Just days after Nintendo released its new Switch OLED, popular gaming company Valve has announced the launch of its much-awaited Switch-like handheld gaming console. Dubbed the Steam Deck, the portable console comes equipped with an AMD APU, up to 512GB of storage, and more.
Display and Controls
The Steam Deck is a portable, gaming-centric device that is designed to offer high-end games on the go. It comes with a big 7-inch touch-enabled display with a resolution of 1280 x 800p resolution that can deliver 720p gameplay. Apart from the screen, there is an array of buttons, thumbsticks, and a couple of touch-sensitive trackpads on the front.
Ports and Battery
Moreover, the device comes with built-in microphones, a MicroSD slot, an integrated fan for cooling, a USB-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack onboard. There is also a 40Wh battery inside that can deliver 7-8 hours of battery life when playing smaller 2D games or browsing the web. As per Valve, users can play Portal 2 on the device for four hours at standard FPS. However, if they limit the FPS to 30 frames, the device could run for 5-6 hours.
Coming to the internals, the Steam Deck packs an AMD application processing unit. It contains a quad-core Zen 2 CPU with eight threads and eight compute units of AMD RDNA 2 graphics. The APU is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The device comes in three storage variants – 64GB eMMC, 256GB NVMe SSD, and 512GB high-speed NVMe SSD storage.
As for the software, the Steam Deck runs “a new version of SteamOS”, which is based on Linux. It is optimized for the device’s form factor and will use Proton as a compatibility layer to run Windows-based games without the need of porting them for the Steam Deck. Users will also be able to connect a mouse, keyboard, and monitor to the device and install third-party game stores, regular PC software, and more.
Valve, along with the Steam Deck console, will also release a dedicated dock. It will let users connect the console to an external display like a TV. However, as per Valve, the Steam Deck “can be plugged into your TV, monitor, or even your old CRT if you have the right cables.”
Coming to the price, the Steam Deck starts at $399 (~Rs. 29,775) for the base 64GB eMMC storage variant and goes up to $649 (~Rs. 48,429) for the highest-end 512GB SSD storage variant. The 256GB SSD storage model is priced at $529 (~Rs. 39,475).
