This SSD is the essential Black Friday Steam Deck upgrade

You don’t need me to tell you that video games are taking up more storage space than ever before. So when Black Friday rolls around, it’s a good time to upgrade.

In the case of the Steam Deck, it’s the number one upgrade I recommend. I bought a 256GB Steam Deck and received it in the earliest batches, and it didn’t take long to need more. My SSD of choice — the Crucial P310 — is reduced right now, with 1TB down to $84.99 at Amazon, or you can get 2TB for $129.99 also at Amazon.

There’s not much that needs saying. If you don’t have 1TB or more already in your handheld gaming PC, then this is the upgrade to make. It’s good for the Steam Deck, it’s good for the ROG Ally, it’s good for the Xbox Ally, and any other handheld that uses the m.2 2230 form factor SSD.

The Crucial P310 is a strong performer, with read speeds up to 7,100 MB/s. Chances are it could even be a little faster than the stock SSD in your handheld, even if not by much.

There’s also the fact that at this price, this is also about the cheapest upgraded SSD you could put in a Steam Deck, so it gets extra points for that.

We have guides on upgrading the SSD in the Steam Deck, the ROG Ally, and the Legion Go to help you on your way. But all you need is a little patience, and a screwdriver. The Steam Deck is probably the most involved process from the software side, but the results are well worth it.

The alternative is to use a microSD card. Sure, these are cheap, but they’re also slow. For lighter games, this option isn’t so bad. But you don’t want to be loading Cyberpunk 2077 from a microSD card!

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