Valve surprised everyone by formalizing its Steam Deck portable console, which allows you to play its games Steam nomadic locally. The device comes out at the end of the year, but reservations will open on July 16.
Against all odds and through a simple press release, Valve announced the launch of its own portable console: Steam Deck. The promise, give players the opportunity to enjoy titles from their Steam library from anywhere.
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AMD Architecture, Stunning Design
“Portable, yet powerful,” promises Valve. Steam Deck is designed to run the latest AAA games in good quality. The device is equipped with a chip carrying a CPU clocked at 3,5 GHz and an AMD GPU, with Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures. It also has a 5 GB LPDDR16 RAM. The storage ranges from 64 to 512 GB depending on the variant, each time with a “super fast” microSD card slot.
The touchscreen LCD is optically bonded for better readability. It offers a diagonal of 7 inches for a definition of 1 × 280 pixels in 800:16 format. The refresh rate is limited to 10 Hz and the brightness can reach up to 60 nits.
The controls of the portable console seem to be positioned very high, but it will be necessary to take Steam Deck in hand to judge the comfort. The analog sticks are symmetrical and haptic feedback trackpads are integrated just below. The directional arrow finds a place at the top left, the A, B, X and Y keys at the top right. The R1/L1 and R2/L2 triggers are located behind, in the upper part, while four other controls take place in the back of the console: R4/L4 and R5/L5.
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More expensive than a Switch, or even a PS5
Two microphones and two speakers are integrated, as is a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB-C port for charging (up to 45W). The 40 Wh battery offers, according to the manufacturer, an autonomy of between 2 and 8 hours, a range which does not mean much and which depends on the use that we will have of the console.
Like the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck has a docking station, but this will be sold separately. It allows you to connect external displays, a network cable, USB peripherals and power supply thanks to its Ethernet, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, USB 3.1 and USB 2.0 ports (two sockets of this type).
In Spain, the portable console will cost 419 euros for the version with 64 GB of eMMC storage, 549 euros for the configuration with 256 GB of NVMe SSD, and 679 euros for the model equipped with 512 GB of NVMe SSD and a glass with premium anti-reflective coating.
The first copies will be shipped in December 2021. Reservations will start from Friday July 16 at 19 p.m. (Paris time). To be able to reserve during the first 48 hours, you must have made a purchase on Steam before June 2021, says Valve, which intends here to fight scalpers who buy the available stocks to resell them at full price.
