Steam Deck Handheld PC Officially Announced by Valve with Preorders Starting Tomorrow

It's a competitor to the new Nintendo Switch OLED

Game company Valve has officially announced the newest hardware it will sell on retail soon, the new handheld PC Steam Deck.

This coming December 2021, Valve will release its own handheld PC. Before the official announcement, rumors called it the SteamPal with some dubious details about it, but now we have the official information.

According to a press release, “Steam Deck is a powerful all-in-one portable PC. With a custom processor developed in cooperation with AMD, Steam Deck is comparable to a gaming laptop with the ability to run the latest AAA games. Your Steam library will be on Deck to play games wherever and whenever you want. Steam Deck is also an open PC, adding the ability to install any software or connect with any hardware.”

The custom processor that was co-developed by AMD is optimized for handheld and it uses the AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture. It also has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. It be available with varying onboard storage, which are 64GB, 256GB and 512GB, and it can also be expanded with micro-SD cards.

The handheld PC has a 7” 1280 x 800px LCD touchscreen with two controllers on each side. It has analog sticks, buttons, and triggers. It also has the two track pads, which was the same type on the Steam controller that was released years ago. There is also the gyro sensor.

The Steam Deck can be docked and used like a regular computer. The dock will be sold separately, but the unit will have a USB-C port that can be used for different peripherals like a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, or multiple controllers. Valve confirms that owners can use everyday PC applications on this handheld, but did not confirm if it runs on Windows OS.

Preorders on Steam Deck will begin tomorrow and has a price tag of $399.

Thanks Game Informer!