With its remarkable OLED HDR display, dramatically improved battery life and numerous quality of life fixes, the new Steam Deck OLED is an exceptional PC handheld – but there was something else I noticed during testing that I wanted to check out. The system felt snappier and more responsive – and it is. Backers of the DF Supporter Program were also expecting response time improvements from the new screen which further motivated my testing and yes, it turns out that Steam Deck OLED doesn’t just last longer and look better, depending on your sensitivity to input lag, it plays better too.
At a basic level you can define input lag as the time taken between user input – like pressing a button – then the resulting action happening on-screen. There’s always going to be processing time within the game engine itself, which is the time taken to process the input from the player through the game logic and then through the renderer. This will vary quite dramatic in of itself from game to game. And then there’s extra lag from the display itself.
In receiving an impressive upgrade to its display, Steam Deck OLED attacks input lag seemingly on two fronts. First of all, the response time of the panel itself in like-for-like display refresh rates seems to be faster on my OLED Deck up against my launch LCD model. So, comparing the LCD panel at 60Hz with a game running at 60fps up against OLED in the same scenario, the OLED is typically 10ms faster to respond in my testing. But there’s more than that – the OLED can top out at 90Hz, opening the door to even faster response. You may not be playing too many games at 90fps on Steam Deck, but the 90Hz panel can play a key role when the Deck’s frame-rate limiting options are engaged – and you’ll be using those a lot.
