Steam Reveals a Portable Gaming Device Called the Steam Deck
Valve made a big move recently with the announcement of the Steam Deck. This is a handheld device running SteamOS designed to allow people to play their PC games on the go. If it looks familiar, that’s because it possibly reminds you of a Nintendo Switch crossed over with a SEGA Game Gear. One big criticism I have about the Steam Deck is that it appears the button layout is horrendous with the D-pad and buttons appearing to be on the extreme edges to allow for the trackpads. Let’s take a deeper look at what you can expect from the machine though.
The Steam Deck touts a 7” 1280x800 LCD multi-input touchscreen (it’s a 16:10 ratio) with a 60hz refresh rate. Inside is a custom AMD Zen 2 APU with 4-cores and 8-threads for the CPU. This is paired with 8 RDNA 2 units for the GPU and 16GBs of LPDDR5 RAM. Over at IGN they found this enough to play Jedi Fallen Order on High graphic settings via an in-development model. For inputs, you have the 4 standard buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, 2 triggers, a D-pad, 2 full-size capacitive joysticks, 2 trackpads for mouse inputs, and 4 buttons on the back that can be programmed to meet your individual needs. The machine even has Bluetooth support. For storage, there will be three models available: 64 GB ($399), 256 GB ($529), and 512 GB ($649) along with a Micro SD card slot for extra storage.
As far as ports go, the Steam Deck has a USB-C port and a 3.5mm headphone port. It can be connected to any USB-C dock to allow the use of USB peripherals and HDMI out for connecting to monitors and televisions. Valve will be releasing its own dock separately in the future, but details are fairly scarce at this time.
In an FAQ with IGN, it was revealed the battery life of the Steam Deck is between 2-8 hours depending on what you’re doing. It was also confirmed that the more storage your core machine has, the faster the read and write speeds will be. Also, the 512 GB model will have a premium anti-glare etched glass treatment applied to the screen.
This looks like a neat machine that many fans are going to enjoy. Are you excited for the new Steam Deck?