You just need to find an M.2 drive in the physically smaller 2230 format (vs. You do have to put things on it explicitly, though.Īn additional wrinkle: the SSD in the Steam Deck is a standard (though uncommon) part and they're pretty not-hard to replace if you do want to increase the internal storage at some point. I'm not real sure what caching magic they're doing (or if the speed just doesn't matter that much) but I can't tell when I'm playing a game off the SD card. I have the midrange so no opinions on screen (other than that glare hasn't been a problem for me, but I'm also never like using it flat on the desk like I do with my phone occasionally?) but will note that the storage has been a non-issue with a SD card installed. Setting up the compression thing is pretty straightforward. If you're price sensitive another option is to do btrfs filesystem compression on internal and external storage and go with your original plan getting a bit more out of it, but again it's hard for me to say how much the anti-glare feature has been a differentiating factor: it's the only screen I've known. The convenience of not having had to crack the case to do the upgrade - I was under time pressure when my Deck came in and I'm not much of a hardware guy - was worth it, as was getting a big, fast SD card to go with it. There's more troublesome glare on the iPad I'm typing on right now because of my cheap screen protector.

It honestly wasn't even a feature I was aware I had, just not enough of a problem to think about. Never once has the notion of glare even been something I thought about while interacting with my Deck. Some of those lighting conditions were unfavorable.

Since I don't own both, I can't offer a comparative opinion, but the screen on my 512 has given me no glare trouble whatsoever at any angle and met my expectations under any of the lighting conditions under which I have used it.

Steam deck 256