Valve has dropped the price of 256GB Steam Deck That's enough to make it cheaper than the original Nintendo Switch for Black Friday. Hardware prices have followed a worrying trend lately, with increasing RAM demand and macroeconomic changes driving up console costs, but there is some temporary relief on the horizon. Anyone hoping to take a steam deck for vacation has a great opportunity to do so now.
The Steam Deck remains one of the more affordable handheld PCs on the market, although its OLED models are almost identical to current-gen consoles. Valve has recently disappointed some fans that the Steam Machine will not be as affordable as some had hoped, as it will not have a subsidized price. However, there is some good news on the Valve hardware front as the company has unveiled its Black Friday deals.
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The LCD Steam Deck is $20 cheaper than the Switch for Black Friday
Steam's first Black Friday sale, which runs until December 1st, includes 20% off the 256GB LCD Steam Deck model. Valve previously offered the same discount on the Steam deck in 2025, so anyone who missed out on this sale has another chance to grab the handheld, this time for $80 below MSRP. It's also worth noting that the discounted price of $319.20 is $20 less than what retails for the original Nintendo Switch, and the Steam Deck is a more powerful system.
Only the older, non-OLED Steam Deck model is on sale for Black Friday, so gamers hoping to get one of the newer versions with a bigger display and more storage for a lower price are out of luck. Still, it's a hard value to ignore compared to the Switch. Notably, Nintendo's Black Friday 2025 sale won't include any discounts on the original Switch or Switch 2, with most of its deals revolving around games rather than hardware. The Steam Deck's sale price also puts the cost of the new 256GB model around what Valve usually charges for the refurbished version.
The discounted price on the LCD Steam Deck may come as a sigh of relief in light of the recent slump in the handheld PC market. The shiny new ROG Xbox Ally retails for $599.99, and the more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X will set gamers back an eye-watering $999.99. Barring any major sales on them, $320 for the Steam Deck, even the older model, seems like one of the best deals on portable PCs around right now.
- brand
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steam (valve)
- Original release date
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February 25, 2022
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$399–$649
- operating system
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SteamOS 3 (Arch-based)
- processor
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Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
- resolve
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1200 x 800
Source: Steam
