News

It just got a lot easier to buy a Steam Deck in South Africa

Luis Monzon

5th May 2023

The Steam Deck is now available in South Africa through Incredible.
All three variations of the handheld gaming machine are being offered, with the cheapest device retailing for R16 999.
The Steam Deck allows you to play your favourite PC games in your Steam library on the move, but the battery life might be an issue for a country with daily power cuts.

Since Valve launched the Steam Deck in 2022, gamers in South Africa have had to sit on their hands and wait for a local launch to be announced. A year later, and no such announcement has yet to be made.

Those interested in buying the Steam Deck locally have had to resort to informal means to get their hands on the device. Usually from other people selling the machine second-hand after purchasing them overseas. You can find such sales on Gumtree, Bob Shop, and Carbonite.

Then suddenly, as if from the ether, an actually reputed retailer picked up the product making it easier than ever to buy the Steam Deck in South Africa. This retailer is Incredible, the former Incredible Connection, and it is offering all three variations of the Steam Deck right now.

The cheapest variation on offer from Incredible is the 64GB version of the Steam Deck, which retails for R16 999. You can also pick up the 256GB version for R21 499, and the 512GB version for R24 699.

While Incredible lists the storage capacity as the only difference between the three versions, Valve’s official site is a bit more specific.

Here we can see that the 256GB version uses NVMe SSD storage, which is faster than the 64GB version. Additinally, the 256GB Steam Deck comes with an exclusive Steam Community profile badge.

Meanwhile, the 512GB comes with the upgrades of the 256GB version and premium anti-glare etched glass on the display and a exclusive virtual keyboard theme.

All three versions have upgradeable storage, according to Incredible, so while none of the options are necessarily affordable, this should be something to consider if you’re thinking about a portable gaming system.

Unlike follow portable the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck is basically a handheld PC where you can play a whole bevvy of Steam titles, from indie games to modern AAA games like Cyberpuink 2077 and Elden Ring.

And because of the Steam Deck’s custom AMD processor, these games will run as if you’re on a high end PC with the added comfort of having the device in-hand.

One negative to having a Steam Deck in South Africa, however, is that the battery life isn’t the beefiest, especially if you do not optimise the settings to provide the best longevity.

Some sources say on the highest settings you can expect one and half to two hours of battery life, which is lacklustre in a country often plagued by Stage 6 blackouts. Playing certain games however can get your machine running for near the maximum of eight hours.

The Steam Deck is also set to receive a rival in the form of the ROG Ally from ASUS. This device is speculated to be cheaper than the Steam Deck and have more capabilities through its Windows 11 OS, including a wider library of games.

Details of the ROG Ally’s battery life are still up in the air, however, and it is something we will be paying close attention to as more information on the handheld is revealed.