If you don't have a PC-based gaming handheld, it can be hard to comprehend what all the fuss is about. This is the fastest-growing sector of the PC gaming space, though, and there's a reason. If you'd like to find out for yourself why everyone from Asus to Zotac is making aming handhelds, you can try out the original Valve Steam Deck LCD with a 256GB SSD for just $319.20 right now, straight from Valve.
The Steam Deck LCD has been slightly overshadowed by its younger OLED sibling, but they're not far apart in gaming performance, and many of the games that you'd really want to play on a Steam Deck — indie titles like CrossCode, Holocure: Save the Fans, UFO 50, Celeste, and Hades — are actually capped at 60 FPS and unable to take full advantage of the 90-Hz screen on the Steam Deck OLED anyway.
For $319.20, you get the original Steam Deck LCD with its 7" screen and 40-Whr battery (Valve touts 2-8 hours of gameplay; we found 2-6 in our review), a 45W power supply with 1.5-meter cable, and a carrying case. This machine is awesome for anyone who travels a lot, for university students with time to kill between classes, and for people living in shared spaces without a lot of room for a bulky gaming PC.
This deal comes just one week before the massive Steam Autumn Sale, Valve's yearly bacchanalia packed to the brim with bountiful game discounts, especially on beloved older titles. We're likely to see deep discounts on delightful games that will play perfectly on the Steam Deck, like the ones we mentioned above, as well as titles like Lost Castle II, 30XX, the Shantae series, Cuphead, the Blasphemous series, and the original Hollow Knight. Probably no sale on Hollow Knight: Silksong, though.
Lest you think the Steam Deck is only suited for 2D games, though, rest assured, you can absolutely play titles like Sifu, Risk of Rain 2, Dark Souls, RoboQuest, and even AAA releases like Cyberpunk 2077 — as long as you're willing to be realistic about the game settings and the longevity of your battery. If the game is marked as "Playable" or "Verified" on Steam (and in some cases, even if it isn't), you can play it on the Steam Deck.
There is the argument to be made that the Steam Deck LCD is one of the less impressive of the current crop of PC gaming handhelds, but as a counterpoint, we'll remark that the $200+ you save buying a Steam Deck LCD could go toward a whole bunch of games — especially with the deep discounts you're likely to see next week. Ultimately, unless performance is a real issue, the experience of playing a game on the Steam Deck OLED (or, say, an ASUS ROG Ally) is not going to be fundamentally different from the Steam Deck LCD.
It also must be noted that $319.20 is an awfully cheap way to get a full-on Linux PC with 16GB of memory and 256GB of fast solid-state storage. While the Steam Deck is hardly a powerhouse PC in 2025, it's still much faster than something like a Raspberry Pi or Lattepanda, and it's fully open and hackable. There's nothing stopping you from using your Steam Deck in your own projects, or even simply as a desktop PC with a compatible dock.
If you're still not convinced, check out our full review of the Steam Deck, but be aware that things have changed a lot in the three years and seven months since its release. Valve has made massive improvements to the SteamOS experience, and everything goes a lot more smoothly these days. You may also want to check out our list of the best PC gaming handhelds for more comparisons. Don't wait too long, though, because this deal ends October 6th.
If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.
