deck!

Announced via a post on X, GuliKit announced that their Hall Effect joystick for the Steam Deck OLED will be coming this month. So, if you are looking to upgrade the joysticks to be ones that last longer and will effectively have 0 drift, this will be the way to go!

Now, it is possible this will have the same square-ish active zone as the other joysticks for LCD Steam Decks, but again, the pros outweigh the cons. For general gameplay, I found it feeling around the same, and it fixed my drift (which is a huge plus). It was relatively easy to install, too, which is just icing on the cake! Hopefully, we will get more information soon because I am very excited!

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