Valve began taking pre-orders for the Steam Deck in July, 2021. But the company didn’t begin shipping the handheld game console to customers until February, 2022. And for much of this year, there’s been a wait list. If you placed an order for a Steam Deck, you’d have to wait months for it to arrive.

Not anymore. Valve says you no longer need to place a reservation. Want a Steam Deck delivered right away? Just place an order for one for $399 and up.

The Steam Deck is a handheld computer with a  7 inch touchscreen display surrounded by game controllers including action buttons, a D-Pad, analog sticks, and shoulder triggers. There are also customizable buttons on the back of the device and dual trackpads on the front, designed to make it easier to interact with games designed for keyboard and mouse input.

Powered by a custom AMD “Aerith” processor featuring four Zen 2 CPU cores and 8 RDNA 2 compute units, the Steam Deck was the most powerful device of its type when it began shipping earlier this year, although other handhelds have begun to catch up thanks to higher-performance chips like AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800U processor.

But the Steam Deck is still hard to beat when it comes to its price/performance ratio. A top-of-the-line model with a 512GB SSD and an anti-glare display costs just $649, and an entry-level model with 64GB of eMMC storage is just $399. Now that Valve has done away with the wait list, the Steam Deck looks like the entry-level handheld gaming PC to beat.

That said, it’s worth keeping in mind that the Steam Deck ships with the Linux-based Steam OS rather than Windows. While many popular PC games can run on Steam OS, you may find that Windows brings better compatibility. You can install Windows on a Stream Deck, but you’ll need to supply your own Windows license, which could drive up the cost of ownership.

Here’s an overview of key specs for the Steam Deck:

Valve Steam Deck Specs
Display7 inches
1280 x 800 pixels
LCD
400 nits
Touchscreen
CPUAMD Zen 2
4-cores / 8-threads
2.4 GHz to 3.5 GHz
Up to 448 GFlops FP32
4-15 watts
GPUAMD RDNA 2
8 compute units
1 GHz to 1.66 GHz
Up to 1.6 TFlops FP32
RAM16GB LPDDR5-5500
Storage64GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1)
256GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2230 PCIe Gen 3 x4)
512GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2230 PCIe Gen 3 x4)
microSDXC card reader
Ports1 x USB-C (with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt Mode for 8K/60 Hz or 4K/120 Hz video out)
1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
Game controllers2 x analog sticks with capacitive touch
A, B,  X,  Y buttons
D-pad
L & R analog triggers
L & R bumpers
4 x assignable grip buttons
2 x 32.5mm square trackpads with haptic feedback
6-Axis gyroscope
Other buttons & switchesVolume Up
Volume Down
View
Menu
KeyboardVirtual
Battery & charging40Wh battery
45W USB Type-C PD 3.0 charger
WirelessWiFi 5
Bluetooth 5.0
AudioStereo front-facing speakers
3.5mm audio jack
Webcam & micMic only
OSSteam OS (Arch Linux with KDE Plasma)
Dimensions298mm x 117mm x 49mm
11.7″ x 4.6″ x 1.9″
Weight669 grams
1.5 pounds
Docking Station1 x HDMI 2.0
1 x DisplayPort 1.4
1 x USB Type-C power input
1 x USB-C out to Steam Deck
3x x USB 3.1 Type-A
Price$399 (64GB eMMC)
$529 (256GB NVMe)
$649 (512GB NVMe)
$89 (Docking Station)

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