Give Your Steam Deck an OLED Screen Upgrade with DeckSight

Valve’s Steam Deck is a fantastic option for PC gaming on the go. It packs a lot of hardware into a really convenient portable package, with dedicated controls for comfortable gameplay. But running resource-intensive games requires a lot of power and that results in fairly poor battery life — specifications list it at as little as 2 hours for the 256GB LCD-equipped model. But now you can get longer gameplay sessions and better visuals thanks to the DeckSight drop-in OLED replacement screen.

There are now OLED versions of the Steam Deck available (both 512GB and 1TB models) directly from the Steam store and those are probably the best solution for someone who doesn’t yet own a Steam Deck. But for anyone that already has a Steam Deck LCD model, DeckSight is a big upgrade.

In fact, a DeckSight-modded Steam Deck LCD model is probably more desirable than a Steam Deck OLED model for those who don’t care about the storage capacity.

DeckSight provides two big advantages: lower power consumption and better picture quality. DeckSight is an AMOLED screen mod that replaces the original LCD. In their testing, Shade Technik found about a 25% decrease in power consumption with the DeckSight AMOLED compared to the stock LCD. And that was in the worst-case scenario (an almost entirely white screen). For real-world usage, the power savings should be even more dramatic.

In addition to saving power and extending battery life, the DeckSight AMOLED should also provide better picture quality. Right off the bat, it has a higher resolution: 1920×1080 compared to 1280×800. The AMOLED also has better color depth, better contrast, and better brightness — and DeckSight will be capable of implementing HDR. Finally, Shade Technik says that DeckSight will have better touch response than the original LCD. That is difficult to verify objectively with the provided specifications, but it seems like a reasonable claim.

This is a hardware mod, but it won’t require any physical modification of parts and should be entirely reversible. The DeckSight AMOLED is a drop-in replacement and the swap appears to be easy.

The most notable risk is the potential for a BIOS update that might affect the DeckSight’s functionality. It requires a custom BIOS and it is possible for Valve to push an OTA BIOS update that negates that. However, users can prevent automatic BIOS updates or re-flash the custom BIOS if such an event occurs in the future.

If you’re interested in getting DeckSight for yourself, it is currently in the crowdfunding phase on Crowd Supply. A complete upgrade kit is $140 for the anti-glare screen version, or $130 for the gloss screen version. Shade Technik expects those to ship in May of 2025.