$3,000 Steam Deck Prototype Teardown — Concept Models Featured Discrete GPU Support, Smaller Joysticks, and Circular Touchpads

Oh man, so here’s the thing. This YouTube guy snagged this super early version of the Steam Deck—like, it’s some prototype model labeled as “engineering sample 34” or something. Crazy, right? Anyway, this Twitter dude—wait, it’s X now, who even knows why—named SadlyItsDadley, thought Jon Bringus from Bringus Studios was the ultimate person to dissect this old gaming relic on camera. Honestly, who am I to argue?

So Jon gets his hands on this thing, and it’s got this paper in it saying “POC2-34.” I guess that means it’s proof-of-concept number 34, but who really cares about numbers? And as if that wasn’t enough of a blast from the past, Jon actually fired up some games on this chunky handheld, giving us a taste of where Valve has been heading with their portable gaming dreams.

Now, let’s get real. The look of this early Steam Deck is way off what we’re used to seeing. Those touchpads? Huge circles—like frisbees or something, totally different from today’s sleek rectangles. Joysticks too, tiny as heck. And don’t get me started on the palm rests. Inside, it’s rocking a Ryzen 7 3700U, 8GB RAM. Okay, that’s tech talk, but I almost missed it had this special Intel Wi-Fi thing and a 256GB SSD or something. Jon couldn’t play with the discrete GPU feature—total bummer, right?

Anyway, Jon being all careful, clones the SSD to save the original. Smart move. And wow, inside it, there’s an old SteamOS version from September 2020 with a trio of accounts already set up. Sounds mysterious, huh? But, plot twist, he can’t unlock the official ‘34’ account. Who locks these things? Anyway—this gives us a snapshot of how far along this thing was before, you know, it actually hit the stores.

Valve, they kinda stirred up the handheld gaming waters with the Steam Deck. Nintendo sort of laid the groundwork with the Switch in 2017, but Valve’s take had everyone buzzing—big time. This got other big tech companies all jazzed up to make their own handhelds. We’ve got the Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo’s Legion Go—plus more on the way, like they’re multiplying!

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