The $789 Steam Deck: How the Memory Crunch Rewrote Valve's Handheld
The cheapest Steam Deck used to cost $399. Now the entry model is $789, and it still sells out. A timeline of the year AI data centres ate the handheld PC's price advantage.
When the Steam Deck arrived in 2022, its headline was the price: a real gaming PC you could hold in two hands, starting at $399. That number did more than anything else to turn handheld PCs from a niche into a category. In 2026 it is gone, and the cheapest new Steam Deck now costs almost twice as much.
On May 27, 2026, Valve brought the Steam Deck OLED back into stock with immediate price rises: the 512GB model went from $549 to $789 (up $240) and the 1TB model from $649 to $949 (up $300). Valve blamed "rising memory and storage costs." Even at the new prices, reports said the handheld sold out in North America within a day.
How we got here
- Late 2025: Valve quietly discontinued the $399, 256GB LCD Steam Deck, the cheapest way into the platform. It gave no reason, but rising NAND flash prices were the obvious suspect.
- February 2026: every Steam Deck model on Valve's store showed "Out of stock." A notice on the store page warned that the OLED "may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages."
- May 27, 2026: the OLED returned with the new prices.
- June 30, 2026: Valve's new Steam Machine launched at $1,049, a price Valve itself said it wished were lower.
What it costs where
- United States: 512GB $789, 1TB $949.
- Eurozone: 512GB €779 (was €549), 1TB €919 (was €679).
- United Kingdom: 512GB £649 (was £479), 1TB £779 (was £569).
- Canada: 512GB C$1,129, 1TB C$1,349.
- Australia: 512GB A$1,199, 1TB A$1,429.
The LCD model is still available second-hand, which has made used Steam Decks one of the better deals in PC gaming this year.
Is it still worth it?
That depends on what you compare it to. At $789 the Steam Deck OLED is no longer the obvious bargain it was, and rival handhelds such as the ROG Xbox Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go 2 are now closer in price, with more powerful chips. What the Deck still has is SteamOS: the best-integrated handheld software, the "Verified" ratings that tell you which games run well, sleep-and-resume that works like a console, and the OLED screen.
If you already own a Deck, the advice is simple: keep it. If you're buying new, check second-hand LCD models first, and if you want a big screen instead, compare the price against a Steam Machine or a budget desktop. Our graphics card guide explains how the same memory squeeze is hitting desktop parts.
Why it matters
The handheld PC boom was built on a simple promise: you could get console-like convenience for a console-like price. The memory crunch has broken the second half of that promise, at least for now. Valve has said it will not subsidise its hardware the way console makers sometimes do, which means its prices follow component costs up.
The good news is that the Deck's software keeps improving, and SteamOS now runs on other handhelds and on the Steam Machine too. Read more about that in our Linux and SteamOS explainer.