After I purchased the Steam Deck a number of years in the past, I was skeptical. I used to be prepared to threat shopping for solely the most affordable model doable—a $400 handheld with a measly 64 GB of storage. Now, I do know I adore it. I’ve used it for a whole lot of hours already, caught with restricted, slower storage. If I had been to rectify this error, I would have to purchase an entire new console. Or a minimum of, that is what different devices have educated me to consider. Not this time.
I’ve a protracted historical past of upgrading my gadgets myself, once I can. The desktop PC I exploit 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 received previous, respiration new life into dated {hardware}. Now, few telephones enable this with out cracking open the entire thing. My first MacBook had house 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 comfortable to be taught that my Steam Deck is, in reality, extremely simple to improve. Assets like iFixit, which advocate for a consumer’s proper to restore their very own gadgets, have guides that present learn how to do particular upgrades on totally different devices.
The information for upgrading the Steam Deck’s storage is refreshingly easy. Unscrew and take away the again panel, take away the board protect, come out a cable, and unscrew the previous storage. Put your new SSD instead and reverse the method. Carried out.
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 advised, the method took perhaps an hour. As an alternative of paying $130 further for a distinct Steam Deck—or worse, shopping for an entire 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 won’t be, for for much longer. Earlier this 12 months, the European Union voted to go new rules that can require smartphones to return geared up with user-replaceable batteries. At the moment, attempting to replace a battery on a recent iPhone requires specialty instruments and technical know-how, and may nonetheless end in warnings that you simply’re not utilizing “real” elements, even when utilizing official Apple batteries.
By 2027, that type of barrier to changing a battery received’t be authorized within the EU, although the knock-on impact will probably 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.