Valve has launched Steam Deck, a handheld gaming unit to compete against the likes of Nintendo’s Switch. The all-new video game console by Valve will ship in December 2021 and its price starts from $399 (64GB model). Reservations are open from today, July 16th.

The Steam Deck includes a custom accelerated processing unit (APU) built by AMD based on their Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture. It has a quad-core CPU and GPU runs on eight compute units.

Valve touts that the Steam Deck has been built to offer long-hour game sessions. The rear of the device is sculpted to comfortably fit a wide range of hand sizes.

The Steam Deck will ship in three models based on internal storage options, - 64GB eMMC storage unit, second with 256GB storage through an NVMe SSD device, while the high-end unit will include a 512GB NVMe SSD storage unit. All the models get 16GB RAM. The Steam Deck comes with a microSD card slot, which also supports microSDXC and microSDHC formats.

The Steam Deck by Valve features a 7-inch touchscreen LCD display with 1280x800 pixels resolution that runs at a native 720p. The highest storage model with 512GB storage has a premium anti-glare etched glass treatment on its screen. The Steam Deck runs the new version of SteamOS.

According to Valve, the battery life of Steam Deck depends on your usage. It’s about 2-8 hours depending on what you’re doing. According to IGNIndia’s questionnaire session with Valve, one can play Portal 2 for four hours. If you limit it to 30fps, you’re going to be playing for 5-6 hours.

The Steam Deck has 2 full-size Thumbsticks with capacitive touch. It features two 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback. It has 6-Axis IMU and together with the help of capacitive touch, you can aim better. Valve touts that by physically positioning the device you can achieve more precision than using a thumbstick or trackpad alone.

Other Gamepad controls include ABXY buttons, D-pad, L&R analog triggers, L&R bumper, View&Menu buttons, 4x assignable grip buttons.

  • 7-inch LCD display with 1280x800 pixels resolution, 60Hz refresh rate
  • AMD APU
  • CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
  • GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)
  • Dual microphone array
  • SteamOS 3.0
  • 40Whr battery, 2-8 hours of gameplay, 45W USB Type-C PD 3.0 power supply
  • 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth 5.0, Dual-band Wi-Fi radio, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, 2 x 2 MIMO, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
  • Ambient light, gyroscope sensors.

Valve is also producing a dock and it will be sold separately. You can put the Steam Deck on the dock and plug it into external displays like a TV with the help of USB Type-C. Precisely, for external connectivity you have plenty USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt-mode support; up to 8K @60Hz or 4K @120Hz, USB 3.2 Gen 2