Signs of Valve’s Steam Deck OLED getting official refurbished units have just been spotted. This will be the company’s first time introducing the OLED model to its refurbished program, where it sells used Steam Decks at a discount.
The Steam Deck OLED has quickly become our favorite and the best PC gaming handheld on the market. Despite being beaten in terms of raw power by the competition, this handheld is an overall better system to use, thanks to its use of SteamOS, as we found in our Steam Deck OLED review.
This information was spotted by intrepid Valve watcher Brad Lynch, who shared a screenshot of the Steam Deck refurbish listing on Steam receiving an update. While there’s not much to see on the surface, it has received two additional “packages” connected to the listing.
There’s a good chance Valve could announce the OLED refurb program in the next Steam sale, which is set for December 19. The LCD Steam Deck refurbishments were announced in August 2023, and have been hugely popular.
The Winter Sale would be a good entry point to introduce them, but there’s nothing officially confirmed right now. Valve slashed the prices of the LCD models by a good chunk for the refurbished models, with the 512GB model getting knocked from $649 to $519. It’s since been discounted further, giving a good indication of how far the $549 512GB OLED model’s price could dip.
As the competition begins to heat up around the handheld space, Valve is definitely cementing itself as the top dog. Recent findings have suggested that the company is gearing up for a wider SteamOS launch, with its custom version of Linux potentially heading to other handhelds and mini PCs. We could very well see far more powerful or different hardware land with a “Powered by SteamOS” badge in the near future.
However, Valve has been adamant that the next Steam Deck should only come after a significant jump in performance. If you want a glimpse of what’s coming, you should check out the best mini gaming PC guide, as many of the smallest of these machines use similar AMD CPUs with integrated GPUs to the ones found in the latest handhelds.