This past week, Valve announced its upcoming portable hand-held PC called the Steam Deck, which will be made available in three versions each with a different price point. The cheapest Steam Deck iteration will contain 64 GB of internal storage, and comes with a price tag set at $399. However, there are growing concerns that this cheaper version may not meet the needs of gamers given that it has a slower hard drive when compared to the more luxurious editions.
While the difference between the 64 GB variation and its loftier 512 GB sibling is about $250, the former is likely going to be appealing to many despite having lower storage as on the surface, all three appear to be exactly the same outside of the price. However, upon closer inspection of the Steam Deck, it appears as though the SSD for the 64 GB version may not be suitable as it contains a different type of hard drive than the other two.
A report states that the cheapest Steam Deck contains an eMMC solid-state drive, while the other two have the much faster NVMe type which is the same hard-drive the PS5 supports. Additionally, the eMMC is only running on 2nd generation PCIe with just one lane for storage, while the NVMe run third generation PCIe with four lanes. The transfer rate on the cheaper model is much lower as well, maxing out at 500 MB/s, according to statistics, while the latter models have a potential throughput of 4 GB/s.
What this means is that anyone who buys the 64 GB model is likely to experience slowness, particularly on much larger and more hardware intensive games. This could very well put the lower end Steam Deck at a significant disadvantage to the current generation of home consoles, which already use much faster storage systems. In this regard, it's perhaps worth considering one of the more expensive versions, but that leaves out those people who could only really afford the cheaper model. Newell did confirm a replaceable SSD slot in all versions, but replacing it is likely unsupported and may void a user's warranty.
Recently, Valve CEO Gabe Newell said the company wanted the Steam Deck to prioritize functionality, but also put emphasis on price. With the 64 GB iteration showing signs that it could be unsuitable for many gamers, it begs the question of why put out a cheaper model if it's going to use technology that may not do the job properly, especially if functionality is something the company wanted to insist was a necessity. It's likely that many will be considering whether $400 will be worth it in the end.
Valve's Steam Deck releases December 2021 with reservations available now.
Source: GameSpot