Valve celebrates the Steam Deck's birthday with first-ever discount

(Image credit: Future)

The Steam Deck is officially one year old, and to celebrate, Valve has just posted the first-ever price cut for this excellent gaming hand-held.

At 10% off, it's not the biggest discount in the world, but it's still a fantastic deal for those who were up until this point on the fence. All three storage variants are available with this discount and there's currently a one to two-week expected delivery date. This particular Steam Deck deal coincides with the ongoing Steam Spring Sale and will be available until March 23rd.

Steam Deck (64GB): was $399 now $359.10 at Steam
CPU: AMD Zen 2 four core 2.4-3.5GHz
Graphics: AMD RDNA 2
RAM: 16GB LPDDR5
Screen: 7-inch, 1,280 x 800 touchscreen, 60Hz

We've been patiently waiting for a discount on the excellent Steam Deck ever since it was launched last year and here we are - the first-ever price cut. At 10% off, it's not the biggest discount in the world but we're not complaining as the Steam Deck is a fantastic (and coveted) device. Not only is it well built, but it features a decent 7-inch OLED display, and a surprising amount of power for its size. Note that the other storage sizes are also on sale today:
256GB: $529 $476.10 | 512GB: $649 $584.10

Outside the US? We've displayed USD pricing but this Steam Deck discount is available worldwide. Simply click through to the Steam Store and you'll get relevant pricing for your location.

An awesome little gaming handheld

If you haven't picked one up already, it's well worth considering the Steam Deck if you're a PC gamer with a large steam library. We were impressed during our Steam Deck review when we put the device through its paces, in particular by the overall design and the flexibility that the device offers (you can easily hook it up to big screens, for example).

Overall, performance isn't super high-end but you can play a surprisingly large number of titles at 60FPS thanks to the Steam Deck's modest 800p resolution, which looks tack-sharp on its 7-inch OLED display. Game compatibility, which was a minor issue at launch, is rapidly improving too, thanks to a number of iterative updates from Valve for the Deck's Linux-based Steam OS. We've even seen Valve recently introduce an excellent feature that enables you to file transfer directly onto the device itself - extremely handy for cutting down on lengthy downloads.

According to recent reports and an Interview with the Steam Deck's designer, we're also a few years away from a 'Steam Deck 2'. This, in our opinion, is good news if you're still on the fence. You should be able to squeeze out plenty of hours on the Steam Deck without having to worry about an upgrade looming on the horizon.

Need something with a little more power? Check out our recommendations for this week's best cheap gaming laptop deals to get a decent machine for well under $1,000.

Alex is TechRadar's deals editor, specializing in getting our readers the best bang for the buck on the tech that we know and love. He's a dab hand at covering retailer events like Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day having over seven years of e-commerce experience at Future PLC; including bylines at our sister sites T3 and GamesRadar. Alex's expertise touches on most areas of TechRadar but he has a particular love for phones, laptops, and cameras, being an avid photographer. Outside of work, you'll find him indulging his love for street and travel photography, at home working on music, or down at the local climbing gym.