I’ve been thinking about this for a while. With the repairability of the steam deck and the power available to it, it seems like a no brainer to use it for a bit of school work or casual browsing, Discord etc. Like you would a normal desktop.
There’s a new product type popping up called LapDock that’s basically a hollowed out laptop but often with a giant battery, UPerfect has one and as well as the NexDock and they seem promising.
My personal biggest gripe is screen resolution and colour accuracy, as well as battery life. As I also do photography colour accuracy would be a great plus for me and as for resolution, I’ve been using 2k and higher screens for years and going back to 1080p seems like a bit of a turn off. However, UPerfect has monitor only types but having to set that up ontop of a mouse and keyboard while out and about seems less than ideal in comparison to a laptop.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone who’s tried it? Anyone who’ve tried desktop mode on high Res screens and seen any downsides, stutters, playback trouble, etc?
Edit:
I went out and bought myself a USB-C Hub with a PD port, HDMI and 2 USB to get a feel for the desktop experience on my TV at home. Since I do most of my work related things in Windows I installed it on a separate partition using GParted to shrink the home folder and then went through the Windows installer. After installing Valves drivers from their help page without errors everything seemed to work absolutely amazingly!
Everything from 4K playback to Windows animations all goes smoothly. It’s a trouble free Windows installation which from my previous experiences is a nice change of pace. The only hiccups I can notice is the occasional stutter and some Windows feeling laggy when resizing and moving, mainly the settings window and other WinUI software with lots of detailing and graphics to them.
I tried installing Deathloop through Xbox Game Pass and that worked wonderfully too. It installed quickly and I tried setting the resolution to 4K and got a solid 15 FPS! I tried 1440p as well and got around 30 and then went to 1080p where I got around 45. Not quite enough for me as I get slight headaches when below 60 but good enough I feel like. In the end for gaming it doesn’t really matter since I have handheld for that. Alternatively up-scaling.
As I’ve tried the Windows experience on the Steam Deck now I’m gonna continue my experimenting with SteamOS and see how that goes. My biggest issue so far has been that the USB-C Hub in Windows works perfectly at 4K 60Hz but SteamOS doesn’t seem to be detecting the 60Hz mode at all when the screen is at 4K. I’m gonna troubleshoot and see what I can find. If anyone has had any similar issues and know how to resolve them any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
All in all the desktop experience on the Steam Deck is amazingly smooth. Truly feels like a proper Desktop when things are setup the way I need them to be and I couldn’t be happier. The question for a laptop replacement is still in the air for me however. Now that I know that the desktop experience will be as smooth as it is I’m wondering which right way to go about it would be. As a lot of people in the comments on this thread and others mention that the build quality of the NexDock is absolutely terrible, a portable monitor seems to be the better way. I suppose in the end it would boil down to either living with bad build quality to get the more seamless experience. or chucking along a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with a portable monitor which could potentially not be too big of a hassle depending on how lazy I’m feeling during the days.
More thoughts would be welcome! Especially if there’s any other users who have any experience with external displays and how they’re using them!
I use my NexDock + SteamDeck when traveling and LAN parties. It works fine, a little clunky. I haven’t tried resolutions above 1080p, but as long as you’re not trying to play AAA games, I don’t see it being an issue. Personally I would go with the external monitor. The Nexdock keyboard and mouse is horrendous.
I don’t intend to do any gaming on an external monitor I think. Even if I do I think I’ll be happy enough with FSR!
You don’t seem to be alone in disliking the build quality of the NexDock. I wish more people had input to the UPerfect devices but their displays seem good. I’ve heard of more “proper” display brands doing some portable displays too that I can look into to get a bit more reliable warranty and such.
Have you found yourself preferring using an external keyboard and mouse with the NexDock? That would probably be the biggest downside to the solution of using the monitor only solution. Having to chuck with me a Bluetooth KB+M.
I’m glad for your input tho, helps a ton!
I pretty much always use an external mouse with my NexDock, cause the touchpad is pretty unusable imo. The keyboard is… okay. I wouldn’t really have a good place to put an external keyboard without pushing the nexdock screen too far back.
My NexDock doesn’t charge the steamdeck fast enough with the single cable solution, so I end up using a USB-c hub and power it separately which makes it extremely clunky. You end up with: 2x usb-c cables for power, usb-c hub, hdmi cable, usb cable to nexdock<-> steamdeck. You can get it down to 1x usb-c cable for charging if you alternate between the charging the steamdeck and the nexdock.
That seems to be the gist for most of the portable displays and lapdocks available. I know there’s a few portable displays that can charge the Steam Deck properly but they’re usually far between. I’m slightly put off from getting 1080p since it’s been a very long time since I settled with that resolution and to me just feels slightly too little. Especially when I’m gonna edit photos and browser the web. I’m gonna check around a bit for 4K portable monitors since there doesn’t seem to be any brand ones that are 2K.