Valve’s Steam Deck wasn’t the first attempt to put PC games in your hand, but it was the first to do it successfully. The hit handheld was first released in 2022, with an OLED version following in 2023. Valve has offered discounted refurbs in the past, but they were all the original LCD edition. Now, you can pick up a refurbished Steam Deck OLED with a solid discount as well.
Valve sells two versions of the OLED Steam Deck: a 512GB model at $549 and a 1TB version with an anti-glare screen for $649. The refurbished Steam Decks come in substantially cheaper, with the 512GB model sitting at $439 ($110 off) and the 1TB at $519 ($130 off). Those are just the US prices, though — the refurbs are also available in Canada, the UK, and the EU. The lower specced model is a particularly good value. It’s even cheaper than competing devices like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go, which are on sale for the holidays.
It can be risky buying refurbished electronics. For many companies, “refurbishing” means cleaning off the fingerprints and doing some cursory testing to make sure the new buyer won’t immediately notice anything amiss. Valve, however, says it goes over each refurbished Steam Deck carefully, running more than 100 tests on the hardware. The company will repair any functional defects to ensure the machines meet or exceed the performance standards for new devices, and it backs that up with the same one-year warranty as new units. There may be some minor wear on the charger, but a lot of refurbished products don’t even come with the original accessories.
Happy Tuesday! We’ve officially added Steam Deck OLED to our Valve Certified Refurbished program today, and refurbished Steam Deck OLED units are now available for sale in the US, Canada, UK, and EU. Learn more here: store.steampowered.com/sale/steamde…
— Steam Deck (@steamdeck.com) December 10, 2024 at 5:01 PM
Valve previously offered refurbished LCD Steam Decks, but none of those are currently in stock. The OLED models are the only refurbs listed, but they’re not the cheapest Steam Deck models. After releasing the OLED, Valve kept one LCD model around. You can still get that device, featuring a smaller 7-inch LCD panel and 256GB of storage for $399. But for our money, the $439 refurbished OLED is worth it.
While the Steam Deck OLED made a few minor updates to the original, it’s still based on the same AMD Zen 2 APU. Valve has said it doesn’t plan to release frequent hardware refreshes, preferring to wait until there’s a generational improvement in performance. So, it’s probably safe to pick up a discounted Steam Deck OLED now, since it’ll be Valve’s main handheld focus for a while still. Valve also makes replacement components widely available so you can keep your refurbished machine running in the event something goes wrong after the warranty is up.