Since getting my Steam Controller, I’ve been playing docked much more, and was curious how well it works for everyone else.
It is and always has been fantastic.
I tend to play stuff in clean, crisp native 720p on my 1440p monitor (with the perfect 4x integer scaling), most commonly using mouse and keyboard… but some games I play with the Deck controls (I have an extra-long docking cord going to the Deck for that purpose). Have a SC reserved, and will just use that instead once I order it.
Eventually I’m going to do power upgrade and get a true 1440 PC… but even though it’ll no longer be docked, I’ll still be happily streaming to my Deck in multiple relax spots in the house.
i use it docked more than anything else with a 1080p monitor my old work was chucking. Works perfectly.
Depends on the game.
Older games run at max at high resolution with no issues.
I use mine docked I’d say about 70% of the time.
Works great, one thing I did learn the hard way though was the JSAux docking station I got had some interference issues with the Dualshock controller I’d set it up with. Ended up going with the official which works decent.
Primarily I use it to stream from my Gaming Desktop. There’s the odd issue but they’re few and far between.
I play mostly in docked through a JSAUX dock on my TV. It has it’s issues, definitely not as seamless as something like the switch.
Sometimes the connection to the TV drops and it goes black for a few seconds, sometimes the TV doesn’t want to see the input from the deck at all unless I reboot both, sometimes my controllers lose connection for a few seconds. Some of which may be issues with the dock of course.
Also, performance is mostly good for pixel art and similar things. With a lot of 3D games I have to compromise between graphics and framerate.
It’s a lot of money for something that only plays certain games well. So I would not recommend it to somebody with my use case.
Sometimes the connection to the TV drops and it goes black for a few seconds
I had this issue for a long time, but it turned out it was just a bad HDMI cable. Swapped cables and it never happened again. Might be worth a try.
I already got this tip and got a new cable. Sadly it hasn’t improved. I really suspect the dock, but I’m too stingy to switch that out atm.
Personally I’ve been encountering more issues with docking than I used to have. Seems like it will work fine in either docked or handheld mode by themselves, but swapping between the two will cause a game to crash or steamOS to restart within the next 5-10 minutes.
I am on beta, so it could just be a SteamOS bug that’s not in the normal builds.
I kind of remember that being an issue way back when the Steam Deck launched. Ever since I always launch games after docking. Bummer to hear it’s still an issue.
Thankfully it sounds like no one else is having this issue. It’s either a beta only problem, or maybe something to do with my cheap offbrand dock.
Disclaimer first: I haven’t played docked ever since I moved to my current apartment, so for about 2 years.
So, for me playing docked was a mixed bag. The main issue was that upscaling from 720p to 1080p (my TV’s native resolution) never yielded a satisfactory image quality. This means, that I only played games docked, that were relatively light on the hardware.
Things that worked well were 2D games, obviously, and light 3D games, like Cassette Beasts or the space-part of Elite: Dangerous (landing in Elite was, of course a no-go at native 1080p).
I also had issues with my gamepad, a DualShock 4, interfering with the WLAN of the deck. If I remember correctly, that has been fixed by a Steam Deck update meanwhile.
I also had severe issues trying to stream from my desktop to the Deck. It hadn’t liked my desktop’s 16:10 aspect ratio. From what I can tell from the current Steam Link Android app, it seems this also has been fixed meanwhile.
For the games that worked fine, I have had a lot of fun playing docked though.
I play some games docked like strategy games (on the computer screen) or family games (on the family TV) and it works fine.
Where it would be problematic is if I also played these games in handheld mode as I would have to change quite a few settings.
It would be nice if the Deck could switch between docked mode (using more power with better FPS/resolution) and handheld mode automatically.
In a way you can do this by switching between the game profile/general profile, but it’s just a workaround.
Works well enough using PS5 controller on 3rd party dock. Only issue is that I will have to delete the Bluetooth controller on SD and pair it. Probably because I use the controller on PS5 and PC.
Quick Access Menu can be accessed by pressing PS button + X. Hope this helps someone out there.
I just did it for the first time yesterday, with a game in which I make heavy use of motion controls. It worked great. I jumped right in and had zero problems. 4k@60 was nice.
Without the Steam Controller, I didn’t want even play docked on tv / monitor. The only time I tried it was to record some gameplay (an external recording device in between monitor and the Deck), so that I get everything record, not just the gameplay. I don’t have the original dock and tried with some random HDMI output thingy. And it worked! Here some bad illustration of the setup:
From Steam Deck over converter, to recorder. The recorder splits up to tv output and saves the live video recording to drive.
[ Steam DECK ] o--o [ USB to HDMI ] o | ----------- o | | [ USB Drive ] o--o [ Recorder ] o---o | TV | | | -----------And it worked perfectly fine! Did I need to do the ascii illustration? No, but I had fun with it. :D
I appreciate the ascii drawing, thanks for including it!
Since I got my makeshift Steam Machine, I now have the deck always docked, with a monitor, KB&M and paired with 4 xbox controllers. It only becomes undocked when we make a trip.
Before all of this, it used to be always docked to the living room TV and without Steam Controllers, my kids were limited to games with controller support.
The experience has always been great.
It works just fine for me. I have played a few games that need a keyboard and trackball, so those work great docked. I used to have a setup with external speakers and a monitor connected to my dock.
If I ever get a Steam Controller I am sure I will play docked even more. My most played game is No Man’s Sky, which I mostly play on a stand for my iPad. It puts the screen a little higher and allows it to stand up when I am not holding it.
I’ve noticed a bit of lag on my inputs when using the dock and a ps5 controller so far. It wasn’t bad, but it was noticeable. Maybe a tenth of a second or so?
Probably your monitor or tv. There should be no additional lag from the Decks perspective when using an external display. Plus you are using an external controller. Is it Bluetooth? That could explain the lag, in addition to your output screen.
I did use it with the TV on Port 1, HDMI cable. I don’t understand where the lag would come from.
Just to be clear I was thinking the lag was between the PS5 controller and the deck. I also have nothing to base that on or detailed knowledge of what to expect.
Could be the wireless PS5 controller connection, definitely. It could be introduced by the TV too, most TVs do a bit of post processing. Most TVs also have a game mode that disables most or all of the post processing to reduce the input lag.
I thought I had that stuff turned off on the TV, but I’ll double check. Thanks for the ideas!
Well your tv could still have lag. You can test it by playing games without external screen, but using your PS5 controller. Then you do the same with the TV and see if there is additional lag. It could be, I am not saying it is from the tv. And maybe additionally the PS5 controller over Bluetooth adds lag too. Especially if you are not close to the system and some other stuff in the house may interfere. And if its the controller, then either it is from the controller itself or the Steam Decks Bluetooth module is not good.
I’m just brainstorming here, never looked this up online where others did “scientific” tests.
Thanks for the ideas, I’ll give them a go tonight!
Some TVs have a “gaming mode” that must be enabled to avoid laggy inputs when playing games.
I’ll try that. I just thought it was for the color of the screen (only thing that seemed to change). Thanks!
I’ve only done it a few times but my biggest success was using it at a LAN party with a dock, monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, and controller. Everything was wired except for the headset which was Bluetooth.
Mostly played some party games, a few solo roguelites, and a couple of AA online multiplayer games. The multiplayer games were a bit of a pain since getting Epic’s easy anti cheat to work required everything to be installed on the main NVMe storage instead of the SD card. I’m glad I did some testing before getting to the LAN because otherwise I’d spend half the time troubleshooting lol.
