As much as I really rate my Nintendo Switch, for me the king or queen of the best gaming handhelds has to be the Steam Deck. It's beautifully built, it has access to a huge variety of games from exceptional Indies to the biggest blockbusters and I've lost entire evenings to its many joys. The only thing I don't like is the price. So it's nice to see that Valve has finally cut the cost of the Steam Deck everywhere it sells it.
The price cut is a decent 10% off, so in the US that means the price is just shy of $360 / $477 / $585 for the 64, 256 and 512GB models respectively. In the UK it's £314 / £413 / £512.
If you've been hanging on for a decent Steam Deck deal, this is it. And here's a knowingly cheesy video about it.
Which Steam Deck should you buy?
They're all great, but when I was spending my own money I went for the mid-range 256GB model. I'm not a huge Steam gamer – I tend to play the same handful of games to death – so I didn't feel the need to shell out for the biggest storage, but the 64GB one looked a little too limited to me. It also has the slowest storage of the three, with eMMC storage instead of the NVMe SSDs of its two bigger siblings.
The Steam Deck launch wasn't as smooth as it could have been, but the teething troubles are long gone and it's a very solid handheld with over 8,000 verified games to play.
If you're wondering whether this discounting is to clear stock in anticipation of a new and much more powerful model, I think that's possible but highly unlikely. Valve recently said it had no intention of massively updating the handheld with a massively more powerful processor; the guts of the hardware, as far as Valve is concerned, are pretty much ideal already. That doesn't mean a Steam Deck 2 won't have improvements in other areas, much like the Switch OLED improved on the Switch with a better display. But the current Steam Deck is a safe buy in terms of future-proof gaming.
If you want to take advantage of the discounting you'll need to do it fairly soon. The prices go back to normal after 23 March.
Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
-
You’ve seen the rebrand, now here’s the first new Jaguar EV
The Type 00 concept previews Jaguar’s all-new electric line-up. We speak to the creatives behind it
By Phil McNamara Published
-
Audi A6 e-tron: your up-market EV estate has landed
The Audi A6 saloon and Avant estate – plus sportier S6 versions of both – deliver futuristic looks and promise huge range.
By Alistair Charlton Published