PlayStation 5 (Launch) vs Steam Deck OLED 1TB
A side-by-side readout for ray tracing.
Understanding ray tracing
Ray tracing is a yes/no feature — a product either ships with it or it doesn't. There is no middle ground and no firmware update will retrofit it. Boolean specs tend to fall into two buckets: nice-to-haves that occasionally swing a buying decision (think wireless charging, biometric sensors, headphone jacks) and hard requirements that rule a product out entirely (think water resistance for swimmers, expandable storage for media collectors). Decide upfront which bucket this feature falls into for your use case. If it's a nice-to-have, treat its presence as a tiebreaker between otherwise-equivalent options. If it's a hard requirement, filter it first and only compare among products that include it — there is no point ranking a product that fails your gate.
This matchupPlayStation 5 (Launch) ships with ray tracing, Steam Deck OLED 1TB does not. For buyers who rely on this feature it is a hard requirement — there is no software workaround once the hardware is missing.
Other specs on this comparison
See the full Game Consoles category for all products ranked by Mars Score.