Even though the hardware isn’t final, reports confirm the arrival of Steam Deck for handheld Steam gaming. The company has revealed a model which currently looks like a mix of Switch, a Sega Game Gear, and the Steam Controller. The seven-inch touchscreen comes with a resolution of 1,280×800 at a 16:10 aspect ratio, 400 nits of brightness, and a 60Hz refresh rate. The device will be available to customers in the US, Canada, the European Union, and the UK in December with a tag of $399.
The dual thumbsticks, two 32.5mm square trackpads, an analog directional pad, four main face buttons, triggers, and a quartet of grip buttons and gyrocontrols make up the device. It also has a headphone jack, stereo speakers, dual microphones, and haptic feedback. Weighing around 669gms and measuring only up to a foot’s width, it has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 512 GB of NVMe internal storage. It can be further expanded using a microSD card.
The company claims that it can efficiently run recent major games because it is a “Zen 2+ RDNA 2 powerhouse”. The custom chipset features a 2.4-3.5GHz processor and a 1.0 to 1.6GHz GPU with 8 RDNA 2 compute units. The 40W battery can run the device for up to 2-8 hours on a single charge. It runs on a new version of SteamOS and has access to many Switch features. The built-in quick suspend and resume feature allows one to suspend the game and resume it when you switch on the device again.
It also supports a range of Bluetooth and USB-C peripherals and can be connected to external devices. Valve is also making an official dock and Steam Deck can be used as an actual PC with its features with an option to download other game stores. The reservations are open from July 16th and can be made on the Steam Store.
