TL;DR: Steam briefly showed options to buy refurbished Steam Decks for the following prices:
- 64gb - $319
- 256gb - $419
- 512gb - $519
The steam page has since been taken down, but will hopefully go live officially soon.
Edit: That was quick, refurbished units available now.
Hmm, I may actually pull the trigger on one of these, then. Is there any benefit to the higher capacity units if I can just pop in an SD card? I assume they can store games on the cards?
I have a 64gb with a large sd card. My recommendation is to get a 256gb. You will feel space starved with installing different versions of Proton, the shader cache(?), and the emulated Window’s user folders.
If you get the 64gb you basically have to get an sd card. If you get bigger then you might not ever have to if you play relatively small games and you don’t mind managing installed games.
Yeah, that would be the plan. I did the same thing with my Switch and it just automatically uses it as additional storage without any fuss. Does the Steam Deck do the same thing?
Yes, but shader caches always go to the internal memory, so that will fill up even if the games themselves are installed to the SD card.
I got the 64GB and swapped the SSD for a bigger one. It was painless and now I have 1TB of internal memory for less than the price of the 256GB model.
Oh right, is it just an m.2?
Yup. Standard 2230 M.2
Check me on this bit I think specifically it’s a single sided 2230. They made some caution about dual sided 2230 because of clearance or airflow.
Perfect, thanks!