This 2TB Micron M.2 2230 SSD is ?155 from Amazon right now, and a great choice for your Steam Deck
Now that's a good deal.
We're seeing a flurry of activity on the front of new handheld consoles from the likes of Lenovo and more at the moment, and let's not forget both the newer Steam Deck OLED and Asus ROG Ally, of course. With these consoles, your only super convenient method of adding storage is to slot in a Micro SD card. But, there is another way, for a more permanent means - changing the SSD.
We recently rounded up the best Steam Deck SSDs with some new options and today, one of them is available for a solid price: this 2TB Micron 2400 is down to £155 from Amazon. That's significantly less than other 2TB drives compatible with the Steam Deck, and makes for one of the best prices we've seen on a larger capacity drive.
It's an ideal choice to chuck into your Steam Deck, ROG Ally or similar because it's a smaller form factor. Usually NVMe SSDs are 22x80mm in size (hence the 2280 form factor), but options such as the Micron 2400 are 22x30mm are smaller, and designed to fit into diddy spaces, such as into the Steam Deck or ROG Ally.
As well as being the ideal size, this 2TB Micron choice also provides a solid upgrade in terms of speed. It's rated for max reads of 4200MB/s when hooked up to a PCIe 4.0 port, although you'll probably see closer to 3500MB/s given that the Steam Deck is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds by virtue of its interface. Regardless, this is still quicker than the Steam Deck's built in SSD with its speeds of up to 2500MB/s, as well as giving you at least double the storage over the top-end 1TB OLED model. Otherwise, it's a four-fold increase over the 512GB model. If you've got an older 64GB or 128GB model, you'll see the biggest gains from capacity. Those with a base 64GB LCD model will also see larger gains in terms of speed, too, given it uses slower eMMC storage that maxes out at 300MB/s. Whichever model you're moving from though, you're going to see excellent gains in both speed and capacity.
Of course, the only thing to keep in mind with a Steam Deck SSD upgrade is that it's a bit more involved than slotting in one of the quickest micro SD cards for Steam Deck. You'll need to carefully take the Steam Deck apart following this handy iFixit guide, which walks you through accessing the internals, carefully removing a heatsink, disconnecting the battery and swapping the drive. From here, you can use a USB flash drive to reinstall SteamOS. If you've worked on a desktop computer or laptop before, then this isn't any more difficult - it's just a bit fiddlier due to the smaller sizes. I'd say it's still very achieveable, you just need a bit of patience and a few tools!
If you want a lot of speedy storage for your Steam Deck or ROG Ally to put lots of games on, this 2TB Micron 2400 M.2 2230 NVMe SSD for £155 from Amazon is the deal for you.