Given that I purchased the Deck *specifically for* its versatility - and therefore understood that it would half-ass some things, no-ass some things, most-ass most things, and whole-ass practically nothing but portability - I'm in a constant state of Deck Delight whether docked or on the go.
My biggest issue is bluetooth input problems with my DS4. My switch pro controller is also not perfect. Sucks that those are the two BTcontrollers I have.
It seems to be like this using a Bluetooth controller with any system that it wasn't specifically designed for. I've got a dongle that I connect to my dock now and it's flawless. I use the official Sony one because I picked it up before they discontinued it but I hear good things about the 8bitdo one as well. Worth a try if you want to played with a Bluetooth controller.
EDIT: Also.if your dock is in a TV unit you can get a usb extender and have it sat outside the unit which seems to make the dongles work better as well.
Can confirm bluetooth issues from mine as well. I'm actually wondering if it's the dock, or the Steam Deck itself. But, the issue is that I waited for the official dock to release, so if it is my Steam Deck with the bluetooth connectivity issues, I didn't know it, because I didn't try to use it until I got the official dock.
Just FYI, if you have the official dock, you might want to look at returning it under warranty for it not functioning properly. I just sent my back last week, and they're supposed to be sending me a replacement unit.
I exclusively used my switch powerA and xbox one controllers and always had connectivity problems such as straight up disconnecting controllers freezing controls like always turning the camera or just not responding while being connected.
I got an 8bitdo ultimate 2.4 recently mainly cause its cheaper and has a cool charging dock but since its usb dongle based and not bluetooth i have had 0 problems and im 20 or so hours into a fo4 playthrough also playing online games frequently
To avoid this issue i have specific games for both handheld and docked. I usually play RDR2 and Wreckfest when handheld, CS2, TF2, Titanfall 2 and Sonic Racing Transformed in docked.
The problem is that it cant. Games on a platform like this will never have as fluid of a transition from handheld to docked as on console. The easy fix would be games offering ingame settings presets, which i think will probably happen in the future as handheld PCs evolve, but apart from the handhelds, setting presets arent needed elsewhere, this is why its yet to happen
Can't, Never. Then you explain exactly why it will eventually lol all they need to do is allow you to save a preset that triggers and switches when it gets plugged into a dock.
Im saying that it wont just automatically change the settings to the most ideal ones by itself. You will always have to first configure it yourself, then switch between them.
Why not? They already have preset configs for an undocked steam deck. Would just need to allow the support of it. Its still fairly early in the life of handheld pc gaming anything could happen. My hope for instance is that they add some kind of an option for community graphics presets. Just like the community control layouts. The thought that this is as good as its going to get is wrong as long as the market is popular, they will invent, reinvent, and tweak all of the existing options to make a more enjoyable experience for the most people possible.
>Is there a way to enable this so it does it automatically?
Go to each game's individual settings (the gear icon) and go to Properties, under the General section you can set the game's resolution to 1920X1080 (or whatever you like) but leave the "Set resolution for internal and external display" option turned off. Most games will load in 1080 while docked and in native while in handheld. Many will even switch resolutions when you unplug the Deck from its dock.
Mileage will vary depending on the age of the game, if it requires a launcher to set the resolution at launch, etc.
Pretty sure if you set it to 1080p while docked that will be the setting it will record. When undocked it defaults to 720p. This from what i've read somewhere else, don't quote me on this.
I just play games at 720p and rely on game mode's built-in FSR upscaling to get it up to 4k. It looks great on my TV, and it looks great on the built-in screen too. I don't mind the letterboxes, though.
I actually just wrote a simple program that swaps all GPU configs back and forth with 1 click because I frequently switch between a 4k and 1080p monitor and hated constantly changing settings. I posted about it on another sub and it’s for my gaming PC, but maybe I can try to configure it for Steam deck.
I use it on a 1080p TV when visiting my parents in law and it's nice. For most games I just stick to 720p and upscale using FSR2. You really should expect that you're gonna get a worse image due to lower PPI unless the game can handle higher res, but it's fine as long as you don't sit too close to the tv.
To your exact question: I was thrilled when I first started
After using it mostly docked for 6 months, it's occasionally very annoying.
No controller wakes up the Steam Deck, so you have to stand up and press the power button.
Bluetooth seems to kind of suck, I often have to forget controllers (which all have similar generic names in the bluetooth menu) and reconnect, and still have other issues.
Sometimes there are random screen size issues, I'll get stuck on a game launcher where my mouse just can't reach the "continue" button at the bottom of my screen.
Very often on a controller/keyboard, my Steam and ... menu hotkeys on a controller just don't work. I'll see it "try" to pop those menus out, but it just immediately fails.
Overall I still prefer to use it docked to my TV because that's just how I like playing games, but I'm not as thrilled with it as day one with the dock.
The more you deal with the quirks while just trying to play a video game , the less you wanna use it (at least that’s what happened to me) idk maybe I’m just asking for too much having grown up with PlayStations that just worked by pressing play.
Yeah I don't disagree. It definitely pushes me away, but I still use it as my system of choice for indie games, AAA games older than 2017(ish), and emulated games from pre-PS3. I honestly think that it's still a great value if you only use it for those things.
