Steam Deck 2: Leaked specs, price & benchmark speculation

❘ Published: 2024-01-17T13:28:23

Dexerto

Valve’s Steam Deck 2 is allegedly coming in 2026, and we’ve summarised all of the rumors, including specifications and the release window for the new handheld.

Portable gaming handhelds are the talk of the town. Big players like Valve, Nintendo, Asus, Ayaneo, and more have all entered the competitive segment. But, Valve’s Steam Deck currently reigns king of the high-powered handhelds.

The Steam Deck, and its upgraded OLED model, are arguably the best of handheld gaming consoles right now, boasting beefy specs and an unparalleled library.

With the first rumors of a Steam Deck 2 finally landing, we’re summarizing all of the rumors and alleged leaks right here, so you know the latest about the unannounced console.

With Valve playing coy on the Steam Deck 2, we’ve done the heavy lifting – compiling a wish list of features and hunting down every leak and whisper on this upcoming handheld console.

Steam Deck 2 release window rumors

According to a leak on Chiphell, Valve is targeting a Q3 or Q4 2026 release window for the Steam Deck 2.

Since Valve is just beginning to speak about Steam Deck 2, we speculate that a release date might be far off right now. In fact, in a recent interview with a couple of folks behind the Deck, it was mentioned that it’d be a while off.

As we’ve previously speculated, the Steam Deck 2 can only come out if it has the backing of a breakthrough in terms of performance. The current Van Gogh APU, a combination of GPU and CPU, is pretty darn powerful in itself. In our testing, we’ve only hit a wall running Returnal and making minor compromises elsewhere.

To best a device like the Steam Deck, you have to consider what a breakthrough would need to bring to the table. It’d have to fix and sustain “older” games from the last few years, that the Steam Deck struggled to run.

Given the Steam Deck OLED launched not that long ago, it’s within reason to assume that the Steam Deck 2 is still years off. Some alleged speculations have made it known that the upcoming handheld will launch sometime during late 2025, all the way up to 2026 being the most likely, though we cannot know for sure.

Steam Deck 2 price speculation

There’s no denying that the current Steam Deck is cheap for the power that you are getting, with a $399 MSRP that was allegedly difficult to attain, as Gabe Newell stated in an interview with IGN. However, Newell also mentioned how critical it was for Valve to achieve such competitive pricing.

For comparison’s sake, Ayaneo’s competing lineup costs over $1000 and isn’t quite as fast as the Steam Deck.

Therefore, we can assume that Valve is subsidizing some of the costs involved, with the hopes of making the money back over on the Steam platform.

We hope the Steam Deck 2 will follow suit, with a subsidized, accessible cost that is more in line with modern game consoles, rather than gaming PCs. However, the same alleged speculations from earlier have stated that the upcoming handheld is likely to cost more than previous iterations of the handheld, due to the suspected updated custom chip and other upgrades.

Steam Deck 2 specs speculation

APU: AMD Zen 4 Hawk Point
GPU: RDNA 4 (Rumored), 16 Compute Units, 8 Work Group Processors
RAM: Capacity unknown
RAM speed: LPDDR5X @ 8533 MT/s
Display resolution: 1440 x 900
Display technology: OLED
Refresh rate: 90Hz

The Steam Deck currently wields a combination SoC made by AMD, based on their Zen 2 processors, with RDNA2 graphics. An updated Steam Deck could see a Zen 3, or even Zen 4 processor, baked in with RDNA3 graphics. A new leak claims that the future handheld will utilize AMD’s Zen 4 Hawk Point processor, which we speculate could be powered by AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture.

According to the same source, the Steam Deck display is also set to receive a hefty update, coming in at 900p. It’s more than likely this will mean a resolution of 1440 x 900, and a 16:10 aspect ratio, but the leak only noted that the Steam Deck 2 will feature an OLED display, like the OLED model, alongside an updated 90Hz refresh rate.

Additionally to these improvements, we would like to see a larger battery, a better screen, and analog sticks to boot. But, we’d still want to see a healthy spec bump across the board. With flash storage getting cheaper, the Steam Deck 2 should also look to equip itself with larger internal storage.

Steam Deck 2 benchmark speculation

While the Steam Deck wasn’t exactly earth-shattering in comparison to full-fat PC hardware, the Steam Deck 2 will follow suit. So, don’t expect 40-series-like speeds. However, you should expect a decent uplift in line with whatever spec bumps that the console might possess. However, if the Steam Deck 2 has a higher-resolution screen, that will impact the device’s performance.

Official benchmarks are inevitably going to be a long way off. But regardless, we’ve given it our best shot to predict what the Steam Deck 2 might offer.

Make sure to read our other guides: