When Nintendo Switch was first teased, the PC gaming market went a little wild. Independent manufacturers took bold steps and packed all they can into a package that resembles the Nintendo Switch running the Windows platform. Despite the fact that most of these devices packs a notebook PC APU with no discreet GPU, they sold them as handheld gaming devices. To be fair, those were good attempts to squish portable gaming devices (gaming laptops) to an even more portable size. In theory also, you get the best gaming experience that is PC gaming.
Obviously, cramming PC grade hardware into constricted space is no mean feat. Most of the handheld gaming ‘PCs’ are thicker than your college textbooks and are as heavy as a brick. You need to fit cooling fans, thermal management systems, storage, RAM, and whatever else you have on a regular laptop into the small package. On top of all of that, you need to fit the controllers too. We thought that we will never see the day a handheld gaming device that can run PC games looking like a Nintendo Switch anytime soon.
Imagine our surprise then when Valve came out to say they have made a handheld gaming device that runs all your PC games. While it should not be a big surprise, it did catch the world off guard a little bit. Valve is not new in creating console peripherals for the PC gaming industry though. They were also responsible for creating something called the Steam Controller a few years back, we never saw the product ourselves though.
The Steam Deck, they call it. It really looks like a Nintendo Switch that is permanently stuck to two third-party Joy Con controllers. You do not get the funky colours of the Nintendo Switch though. Instead, you get a completely gun metal black finish that gives it a more edgy look.
It is built to run the Steam interface on its 7-inch 720p (1,280 x 800) LCD display with 60Hz refresh rate. It is built to run games on your Steam Library on that exact same display at that resolution too. You can get better displays from smartphone devices today, obviously. The issue with better and faster displays is that it presents a very real bottleneck for modern PC games, so some level of sacrifice would be required on portable handheld devices.
Keeping the display running at full chat is an AMD Zen 2 architecture CPU (four-core, eight thread) that is also paired to RDNA 2 GPU (eight CU) custom APU for the Steam Deck. You get 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM that is non-replaceable. 16GB of RAM is ample though for a gaming PC. They even pack it with up to 512GB in an NVMe PCIe SSD format to keep things trundling along at breakneck speeds.
The controller layout does look a little weird because the D-pad lines up with the joystick. The layout is necessary though to fit the touch pads for a more intuitive navigation for the Steam Deck. The 7-inch display is also a touch sensitive display, if you really cannot figure out the controller navigation.
Obviously, the Steam Deck runs on Steam’s custom interface. However, it is also built as a PC complete with a dock and everything with proper I/O. That also means that you can run it as a PC on a desktop display or a TV if you really want to. It runs on Linux though, so you do not get the Windows experience here. Still, you can run third-party apps on Steam Deck, something you cannot do on any other gaming consoles.
Valve’s Steam Deck comes in three flavours when it is available later in December 2021 and beyond. These are not colour options though, rather three storage options. At the most basic you are getting a 64GB eMMC internal storage. A step above that is a 256GB NVMe SSD. At the top of the food chain is a 512GB storage option. All variants come with a MicroSD expansion slot, so you still can get a MicroSD card for more storage if you need to. Prices start from US$ 399 (MYR 1,676*) for the most basic version and tops out at US$ 649 (MYR 2,727*). Compared to the Nintendo Switch, the entry level price is still more expensive. At the top as well, the Steam Deck is approximately US$ 150 (MYR 630*) more than current generation gaming consoles. You do not get to bring around your Steam Library with you on the other consoles though.
*Approximately based on exchange rate of US$ 1 = MYR 4.20 on xe.com as of 16/07/2021