DeckSight is a 1080P AMOLED display panel that drops into an LCD model Valve Steam Deck with no major modifications. DeckSight surpasses the stock LCD in almost every specification, making your games look sharper, more colorful, and with perfect black levels.
$130-140 for the screen
- Display Technology: AMOLED
- Size: 7” diagonal, 16:9 aspect (slightly shorter and wider than stock)
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (up from 1200 x 800)
- Color Depth: 10-bit, 1.07 billion colors (up from 8-bit, 16.7 million colors)
- Brightness: 800 nits
- Surface Options: Matte: Anti-glare and anti-fingerprint etched glass (similar to highest end stock LCD) Gloss: Anti-fingerprint coating (similar to 64 and 256 GB LCD models)
- Refresh Rate: 60 Hz (currently), may be improved in before release or with BIOS patch (likely 80-90 Hz)
- Contrast Ratio: > 1,000,000:1
- Compatibility: Valve Steam Deck (LCD models, 64 GB/256 GB/512 GB)
Hey! I know the guy working on this. Super cool, detail oriented guy.
A drop-in low power OLED display upgrade for LCD model Steam Decks
DeckSight requires a custom BIOS
future updates may temporarily disrupt DeckSight functionality until re-flashing is performed.
So, not drop-in after all.
Yeah it’s a huge pain in the ass to replace the screen too.
The steam deck really can’t do 1080p, depends on what games of course but at 720 is where it functions best
That’s stupid. It’s not a console where settings are locked down. Sure, you probably can’t run a new AAA high fidelity game at 1080p, nor could you run it at native at max settings. There are tons of games out there, new and old, that it can easily run at 1080p, especially if you tweek settings. You can always choose to render at a lower resolution than native too if you want.
The built in screen is 800, not 720.
It can do other resolutions natively if you connect an appropriate display.
Technically it’s 1280x800 which is 720p but slightly taller. While saying it has an 800p display would technically be correct it doesn’t provide context for the actual resolution of the display since it’s only half of the full description of the resolution and there’s no widely agreed upon “800p” resolution. 720p has a coded understanding for how sharp a display is among tech knowledgable people. 800p has no such history. So while saying the steam deck has a 720p display may not be technically correct its actually a much more useful descriptor as most people understand how sharp that display is going to be.
Technically this “1080p” display isn’t even 1080p. Its 1920x1200 but it has the same pixel density as a similarly sized 1080p 16:9 display. So we say 1080. 4k is also not 4000 pixels. Its 3840x2160
Edit: Apparently the decksite is actually a 16:9 1080p display. I had assumed it kept the aspect ratio of the deck itself. It evidently does not.
The steam deck really can’t do 1080p
When docked, I use 1080p all the time.
You can run games at 720p and upscale to 1080p. I’m assuming that’s how people will want to run any of the more demanding games with this mod.
I was about to say “look interesting, but I’m going to wait for reviews”, but it seems that I need to do that anyway:
[…] for the initial launch, CE compliance will not be pursued and DeckSight will not be available in EU countries that conform to CE
meh
Also, why do these replacement screens always insist on increasing the resolution?
The low res is one of the main reasons the Deck holds up as well as it does.
It’s easier to source a screen with a particular size that has standard resolution.
The steamdeck has a super awkward resolution that doesn’t fit into any standard aspect ratio. Which creates problems with some games.
If you want to play games on a lower resolution for performance reasons, you can always just to that. Games don’t need to run on the native resolution.
Playing a lower resolution on a screen that has a higher one will generally also make the image look nicer, as the DPI is higher. (just be careful and don’t scale to some weird fractional scales)
1280x800 is 16:10, a standard aspect ratio, and isn’t far from 16:9 at all. 720p (HD) is 1280x720
The steamdeck has a super awkward resolution that doesn’t fit into any standard aspect ratio. Which creates problems with some games.
Games don’t need to run on the native resolution.
Yeah they don’t. The Deck’s resolution is fine. Do you have any examples of games that don’t run well on the deck?
edit:
Playing a lower resolution on a screen that has a higher one will generally also make the image look nicer
No. Native resolution always looks better
Upscaling is available, and especially if the higher resolution is a clean 2x then doing it with minimal artifacts it’s quite easy
This may be feasible for WQHD, but upscaling from 960x540 > 1920x1080 doesn’t really sound like an upgrade from WXGA anymore.
Another problem is that while there are some 3D games that support internal upscaling (FSR etc), not every game has the option to scale the UI indepently so things look extremely small at higher resolutions. The games that support both should be an exception and look better on a higher DPI screen.
I do believe that you could either slightly increase the resolution and screensize to 1600x1000 or 1600x900, or just use a WQHD-screen so you can get clean 2x upscaling from 720p.
My main laptop is literally 16:10, same res as a deck, pretty sure most Macbooks and productivity monitors are 16:10 too, my gf even snagged a 30" 16:10 monitor. Who tf even bothers with 16:9 anymore lmao it’s the worst of all worlds.
I believe it has to do with availability of pre-existing screens. I don’t think a startup can afford original deck exclusive OLED panels, these were probably mass produced for another device and are just being refitted for the Deck.
1080p is a terrible way to “upgrade” your Steam Deck.
Agreed, for me. But if I played all retro, might be a different story.
Really depends on the content you consume. A lot of indie games and old games could benefit from 1080p. Especially with small text. And for more power hungry games you can always choose 720p
Oh yeah. Small text is a fair point, and one that I hadn’t considered.
I’m just trying to get a decent framerate for my 3D platformers and horror games and the Deck isn’t exactly impressing me at 800p 😭
How so?
Were you expecting 1440p for a handheld? The steam deck can’t handle resolutions that are too high already anyway
Normal screen is close to 720. Boosting up to 1080 has little benefit at this size and negatively affects performance and battery.
No, the steam dk can berely handle full HD on most games that would benefit from it.
I would definitely go for that, if it wasn’t a whole world of pain to tear down the Deck to do a screen change.
For me, these are the kinds of things that are nice to have if my native screen dies anyway somehow, and I would have replaced it no matter what. The more options the better in that scenario.
But to change out the screen just because it’s possible? Nah dawg I’m good.
I went ahead and backed it. I am slowly amassing everything I need for a complete shell swap (and other bits and bobs to mod my deck - last things needed are a bigger SSD and a SSD enclosure to clone the drive/use the original as external storage). If this gets funded, I’ll just wait until I get it in May and just not have to worry about detaching the stock screen and reattaching it to the new shell. If this doesn’t get funded I’ll just order a replacement screen from ifixit.
