The hardware is, admittedly, crowded, and you’re going to want to rework some keybindings sooner or later, but it all works better than I expected it would. The action takes place on a 7-inch touchscreen built into the center of the Deck.

You can play those games directly on the Deck with its two analog sticks, four face buttons, four assignable buttons on the unit’s grips, two analog triggers, two “bumpers,” and two 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback. Your Deck treats your Steam games as if they’re all part of what the Steam desktop client calls a Dynamic Collection, with a big suite of custom filters that let you organize and sort your games by playtime, achievement completion, file size, and so on. To get games on your Deck, you download them wirelessly from your library on the Steam storefront. In my tests using the 256GB edition, I was able to run Doom Eternal, one of the most demanding games in my Steam library, at 60 FPS without any issues, on a portable device. TLDR: the Deck is very powerful for its price. “If you’re looking to break into PC gaming for an incredibly low introductory price, however, the Steam Deck might be the single best deal that anyone’s ever offered.” Each Deck features 16 GB of RAM, a custom AMD processor with a Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz CPU, and a 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz GPU. The 512GB model also has special anti-glare etched glass on its front screen, but the three types of Deck are otherwise identical. All three models also feature a slot for a microSD card for expanded storage, which is mandatory for the cheapest brand of Deck and a solid quality-of-life bonus for the 512GB. (Valve Image)Īt launch, the Steam Deck comes in three models with three different internal hard drives: a 64GB eMMC ($399), a faster 256GB NVMe SSD ($529), or a top-line 512GB NVMe SSD ($649). The tale of the tape As with everything else at Valve, the Steam Deck went through a lot of prototypes before it settled on the current model.

Its real value is in its low cost, which can open the world of PC gaming up to a whole new audience. If you’re a diehard PC player, this isn’t going to replace your desktop or even your laptop, but the Deck brings a lot of interesting utility to the table.

Steamdeck cost