•Hot deformation behavior of 700 MPa HSLA steel above 1200 °C in was detailed studied.•Uniform and granular bainite is formed when the deformation amount is 40%.•Deformation resistance value under steady-equilibrium state is about 56 MPa.A high temperature deformation experiment was conducted on a high strength low alloy (HSLA) steel Q690 using Thermecmastor-Z thermal/physical simulator. During the experiment, the specimens were heated from room temperature to 1200 °C with the heating rate of 10 °C/s and 50 °C/s, respectively. The deformation temperature was 1200 °C and the deformation amounts were 0%, 10% and 40%, respectively. The microstructures, stress–strain diagram and hardness were obtained. The results revealed that the microstructure transformation of deformed austenite was quite different from that of the normal situation. With the increasing of deformation amount, more lath-shaped microstructure and less granulous microstructure were observed. The compressive deformation effectively prevented the precipitation of carbides. Larger deformation amount or lower heating rate was conducive to the atomic diffusion, which led to the microstructure uniformity and hardness decreasing. The maximum stress was 68.4 MPa and the steady stress was about 56 MPa.