Well, it takes:
2 days for RMA Approval and Label
10 days via UPS to travel to them
3 days for Processing
6 days for shipping of replacement unit
That would be 21-Days, keep in mind that you should not count Sundays as it doesn’t seem like the Steam Deck moved on Sunday at all (when first being shipped to me nor when being returned for replacement). Idk if their warehouse is open on Saturdays or Sundays, which might affect delivery, shipping, and processing.
You will notice dead pixels, here’s how:
You can open up Firefox (when you hold down power button, go to Desktop, then click Firefox it’ll download after a minute) search ‘dead pixel test’, and click onto it. If there is a dot on the screen that doesn’t come off when you gently use the microfiber cloth (aka check that it isn’t dirt), you will want to go through each screen color.
If a black dot only appears on one of the three colors, which are Red, Green, Blue, it will also show on White, then you have a dead pixel (subpixel, whatever color it shows black on is what type of dead one it is; i.e. black dot on green, nothing on blue or red means you have a dead green subpixel).
OLED displays work by using a red, blue, green subpixel to display colors. White is a mix of all three, black is the absence of them. So on white if green is out you’ll have a reddish brown or purple dot form, on red you’ll have no dot, on blue no dot, but on green there’ll be a dot.
How is it connected to earth?
They aren’t doing that for the LE though, and now it is out of stock…
Not necessarily so for a dead pixel though
Indeed, and the apparent 3-week leadtime for a replacement unit
Seems a legit way to test for dead pixels.
Have they asked you to try and fix the pixels by >!turning it off and on again?!<
It seems to be a replacement
That’s dead for sure.
Up to you if you want to do an RMA or not, I would generally recommend doing so as this is not a cheap device.
You need to take a picture of the pixel though zoom in (a lot, you should be able to see the pixels), I would take one of it on a green background and another on the white. This needs to be submitted alongside your RMA request to Steam so that it will be approved w/o delay.
On the green it is black b/c the green subpixel is dead (blue & red are off). If it was stuck, it would show on the other two screens too. To form white it mixes all three colors…so if one is missing it’ll form a dot that isn’t black (which would require the absence of colors), but will form one that is a composite of the other two.
No, use Firefox to do a search for ‘dead pixel test’, and then go through it.
If you have purple on a white screen, that means that you have the red & blue working, but not the green (unless both are stuck). You’ll be able to tell based on what happens with the dead pixel test.
On the green background, if a black dot appears, you have a dead subpixel. Unless it also appears on the red & blue screens. It is possible that it is a stuck pixel, just kinda unlikely. It could also be multiple dead subpixels, but purple is probably red & blue either stuck together (somewhat unlikely), or that green is dead, which is somewhat common at this point.
Rate of issue? Who knows, could be 50%, could be 1%, impossible to say. All I know is a lot of people with the LE have a dead green subpixel it seems.
Out of curiosity why are you refunding?
If you are looking for a replacement LE you need to do a RMA, if you refund you can’t buy another apparently.
Otherwise carry on.
You do understand that that makes zero sense right?
There could be a 99% issue rate, just because you don’t have an issue doesn’t mean that it isn’t quite common. There could be a 1% issue rate with 100,000 copies delivered so far, and that would also cause the amount of people discussing it that have been.
Honestly feels kinda petty, like you’re rubbing it in the faces of people like myself that DID have issues. Do you think we’re lying or something?
No, the majority of people just want to buy something and it work.
It would be cheaper than the other models, there’d probably be a ton of issues with uninformed people buying them, and not realizing now that they need to go get 3rd party hardware for it to work. On top of that, any incompatibilities with the SSDs they use will become Valve’s problem.
It’d be better to just add a second NVME port.
Well, you’re already doomed then, since many games on Steam only play at 1280 x 720p, aka the black bars of death.
Is that what it costs in Canada or something?
My list:
I think everything else is fine. More case options is probably beyond the scope of what they really should want to do. A larger, faster NVME SSD is pretty much a guarantee anyways, no need to ask for that.
Micro not Mini LED is superior to OLED, more expensive though. Would probably double the price of the handheld, but there are plenty of people (like me) that would buy it anyways. Should only be an option, not the default, unless they somehow manage to do it at the same pricepoint as OLED; otherwise their sales will drop considerably.
The biggest advantage that the Steam Deck has, is that games are being developed, designed to run on it.
Games aren’t being designed to run on the Rog Ally (at least most won’t). Many game developers are going to go for that green checkmark, and it gives them a good target to design for.
No, just do it though, play on the console in the meantime. It’s not like they disable it or anything while you wait.
Unless it is unplayable due to the pixels, might as well get some use out of it.
They only give you the label though, hopefully you kept the box or else you’ll need to find one or buy one (not really an issue in all honesty), my RMA label was through UPS, it cost me like $18 for box & packing, probably took 15 minutes with 12 of them spent in line b/c of old people.
Absolute worst case you go through 2-3 RMA’d units with issues, before you just refund and get the regular model.
The screen costs a lot more than $90, it will probably be $200 or more. Honestly if they had just offered me $100-200 to keep it, I would have.
Nope, I sent mine away last Saturday at 9 am, won’t be arriving at the facility in Utah apparently with the shipping they chose until Next Monday, and then 3 days of processing, ~6 days of return shipping…
If it’s not new / same model (and unblemished) I’ll be returning it I think. I went ahead and bought a glossy model b/c I realized that it’ll be about Christmas before I see the replacement LE, and if I waited until then to order my replacement it’d be like 1-2 weeks into January.