Valve announces Steam Deck handheld gaming PC to take on Nintendo Switch

In an effort to take on the Nintendo Switch, Valve has announced the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck is a portable handheld gaming PC that marries a Nintendo Switch-like form factor with a vast gaming library on Steam. Teased earlier this year in May by Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell, the Steam Deck is official now and is going to start shipping by December this year. The Steam Deck comes with a 7-inch touchscreen display that has controller buttons and analogue sticks on either side, much like the Switch. This gaming device is going to be offered in multiple storage options and is powered by an AMD CPU and GPU.

Steam Deck price

Valve’s Steam Deck is priced at $399 ( ₹29,800 approx) for the 64GB eMMC version, $529 ( ₹39,500 approx) for the 256GB NVMe SSD version, and $649 ( ₹48,400 approx) for the 512GB NVMe SSD model. There is only one colour available on the Steam Deck right now, which is black, we might see more colours later, but it is not official. The Steam Deck will be available for purchase in December this year and will be available in Canada, UK, US, and the European Union. We know nothing about the India prices or availability dates yet.

While all the three variants of the Steam Deck come with a carrying case for the device, the 256GB and the 512GB model come with some extra perks. The 256GB Steam Deck comes with an exclusive Steam community profile bundle and the 512GB model comes with a premium anti-glare etched glass, the Steam community profile bundle, an exclusive carrying case, and an exclusive virtual keyboard theme. You can reserve any of the devices right now but only in the regions mentioned above.

Steam Deck specs, features

The Steam Deck runs on Arch Linux-based SteamOS 3.0 that has been specifically optimised for a handheld experience. It has a built-in quick suspend/resume feature and you can install and use PC software and perform typical desktop tasks on this as well. It also allows you to install other game stores on it like Origin, Epic, etc.

The Steam Deck comes with a 7-inch LCD display with 1,280x800 pixels resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, 60Hz refresh rate, and 400 nits of peak brightness. The screen is touch-enabled and comes with an ambient light sensor as well. Under the hood, it is powered by an AMD APU that includes a Zen 2 based 4-core 8-thread CPU with clock speed ranging from 2.4GHz to 3.5GHz and a GPU with 8 RDNA 2 compute units (CUs) that range from 1.0GHz to 1.6GHz. The APU's power ranges from 4W to 15W.

The Steam Deck comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and three storage options - a 64GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1) storage, a 256GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4), and a 512GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4). All three models come with the expandable storage option via a microSD card slot that works with SD, SDXC, and SDHC cards. As Valve noted, the 256GB and 512GB options will be much faster than the 64GB model and the 512GB option will be the fastest. The Steam Deck comes with dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v5, a 3.5mm stereo headphone combo jack, and a USB Type-C port that can be used to output the display on a TV or monitor. It can handle up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz.

In terms of game controls, you get a D-Pad, two analogue sticks, A B X Y buttons, bumpers, triggers, two trackpads, and four additional buttons on the back that can be customised in-game. The Steam Deck comes with a built-in gyro sensor as well and works with an external keyboard or mouse.

There is a 40Whr battery on board and promises about two to eight hours of gameplay. The USB Type-C port supports 45W charging. The Steam Deck comes with stereo speakers and a dual microphone array. With the Steam Deck you get a dock that will allow you to get external display connectivity via HDMI or DisplayPort, wired networking, a USB hub, etc. As IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey pointed out, Steam Deck can run other operating systems besides SteamOS adding that it will run every Xbox game that is available on Steam.