Steam Deck prices, specs, benchmarks, and where to buy

What are the Steam Deck costs? The Steam Deck is a fabulous machine, packing a shocking quantity of energy into a conveyable package deal that’s additionally obtainable at an inexpensive price. The value you pay for one will in the end be decided by which mannequin you go for, however it can save you your self a couple of dollars hopefully and persistence.

Since our Steam Deck review, the hand-held has come alongside leaps and bounds with numerous enhancements to SteamOS and Proton, leading to a way more polished expertise. These adjustments have allowed the variety of best Steam Deck games to develop into the tens of 1000’s, making the Steam Deck value all of the extra palatable.

What are the Steam Deck costs?

The Steam Deck costs begin at $399 / £349 for the 64GB mannequin, with the 256GB model coming in at $529 / £459, and the 512GB version topping out at $649 / £569.

The very best Steam Deck costs are all the time these set by Valve itself, with third-party sellers on Amazon and different shops charging a further premium for the system. As such, we strongly advocate solely buying a Steam Deck by way of the Steam retailer.

For those who’re in search of reductions on the Steam Deck value, your finest wager is to attend for a Steam sale. Beforehand, Valve has provided a Steam Deck discount of as much as 20% for the 512GB mannequin, making it simply $519.20. The opposite variations of the Deck additionally obtained a value lower, albeit a smaller 15% for the 256GB model and 10% for the 64GB.

Alternatively, in case you don’t thoughts your transportable PC being solely brand-new, you could possibly strike fortunate with the Certified Refurbished Steam Deck program. Costs right here begin from $319, making it the most affordable approach to get a Steam Deck, however inventory is understandably very restricted.

What are the Steam Deck specs?

The Steam Deck specs focus on a customized quad-core AMD Zen 2 APU with eight RDNA 2 compute items, paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. This chip was constructed particularly to offer an excellent steadiness of efficiency and energy consumption, with a TDP of simply 15W.

The Steam Deck display makes use of a 7-inch IPS panel, with a local decision of 1280 x 800 and a refresh fee of 60Hz. This pales compared to the likes of the ASUS ROG Ally, however Valve staff have already voiced their needs to construct a Steam Deck 2 with a superior display.

With regards to storage choices, the Steam Deck is available in three flavors of capability: 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB. When you can swap out the SSD inside the hand-held, it’s a lot simpler to fit within the best microSD card for Steam Deck because you don’t must open up the system.

As a substitute of Home windows 11, the Steam Deck makes use of SteamOS 3.0, Valve’s personal working system primarily based on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 5. As such, the Proton compatibility layer is used to get video games operating on the Deck, resulting in the creation of the Deck Verified system.

Steam Deck benchmarks

Steam Deck benchmarks present that whereas Valve’s transportable PC is as a rule a perky powerhouse, there are some video games which might be merely an excessive amount of for the system to deal with.

For instance, Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam Deck efficiency sees the verified title run at 30fps utilizing medium settings at 1080p, which could be boosted with using upscaling applied sciences like AMD FSR. That is a formidable feat for the system, given how demanding the RPG sport is.

Nevertheless, with video games like Returnal being nigh-unplayable and Remnant 2 on the Steam Deck being a wake-up call for Valve, the system could also be hitting its limits with trendy releases. Even so, there are tonnes of basic video games and less-demanding titles that the Steam Deck will fortunately energy via.

Valve claims that the Deck’s 40Whr battery ought to permit for 2 to eight hours of gameplay, relying on how demanding the sport you’re enjoying is. Nevertheless, in keeping with Gamers Nexus, you may drain the system’s battery in slightly below 90 minutes, in case you don’t cap your body fee and use larger settings.

For these involved that microSD playing cards aren’t in a position to sustain with the Steam Deck’s inner SSD, The Phawx has some excellent news for you. Of their benchmarks, they discovered that load occasions between the 2 storage mediums had been “largely the identical.” Even within the worst case situations, video games loaded round 12-17 seconds slower than the inner SSD.

When was the Steam Deck launch date?

The Steam Deck launch date was February 25, 2022, with Valve having to delay the launch of the system from its preliminary window of December 2021. Nevertheless, it wasn’t till October 2022 that the Steam Deck was obtainable to order with out a reservation.

For the reason that Steam Deck launch date, the hand-held is now obtainable to buy alongside the Valve Steam Deck Docking Station, the official dock for the system.