Apologies if any Valve/SD Superfans find this upsetting.

Someone at Valve made the decision to accept low-quality BOE Panels for the LE edition (Quality here is quality control, not image quality or what have you). OLED panels are mature technology and dead pixel QC checks have been a thing for over a decade now. I can’t even recall the last device I received with a dead pixel.

The only way these things are leaving in mass with as many issues as have been posted here is if someone signed off on accepting a lower QC standard - whether for cost or quantity is anyone’s guess. I’m not completely against this - but I do wish they made clear what their acceptable quality standards are or offered a two-tier system (paying more for deck that has gone through extra QC rounds).

When you buy an Intel Processor you are only guaranteed to get one that meets a minimum specification - but you may get one that overperforms. I don’t have a problem with this because the minimum spec is clearly defined. In 2023, dead pixels are not and cannot be assumed to be the “minimum spec” for any piece of equipment. As such, if Valve is taking an approach where the “minimum QC spec” includes dead pixels - they should own up and clearly indicate as such. They aren’t selling an off-brand monitor on a secondary market - even those companies tend to clearly label their products as having low-grade panels.

Not a good first-hardware experience for me with Valve.

It mostly does what it says - allows the display to adjust its refresh rate to exactly match the incoming frame rate from a game.

A 90hz display can’t actually display 60fps content smoothly. It ends up displaying 60fps content at a mix of 45hz and 90hz. (45hz is just displaying the same frame twice). A VRR display can display 60fps content perfectly smooth.