The Steam Deck LCD has been discontinued, making the Steam Deck 512GB OLED the new entry-level option

When Valve introduced the Steam Deck OLED a little over two years ago, the company lowered the price of the Steam Deck LCD with 256GB of storage to $399 and discontinued the lower-spec Steam Deck LCD with 64GB of eMMC storage.

Since Steam Deck OLED prices start at $549, that meant that customers looking for a cheaper option could continue to opt for a reasonably well-specced Steam Deck LCD with similar performance… until now. The Steam Deck LCD is now sold out and Valve says it has no plans to make any more.

As spotted by Windows Central, a note on the Steam Deck website says that “we are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available.” And that means that since it is sold out, the only way you’re going to get your hands on one is to pick up in the future will be to hunt around for a used or refurbished model/

It also means that the starting price for a new Steam Deck is now effectively $549. What you get for that price is a handheld gaming PC with a 7.4 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel OLED display featuring a 90 Hz refresh rate, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a 50 Wh battery that Valve says provides 3 to 12 hours of game play, support for WiFi 6E, and a slightly newer custom AMD chip that Valve says offers similar performance to the one in the Steam Deck LCD, but with efficiency improvements.

Valve also offers a model with a 1TB SSD for $649.

While it’s disappointing to see one of the cheapest handhelds designed for PC gaming go away, even at $549 and up, the Steam Deck is still priced competitively. While rivals including GPD, AYANEO, Asus, Lenovo, and MSI have released many handheld gaming PCs in recent years with faster processors, better screens, and other features that help set them apart from the Steam Deck, most of them also cost a lot more.