Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming device promises to bring the power of consoles in your hands

• The Valve Steam Deck is a new handheld gaming device with powerful hardware.
  
• Designed like the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck is capable of running most games available on Steam, including the latest AAA titles.
  
• The Steam Deck reservations begin July 16, and it is priced at $399.
  

Valve, the US-based game developer company and the maker of Steam has announced its own dedicated handheld gaming device, the Steam Deck. This portable gaming device promises to pack a punch, too, bringing the power of dedicated gaming consoles into your hands.

The Steam Deck sports a 7-inch display and runs on a quad-core AMD Ryzen Zen 2 processor. This is paired with the RDNA 2 graphics, with up to 512GB storage and 16GB of memory. If that isn’t enough to make you feel giddy, there’s more.

Steam Deck price and availability

The Steam Deck is priced starting at $399 (approx. ₹30,000) and reservations begin July 16, however, reservations are not open in India just yet. Don’t lose hope, though, as Valve says that expanded regional availability is coming soon.

The Steam Deck will start shipping in December this year.

Steam Deck features, specs and design

The Steam Deck is loaded with controls and features. It uses a similar form factor as that of the Nintendo Switch, except it packs in a much more powerful punch.

It runs on a tweaked version of Valve’s SteamOS, with an interface designed to enhance the ease of navigation. It sports a 7-inch HD resolution display, with a 60Hz refresh rate.

Thanks to the Zen 2 processor paired with RDNA 2 graphics, the Steam Deck is powerful enough to run almost everything on the Steam store. Valve says that it is capable enough to run the latest AAA games as well.

Beyond the powerful hardware, the Steam Deck also promises a complete gaming experience thanks to the abundant controls on hand – it has all the buttons you’d need, including full-sized joysticks. It also has four buttons on the back that can be mapped to do whatever you want.

Valve says the 40 watt-hour battery should offer “several hours of play time for most games,”. For lighter games or streaming, the company says you can expect 7-8 hours of battery life. This will likely vary based on real life usage, but it does offer an approximate idea of what you can expect.

But beyond gaming, the Steam Deck is actually a full-blown Linux computer. You can even attach a mouse, keyboard and connect the device to a monitor and download other software, app store or simply browse the web.

And if the Steam Deck succeeds, Valve would consider launching future models, said Gabe Newell, the company’s co-founder in an interview with IGN.

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