The New Steam Handheld Is More Like a Portable Gaming PC
Steam’s much rumored handheld is now an official reality, and its specs are insane. Dubbed the Steam Deck, this thing is essentially a way to take your entire Steam library on the go anywhere, something I’ve personally been wanting to do ever since I got acclimatised to the flexibility of the Switch.
Prices start at US$399 and move up to US$649 depending on how much built in storage you’d like. The base model comes with 64GB, which is just big enough to fit maybe one big AAA game, or about a thousand indie games. An SD card slot on the back allows you to expand storage. It handles remote play as well if you’re wanting to play a game straight off your PC without installing. Otherwise its onboard GPU (8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz with a four-core 3.5GHz Zen 2 processor) can handle playing games natively.
This foot long bad boy weighs 669 grams. It has a 7″ touchscreen with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 at a 16:10 aspect ratio. It has a 60hz refresh rate which is a staple of PC gaming. Plugging it into an external monitor allows you to crank things up to 8K at 60Hz or 4K at 120Hz.
Two trackpads on either side are reminiscent of Steam’s existing controller, which makes it a tiny bit more mouse friendly, although probably still not up to par with a standard mouse and keyboard, which you can plug in if you wanted.
The Steam Deck handles Bluetooth and USB-C peripherals. A separately sold dock will expand the use of this USB-C slot and allow for an ethernet connection, 3 USB-A slots, an HDMI 2 and DisplayPort 1.4. Battery life goes anywhere between 2 to 8 hours, depending on how intensive the game you’re playing is.
All specs at this time are not finalised, so we’ll have to see what actually comes rolling out of factories when it begins shipping in December 2021.
The price point is pretty incredible for the amount of grunt you get out of it. This is a price point that only Valve could get away with. They don’t expect to make money out of their console, they expect to make money from their pre-existing storefront which this entire console is built around. There are plenty of PC handhelds out there, but they can’t take the same sort of cut Valve can without making and marketing their own storefronts. The value of being able to make big bank from the stores in reflected in the ongoing legal battles between Apple and the Epic Store. This is a fight that Valve can bypass entirely by making their own platforms.
Personally this device is looking pretty sweet, as long as the specs don’t change dramatically before release.
