Just before the Steam Deck OLED was announced, Valve’s developers spoke to press about a successor, revealing that hardware limitations have been the obvious roadblock in committing to a “Steam Deck 2.0.” In speaking to Eurogamer Yazan Aldehayyat, a Valve hardware engineer, said in relation to a successor, “Obviously we’d love to get even more performance in the same power envelope, but that technology doesn’t exist yet.
” This was just under a year ago now, last November, and since then we’ve seen the OLED variant launch alongside a few other mediocre competitors. My perception is that handhelds have plateaued – the Steam Deck is still the best option, despite the internal hardware staying virtually identical. This isn’t a stain on the handheld manufacturers, but rather the fact that realistic and feasible technology just hasn’t been available.
At least, not until AMD releases the Ryzen Z2 chips next year . For context, the ASUS ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go are both powered by the Z1 Extreme; the chip that allows the handhelds to out-perform the Steam Deck in fidelity. However, the main issue is the power draw, meaning that both the Ally and Legion Go have any meaningful use case ripped out from underneath them by clunky design, virtually useless battery life, and an overwhelming lack of practicality.
PCGamer predicts “43% better graphics performance than the Z1 Extreme” if it is indeed a renamed Strix Point die, and that AMD has the opportunity.