Months of speculation leading up to Nintendo’s supposed reveal of the rumored Switch Pro ended up with a major disappointment. Instead of a beefed-up version of the hybrid console, eager consumers were offered minimal upgrades. Stuff like bigger internal storage, OLED display, and a wider kickstand. To the delight of the gaming industry, Valve swoops in with the Steam Deck.

To date, Nintendo remains the top dog when it comes to handheld gaming. Despite the attempts of its rivals, it seems nothing can unseat the Switch. While it’s too early to say, a lot of gamers are hyped up about what the Steam Deck brings to the table.

The fact that it gives players access to their library of PC games on a handheld device is already a good reason to grab one. According to Valve, the portable gaming machine can even run the latest AAA titles, albeit at modest settings.

To make that possible, it relies on a custom AMD APU. There’s a quad-core Zen 2 CPU and an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with a 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM. It will be powered by a 40 Whr battery which should last anywhere between 2 to 8 hours depending on usage.

Valve offers it in three storage flavors: 64 GB (eMMC), 256 GB (NVMe SSD), 512 GB (NVMe SSD). Given the space needed by some popular titles (we’re looking at you Call of Duty: Warzone) the bigger capacity models will fly off the shelves first.

We’re looking at a 7-inch 1280 x 800 LCD touchscreen with a 60 Hz refresh rate. Unlike the OLED Switch, this chunky handheld does not have removable controllers. Valve will also offer an optional dock with additional ports for connectivity and more. The Steam Deck is shaping up to be one exciting platform.

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Images courtesy of Valve