Valve has taken to the PAX Australia show floor this morning to announce that the Steam Deck is officially coming to Australia.
After being available for sometime through unofficial channels here in Australia, Valve has confirmed that both the LCD Steam Deck and the Steam Deck OLED will be sold and shipped through Steam directly here in Australia.
The Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED available to wishlist now and will be available to order in November with units shipping out immediately at the below prices:
You can wishlist it over on Steam HERE before it ships in November.
This marks the first time that Valve has sold hardware directly in Australia, after partnering with the likes of EB Games for the Valve Index, and we had the chance to talk to them earlier this week where they confirmed that this was the start of them committing to bringing hardware to Australia in a much more timely fashion now that the groundwork has been done to sell and ship hardware directly.
I’ve got my hands on the 1 TB OLED version, so now that we’re officially getting it in Australia, I’m looking forwards to reviewing it and seeing how it compares to some of the other handhelds that I’ve used over the past few years. We also got the chance to speak to Valve ahead of the announcement and you can read that HERE.
Just in case you’re not as familiar with the two models, The Steam Deck OLED has a larger 7.4-inch HDR OLED display with 1000 nits of peak brightness. The refresh rate has been updated to 90hz and the latency of the touch screen has also been improved.
The device has a larger 50whr battery (up from 40 whr) and combined with a more efficient APU, you can expect a 30-50% better battery life which Valve says is good for 3-12 hours of gaming depending on what you’re playing. Despite the device having a larger screen and a larger battery, the total weight has been reduced by 30 grams or 5% which should make a big difference in comfort.
The 1TB and 512GB OLED versions also have a few differences with the 1TB OLED version coming with an anti-glare display, and also an extra removable liner in the case as well a a special exclusive startup movie and keyboard theme.