“Ruined” might be a smidge on the strong side, but there’s no question that over the last few weeks, I’ve barely touched my Steam Deck OLED. And I absolutely blame my gaming PC for that.
A couple of weeks back I wrote about how I’ve started to play my PC on my living room OLED. Spoiler: it’s been a revelation. Playing the best PC games on one of the best OLED TVs on the planet has been brilliant. It’s allowed me to enjoy fresh playthroughs of Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2 in full-on “couch potato” mode in glorious full-fat 4K.
I simply switch on my 77-inch LG G3 OLED, plonk my little Logitech MX Keys Mini wireless keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3 mouse on the end of my L-shaped sofa, I pair my DualSense Edge with my PC over Bluetooth, I enter Steam Big Picture mode, and I’m off to the races.
The caveat being my rig weighs more than a pot-bellied pig who’s fed a diet of nothing but fried chicken and fudge sundaes. Every time I have to scoop up my Nvidia RTX 4090-powered PC and stagger all of 25 feet with it to my living room, I legitimately fear my spine will snap. But hey, I’m willing to throw the dice on a major back injury when it lets me play the best Steam games on an astonishing OLED TV with a Micro Array Lens (MLA) panel that can hit over 1,300 nits of peak HDR brightness.
I’ve tested some of the best gaming monitors throughout recent years, and honestly, not one of them comes close to producing the picture quality the LG G3 is capable of delivering.
The byproduct of this G3 love-in? I’ve stopped using my Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 for gaming — and I only bought the damn thing last Black Friday. I do still use it for my job, though, as the 32:9 aspect ratio makes it a dream work monitor. And the other big casualty, as the headline alludes to, is my poor Steam Deck OLED. which has been getting very little affection from my pasty digits.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think Valve’s updated portable PC is a sensational gaming device. I love pretty much everything about it. That unbelievably crisp little HDR screen, the fact I can play some of my favorite PC games ever at 90 frames per second, and those slimmed down bezels compared to the LCD Steam Deck make it a must-buy upgrade if you’re a fan of Valve’s OG handheld.
(Red) Dead on the money
But c’mon, when I can play Red Dead Redemption 2 at 4K/ 120 fps with every single setting maxed out and barely drop a frame thanks to my RTX 4090 and AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (hot damn, what a gaming CPU), experiencing Rockstar’s Western classic at 720p (and if I’m lucky) 30 frames a second at low settings just can’t compete.
The added bonus of playing my PC through my living room TV is I get the chance to hear my favorite games in incredibly immersive fashion through my Sonos surround sound setup, which consists of a Sonos Arc, two Sonos Subs and a pair of Sonos Era 300 speakers — we rank those as the best Sonos speakers you can currently buy in 2024.
The added bonus of playing my PC through my living room TV? I get to hear my favorite games through my Sonos surround sound setup.
Ganted, my booming subs might have gotten me into the odd angry altercation with my upstairs neighbors. Sorry, residents of flat 6. I apologize to your and your battered eardrums.
Again, Steam Deck OLED packs in surprisingly powerful, well-rounded speakers, but they can hardly compete with the setup above.
As my Deck OLED guilt rises, I’ve started to force myself into scenarios where playing it for short bursts makes sense. Recently, I’ve started playing Forza Horizon 4 on it during my lunch breaks and my beloved hometown of Edinburgh looks sensational on Valve’s incredible screen.
Fright Night
I’ve also booted up what must be (at least) my fifth playthrough of Alien: Isolation in bed over the past few days in perhaps unwisely nerve-shredding sessions before I head off to the land of Nod. Yeah, that’s probably not the best idea, ist it?
The Creative Assembly’s horror masterpiece is stunning on Steam Deck OLED. With minor tweaks, you can run it at 90 frames per second at high settings, making it both fluid and frightening in equal measure. It’s the perfect example of what Valve’s device does best: It lets you relive classics from the Xbox One and PS4 generation at high quality levels.
In the meantime, I’ll try to do a better job of splitting my gaming time between my PC and Valve’s OLED beauty.
You never know, the latter may get lucky, and I’ll tear my quads the next time I pick up my monolith of a PC. Then me and my Steam Deck OLED can’t get properly reacquainted in a hospital bed.
