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Whereas over in console land, the Nintendo Switch 2 requires a high-end microSD Express card, the Steam Deck’s microSD requirements aren’t very demanding at all. Any UHS-I microSD should work, including microSDXC (Expanded Capacity) and microSDHC (High Capacity) cards. You’re best off looking at SDXC cards, though, like the ones listed above: standard microSD cards are limited to a piddly 2GB, while microSDHC cards max out at 32GB. Since only microSDXC cards can therefore occupy the 64GB-2TB range, they’re the ones to focus on to make sure you’re adding sufficient space. Once you’ve got a comp

Probably, as microSDs normally don’t come ready-to-use on a Linux system like the Steam Deck. Luckily, formatting the microSD card yourself is easy. Just slide it into the port on the Deck’s bottom edge, power it on, then navigate to the System section of the main Settings menu. Scroll down to 'Format SD Card', hit the Format button, and in a few moments your card will be set up and ready to roll.

In most games, the only tangible difference is in load times; you won’t get slower framerates on a microSD card, for example. The only games that might not work as well as they do on the SSD are those that specifically take advantage of high SSD speeds, like Cyberpunk 2077’s open world streaming and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s dimension-hopping sequences. In the latter’s case, the game essentially sits on a loop for a few seconds so the game can load in the new scene from the microSD card, a transition that’s more or less instantaneous on an SSD. To be clear, though, these examples are extre

Yep! In the main Settings menu, scroll down to the Storage section, then highlight the microSD card and press the X button to set it as the default installation location. In this same sub-menu, you can also move games between the internal drive and the microSD. Select the game you want to move, press the Y button, make sure the other drive is selected in the drop-down menu, and finally hit 'Move' to transfer it over.