Bring your PC games anywhere with Valve’s Switch-like Steam Deck

Every so often, we see a concept for a PC handheld from some startup that promises to revolutionise portable gaming, but they’ve yet to deliver at a palatable price let alone catch on broadly. That could change later this year with Valve’s Steam Deck, a portable gaming PC that can’t help but look like a Nintendo Switch albeit without detachable controllers. This beastly handheld is powered by a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU, with a meaty 16GB RAM and SSD storage within plus microSD card support. The 7in 1280×800 screen isn’t super high-res, but as we’ve seen with the Switch, games can still look pretty great on a smaller display like this. It has physical and touch controls and is compatible with the entire Steam library, Valve says – so even flashy 3D games like Doom Eternal and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order should run well here. It’ll start at US$399 (about £289) for a version with a 64GB SSD, while versions with speedier 256GB and 512GB NVMe SSDs will cost a bit more while otherwise keeping parity on specs. The Steam Deck starts rolling out in December.