An aftermarket Steam Deck screen upgrade is coming, and its not a good idea

DeckHD’s 1200p screen upgrade brings high resolution gaming to Steam Deck

Valve’s Steam Deck ships with a 7-inch 800p screen, and there is a reason for that. The Steam Deck is a piece of mobile gaming hardware, and that means that the device has a limited amount of gaming horsepower. High resolution gaming requires a lot of GPU horsepower, and this is why Valve stuck to a seemingly basic 800p 60Hz display. That said, there are those who would like to see a higher resolution Steam Deck, or new Steam Deck revisions that feature other screen upgrades. 

FX Technology, a mobile tech company has revealed their DeckHD screen upgrade, a new Steam Deck compatible screen that offers gamers a higher resolution screen (1200p vs 800p) that features an anti-glare coating and 95% sRGB coverage. The screen’s specifications say that the DeckHD upgrade offers the same 400 nits of screen brightness as Valve’s standard Steam Deck screen, and the screen can offer users a 60Hz refresh rate. 

With its higher level of sRGB coverage, the DeckHD screen can offer users higher levels of colour accuracy, and its anti-glare coating make this screen a great upgrade option for users of Valve’s baseline glossy Steam Deck models. The higher resolution nature of the screen also opens the door to higher resolution gaming, which has its upsides and downsides. The screen is expected to cost $99 and release soon.

As mentioned before, the high resolution nature of this Steam Deck screen upgrade is a mixed bag, as while a screen with a higher pixel count can deliver clearer images, rendering games at a higher resolution requires more system resources. Simply put, the potential of Valve’s Steam Deck hardware is limited, and many games will not run well at 1200p. While a lot of older games will be playable at 1200p at 60 FPS on Valve’s Steam Deck, a lot of newer titles won’t. Beyond that, rendering games at a higher resolution will shorten the Steam Deck’s battery life, something that is already seen as a weak point for the device.

Since the Steam Deck’s launch there have been calls for a new model with a higher-end screen, but most users of the Steam Deck have called for an OLED screen upgrade, not a high resolution screen upgrade. That said, there will certainly be more than a few Steam Deck fans who will want a DeckHD screen upgrade, even if it has downsides. 

You can join the discussion on the Steam Deck’s 1200p DeckHD screen upgrade on the OC3D Forums.