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.
Deck is very DIY friendly, including potential repairs. So it should be fairly safe to assume that it work just as new unit - especially coming from Valve itself.
I dunno about DIY at home though.
The video by Valve themselves say not to open Steam Deck, then shows and explains why by showing how tightly coupled the hardware is.
They won’t stop you of course.
They have to say not to open so that they aren’t liable for people breaking it when opening it. Some aspects of the hardware are hard to work with, like replacing the battery, but joysticks and screens (the main things I would expect people to need to repair) are surprisingly easy to access for a modern portable device.
After cracking open my own Deck, replacing the SSD or Thumb sticks is dirt simple. There are even drop in Hall effect sticks you can get. The only real trouble is if you need to replace the battery. The screen and battery are definitely the hardest things to replace in the Steam Deck.
PS: REMOVE THE MICROSD FIRST! I’ve seen people forget their card is in there and literally snap it in half when opening up their Steam Deck.
The only thing you really need to worry about is the metal heat shield removal since it is moved before the battery is unplugged, but after that it’s pretty safe
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That’s nice to see. I recently RMAd mine and was sent a new one. Mine definitely wasn’t unfixable, but I think would’ve taken longer than Valve would prefer. I hope it gets refurbished and sold instead of just trashed.
I’ve been wanting a Steam Deck and telling myself I don’t need one and they keep trying to seduce me!
Valve finally realised that there is more to seduction than just fried chicken
Yeah, I really have no need. The money would be better spent on hardware for my computer if anything. Still, I want one. I don’t know why.
I was seduced, though the last time I played a PC game was somewhen in the 90s. Thought to get into that steam thing. Opened an account, ordered the steam deck, had the account blocked for fraud, my order cancelled, was not eager to share my ID with steam. Aaand still don’t own one. Now I am just not up for it anymore. Maybe you can take that route.
I want one. It’s a lot easier for me to start up a gaming session on the couch with a handheld without much fuss than on my computer at my desk. There are a lot of games I’d play more this way.
Holy shit thats cheap
At that price I can’t afford not to!
You’re basically losing money by not buying it, lol.
Yeah, grab the 64GB and slap a 512GB SSD in for $50 and you’ve got a steal.
That’s actually a fantastic price point. I have an ayaneo, so I have absolutely no need to pick up a Deck, but this will make it very tempting
What’s the price difference with the brand new ones?
In the US:
- 64GB is $399
- 256GB is $529
- 512GB is $649
According to here:
- 64 GB costs $419
- 256 GB costs $549
- 512 GB costs $679
Those are some very reasonable prices
Especially if it comes with the same warranty as a new one.
Looks like it does!
Is there a warranty?
Yes. The same warranty you receive with a new unit is provided with each Certified Refurbished unit. If you have an issue with your unit and that issue cannot be resolved it will be replaced with another Certified Refurbished unit.
As someone that needed their first deck RMA’d that fuckin rules. I was PISSED mine died, still have no clue what happened never had a device catastrophically fail like that, but they were awesome about it. Tech support tried to diagnose and fix and when it was obvious it was toast they just took it back and sent me a new one.
Meh, $500+ for what is basically a $350 laptop crammed into a handheld form factor is not exactly what I’d call “reasonable”.
Can you point me to a $350 laptop with similar specs? And the form factor is the whole selling point, duh.
I, for one, would actually be fine with buying a Steam Deck at that price just so that way Steam/Valve have incentive to continue their work on Proton (their answer to try and get unsupported games working on Linux and their own official SteamOS).
The trade-off of giving them incentive to work on Proton, which would help an estimated roughly 2.5 million “monthly active users” using Steam on Linux definitely seems reasonable to me at least.
Yeah but I don’t want a laptop. Until people start making handhelds this good at that price (and there are competitors getting close) then the price seems fine.
This is awesome! More decks in the wild is the best option!
Sure would be nice if they shipped to more regions.
Can anybody comment on how worth it is for the ones with better screens? I get the value of the larger size, but I’m happy with the 64gb plus sd card - I just have fomo if the screens make a difference.
You mean the anti-glare one on the most expensive version? I would say it’s a nice addition but nothing revolutionary. It really makes it nicer to play in sunlight, but it is making colors a little bit darker. I don’t feel much of a difference with colors, however. But I would say just for the screen, the price hike is not worth it. And remember - it’s not something that a screen protector can’t do, I think you can buy one with the anti-glare protection.
Cool, really appreciate that.
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!
I hope they’ll do Deck 2 some day. My current laptop is still so much stronger than the current Deck that there’s no point of going there even though I’m quite interested.
