I am not sure if this is due to panel differences. Off angle (greater angle than is likely typical under normal use), the Samsung panel starts to get a rainbow/oil slick effect that I find a bit distracting and distorts the colors.

Happens on the glossy the Samsung panel too. That behavior is typical of Samsung rigid (glass substrate, glass encapsulation) OLED panels. The refraction of light through the glass stack causes “rainbow” viewing angles. Alternating between blue pink then green blue as angle increases.

The LE BOE panel has less gap between the glass and the panel.

That’s really interesting to me - when you shine a light on the display, do you notice any (minor) waviness/distortion of the light reflecting off the panel? Particularly on the junction between the panel and bezel.

I highly doubt it, but the BOE display could be a flexible (polyimide substrate, thin-film encapsulation) panel, which would be a first for a “tablet class” display. The easiest way to tell would be for someone to do a teardown on the LE model and look at the panel ID found on the ribbon cable.

For the BOE Steam Deck panel, if flexible, it’ll be along the lines of BF074xxx, and if rigid, something like BB074xxx.

For the Steam Deck’s rigid Samsung panel, it’s AMS740DJ01.

Unfortunately I haven’t found a full tear down for the LE, but you can usually visually identify a flexible panels (such as ones found on all OLED iPhones and practically every flagship OLED phone) as they aren’t usually perfectly flat unlike their rigid counterparts. Part of the reason why it’s Apple is rumored to use a hybrid (glass substrate, thin-film encapsulation) OLED for their upcoming iPads. Might be impossibly to discern due to the etched glass cover, though chances are the BOE panel just uses thinner glass than Samsung for encapsulating the OLED device.

Very limited sample size on Discord, but looks like both Samsung and BOE panels are appearing in the wild.