After I purchased the Steam Deck just a few years in the past, I was skeptical. I used to be keen to danger shopping for solely the most affordable model doable—a $400 handheld with a measly 64 GB of storage. Now, I do know I find it irresistible. I’ve used it for a whole bunch of hours already, caught with restricted, slower storage. If I had been to rectify this error, I would have to purchase a complete new console. Or a minimum of, that is what different devices have skilled me to consider. Not this time.
I’ve a protracted historical past of upgrading my gadgets myself, once I can. The desktop PC I take advantage of each day has been ship-of-Theseus’d from the same computer I built over 20 years in the past—by no means absolutely changed, however upgraded, piece by piece, over time. Throughout that point, it is more and more grow to be the exception to the rule. Till the Steam Deck got here alongside.
Elusive Upgrades
I used to interchange the battery in my early smartphones once they bought previous, respiratory new life into dated {hardware}. Now, few telephones permit this with out cracking open the entire thing. My first MacBook had area on the underside to improve its RAM. Now it’s baked right into the M-series processors. I wouldn’t be capable of improve it, even if it weren’t difficult to access.
Which is perhaps why I felt so completely happy to study that my Steam Deck is, in truth, extremely simple to improve. Assets like iFixit, which advocate for a person’s proper to restore their very own gadgets, have guides that present the right way to do particular upgrades on totally different devices.
The information for upgrading the Steam Deck’s storage is refreshingly simple. Unscrew and take away the again panel, take away the board defend, come out a cable, and unscrew the previous storage. Put your new SSD as a substitute and reverse the method. Accomplished.
It’s not fairly as simple as changing the battery in your TV’s distant, but it surely was sooner so as to add extra storage than it was to reinstall Steam OS. All instructed, the method took perhaps an hour. As a substitute of paying $130 further for a distinct Steam Deck—or worse, shopping for a complete new one for $530—I paid $20 for a cheap SSD on eBay. Minus the price of a good hamburger and half the size of a typical video essay on YouTube later, I can now set up extra video games on my Steam Deck, in much less time and with shorter loading screens than I had earlier than. This doesn’t should be a novel expertise.
Restore on the Horizon
It additionally may not be, for for much longer. Earlier this yr, the European Union voted to cross new rules that may require smartphones to come back outfitted with user-replaceable batteries. At present, attempting to replace a battery on a recent iPhone requires specialty instruments and technical know-how, and may nonetheless end in warnings that you just’re not utilizing “real” components, even when utilizing official Apple batteries.
By 2027, that type of barrier to changing a battery gained’t be authorized within the EU, although the knock-on impact will seemingly result in producers complying globally. We already noticed a similar effect occur when the EU passed a law requiring all telephones, tablets, and cameras offered within the area to have a USB-C port. It’s simply extra environment friendly to make one mannequin that the corporate can promote in all places.
