After months of shortage, the Steam Deck is finally available directly for sale, without delay. It’s the end of the painful waiting list system that enraged players interested in this famous hybrid console.
Until now, you had to be persistent to get the Steam Deck, Valve’s hybrid machine, between portable console and PC. As with the PS5, manufacturers have been facing a shortage of components for several years, and the production of electronic devices is affected. To obtain the Steam Deck – which owes its name to the famous distribution platform for dematerialized video games – you had to register in a queue. Then, the buyers received an e-mail which allowed them to validate their order. Once the console was reserved, the Steam was shipped in waves. However, as announced by Valve in a press release, this somewhat troublesome system comes to an end. The firm estimates that production has reached a point where supply can meet the demand of gamers, who should receive their console one to two weeks after purchasing it from the Steam store.
Steam Deck: a hybrid device, between console and PC
As a reminder, the Steam Deck is a hybrid “portable” console – still with a size of 298 × 117 × 49 mm and a weight of 669 g… – capable of running Steam games, like a mini-PC. It has an LCD panel with a definition of 1,280 x 800 pixels – a little below the Full HD standard – for a touch screen in 16:10 format, with a refresh rate of 60 Hz and a brightness of 400 nits . He carries a CPU 4-core – like the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S – clocked at up to 3.5GHz. As for the GPU, it benefits from the RDNA 2 architecture ofAMD, as well as 8 calculation units, for a power of 1.6 Tflop. The Steam Deck has 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and is available in three versions with a storage capacity of 64, 256 and 512 GB – the first model is therefore quite limited, the other two are much more interesting. Note that it has a Micro SD card slot to extend this capacity. It has a 40 Wh battery offering a range of 2 to 8 hours.
The Steam Deck was designed so that the gamer can enjoy games from their Steam library wherever they go. However, not all games are compatible, only those that are Proton certified – there were 5,000 as of September 2022, and Valve continues to grow that number. Seven months after its launch at the end of February 2022, the machine is now available for purchase instantly, without its reservation and queuing system, on Steam’s website. For now, this only concerns the 256 GB and 512 GB versions – respectively at 549 and 679 euros. For the entry-level model at 64 GB, on the other hand – at 419 euros – the reservation is still necessary.
Steam Deck: the docking station finally available
Valve took the opportunity to announce the start of commercialization of the Steam Deck docking station – its release has also been delayed due to supply chain issues. An accessory that should reinforce the hybridity of the machine, which then becomes both nomadic and domestic – a model that takes up the Nintendo Switch.
The docking station has three USB 3.1 ports for connecting keyboard, joysticks and mouse, as well as an Ethernet port, a DisplayPort 1.4 to be connected to a monitor, and a socket HDMI to be connected to a TV. It’s a welcome addition for those who would like to use the portable console on the big screen – without having to buy a gaming PC on the side. However, it is important to remember that the docking station does not improve the performance of the Steam Deck, which can be a problem if you connect the device to a screen with a 4K UHD television – since the screen of the console only has a definition of 800p which, in the absence of scaling, risks giving a rather coarse graphic rendering. The docking station is available on the Steam site for 99 euros. Delivery times should be quite short, but nothing says that the reservation system will not make a comeback in case of high demand.
