The $399.99 Steam Deck only has 64GB of internal storage, just enough room for a handful of bite-sized games or a large open-world game with a handsome install size. That’s not ideal, but don’t stress, as upgrading the deck’s memory is both easy and relatively affordable.
Like the Nintendo Switch, every Steam deck supports microSD cards for storage expansion, and these cards come in a range of capacities – many of which are regularly discounted. Whether you want a modest upgrade to 256GB, a bigger 512GB card, or the ultimate 1TB boost, we have some recommendations to help you download more games from the Steam Store. These options meet the Steam Deck’s speed requirements (more on that below). You just have to go through a quick formatting process.
Does speed matter?
While some more expensive microSD cards tout faster transfer speeds than others, which should translate to faster game install times, the general consensus is that most models offer a similar experience on the Steam Deck. Compared to running games from the $399.99 model’s internal eMMC storage, using a microSD card will deliver near-identical performance in most games (the more expensive Steam Deck models use NVMe SSDs, which are faster as eMMC and microSD).
The console’s microSD card slot supports UHS-1 class cards, a specification that achieves a transfer rate of 104 MB/s. That’s quite a bit slower than the advertised transfer speeds offered by many of today’s mainstream microSD cards. So we recommend focusing on conserving as much storage space as possible rather than worrying about speed.
Update (February 27): This post was written when the Steam Deck was released in early 2022 and has been updated to reflect that it has been available for about a year. We’ve also adjusted the layout and added details about the Steam Deck’s UHS-1 compatibility.
