There are lots of Black Friday tech deals floating around. But if I may, let me point to you to a deal that isn't specifically attached to the holiday shopping season: The 64GB Valve Steam Deck is on a nice discount on Steam, at just $349.
Valve is making the 256GB LCD Steam Deck the new base model, so this is a limited-time deal. Once it runs out, it's gone. And while 64GB of eMMC is a paltry amount of storage if you play major game releases, $349 is remarkably affordable for a gaming PC, and can be easily improved with a little more cash and some elbow grease. Check our guide to upgrading the Steam Deck SSD for more details.
The 64GB Steam Deck is from the original release, with an LCD screen, the AMD Zen 2-based "Aerith" APU, a 7-inch, 1280x800 screen, and 16GB of RAM. While the newer Steam Deck OLED has a nicer, larger screen, it starts at $549. That's $200 extra, albeit with more storage.
The good news is that, at $349, you may have a bit of money left over in your budget for more storage, and that's where the magic comes in. The 64GB of eMMC storage can be replaced with a faster, larger NVMe drive to store way more games.
While we have a whole page dedicated to the best SSDs for Steam Decks, our favorite option, the Corsair MP600 Mini 1TB, happens to be on sale for Black Friday. It's a fast TLC drive that's reasonably priced, making an extra deal even sweeter.
We've been appreciating the Steam Deck OLED here at Tom's Hardware, but if you balked at the Steam Deck's price originally, this 64GB option combined with a brand new SSD will give you some gaming power on the go. You could even add SD cards later on for more storage, but this is a great start at a great price. Plus, we're probably still two or more years away from Steam Deck 2.
