Steam Deck Underprices The Original Nintendo Switch With Its Black Friday Sale This Week
Valve has cut the price of the 256GB Steam Deck enough to make it cheaper than the original Nintendo Switch for Black Friday. Hardware prices have followed a worrying trend lately, with surging RAM demand and macroeconomic shifts driving console costs ever higher, but there is some temporary relief on the horizon. Anyone hoping to grab a Steam Deck for the holidays has a great opportunity to do so right now.
The Steam Deck has remained one of the more affordable handheld PCs on the market, although its OLED models cost roughly the same as a current-gen console. Valve has also recently disappointed some fans by confirming that the Steam Machine won’t be as affordable as some had hoped, as it won’t have a subsidized price. However, there is some good news on the Valve hardware front now that the company has unveiled its Black Friday deals.
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The LCD Steam Deck Is $20 Cheaper Than the Switch for Black Friday
Steam’s first-ever Black Friday sale, which runs through December 1, includes a 20% discount on the 256GB LCD Steam Deck model. Valve offered the same discount on the Steam Deck earlier in 2025, so anyone who missed that sale has another chance to grab the handheld for nearly $80 below MSRP this time around. It’s also worth noting that the discounted price of $319.20 is $20 less than what the original Nintendo Switch retails for, and the Steam Deck is a more powerful system.
Only the older, non-OLED Steam Deck model is on sale for Black Friday, so gamers hoping to grab one of the newer variants with a bigger display and more storage for a low price are out of luck. Still, it’s a hard value to overlook when compared to the Switch. Notably, Nintendo’s Black Friday 2025 sale does not include any discounts on either the original Switch or Switch 2, with most of its deals revolving around games rather than hardware. The Steam Deck’s sale price also puts the cost of a new 256GB model around what Valve normally charges for a refurbished version.
The discounted price on the LCD Steam Deck may also come as a sigh of relief in light of the broader handheld PC market lately. The shiny new ROG Xbox Ally retails for $599.99, and the more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X will set gamers back an eye-watering $999.99. Barring any major sales on those, $320 for a Steam Deck, even an older model, looks like one of the best deals on portable PCs around right now.
- Brand
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Steam (Valve)
- Original Release Date
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February 25, 2022
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$399–$649
- Operating System
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SteamOS 3 (Arch-based)
- Processor
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Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
- Resolution
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1200 x 800
Source: Steam