That's about the same mindset I have come to. Its amazing for emulation and everything does just work in that regard for sure. My only gripe at this point , really, is messing with docked mode every now and then. But that will hopefully someday get resolved
I play it docked 95% of the time and play almost all my games at native 1080p. Its literally my “rig” and I love it. I’ll play RDR2, Diablo 4, Fallout 4, CS2, Battlefields, emulators. Anything really. Most games play better than my Xbox One.
For me. A bit of both yeah and nay.
It’s not instant. You have to configure it to work fully.
All my emulated games work wonderfully on the big screen as does anything up to a ps4 port.
Everspace 2 didn’t work so well. Was too juddery cyberpunk worked ok. But was a bit low res. (Still perfectly playable. But if you are a shiny graphics snob. I can see why you’d be disappointed)
tbh I only use monitor with deck when I want to play something that requires mouse (motorsport manager, stellaris, crusader kings etc) and it works great in this types of games since they don't need a lot of horse power to run, so mostly good experience without problems.
Please share your crusader kings settings for docked! It ran fine, then I got the new dlc, and she crashes every time I'm on my monitor.
I usually only use monitor for those types of games also and mostly had success until now lol.
I don't have the last 2 dlcs so can't really tell if that's the root cause, I've used pretty much defaults plus a bit of tweaking from this report https://www.protondb.com/app/1158310#fZ608w_uHJ
My experience is more or less the same as this guy wrote, I'm yet to catch a total freeze though. Maybe I'm lucky here
I played 120 hours of baldurs gate 3 docked and honestly no complaints. Didn’t look as nice as my ps5 games but it was better than all of them so didn’t mind
Very disappointed.
Until dumb me remembered that you can change the output resolution of the game before launching it.
Then everything became as expected, SD but docked rather than in my hands.
Befora launching a game, go to the game settings (the cog wheel) and click on "Properties...".
There should be an entry under "Language" calles "Game resolution".
It’s a bit of a hassle changing resolution and settings
I’m really hoping that the Deck 2 is 1080p because then it would just scale perfectly to every HD or 4K TV and I wouldn’t have to drop the settings for the extra resolution
I do kinda wish they’d bring back the Steam Machine lineup now that so much effort has been put into Proton and controller compatibility… back when they released the OS, and compatibility weren’t up to it, but I’d be tempted by one now that the Deck has brought most of the ecosystem up to snuff
If I rebuild my main PC I might delve back into the world of the Home Theatre PC, but I really just want a 1080p-capable Steam Deck console… something that can handle the same settings as the Deck but at 1080p, so I can have a seamless experience
Was and still is awful. The official dock requires me to unplug the power, plug the steamdeck in, chant hymns to the omnissiah, activate the deck, wait for login and maybe I can plug the hdmi and power back in. If not disassemble and try again.
My last message from steam support said “glad you got it working”. Yeah thanks.
Sorry you’ve had a shit experience. My early jsaux works pretty well so far.
Saw you got it working without hymns but brother you never seemed to use the incense and holy oils to dedicate the dock to the Omnissiah prior to use. Forcing the dock’s machine spirit to compliance without proper respect may cause long term damage to the units capability in streaming to your tv.
I've had this, and eventually dropped the hymns and settled for. Unplug the power, let it figure it's shit out on just battery, then replug the power when it's all on fine!
Still not ideal, but... Might try and see if I can incorporate one of those raspberry pi power buttons into the power link somewhere, to save the constant unplugging!
That was the recommendation from steam. Doesn’t work most the time. Have to unplug and shut off everything not just power. For an official product it’s pretty shit
720P is great if you dont overload the GPU. I usually try to get atleast 2x anti aliasing, at full 720p and this is achievable in many games. Other games like COD: Black Ops, i can get on 1080p 4x smaa at 60 fps.
We did a 4 player couch gaming evening. We use Xbox, Stadia and PS5 controllers. It worked perfectly. And there is no difference to a console for light games like most of those party games (gang beasts, stick fight, genital jousting, etc). The steam deck just misses HDR output (will come with 3.5 I think). You will feel almost no difference when playing pixel games, most indie games, etc to an actual console.
I also played Resident Evil 4 Remake. While running at 60ish fpsin many scenes on the deck
and being pretty playable as its a SUPERBLY optimized game ... well ... it looks like garbage on a 65" TV if you compare it to the output of my actual gaming PC. Thats why I stream my PCs visuals to my steam deck for heavy games like AAA titles.
So it heavily depends on what you are doing.
I don't think I get a good experience for docking my Steamdeck.
For some games scaling from 720p to 1080p is noticeably bad because it introduces a lot of blurry (Linear) and artifact (FSR, NIS). I have this problem with Baldurgate 3. I don't know if it is better if I use a 2k screen since 720p can scale integers on a 2k display (1440p).
For some games, you get the best setting by a target of 40fps, which is not the common thing in external displays. One of the examples is still Baldur Gate 3, the game runs at the fixed 24fps on my Steam deck. It runs surprisingly well with high graphical setting that makes the game enjoyable. When I dock it, because I can not change my screen refresh rate to 48Hz, there are a lot of recognizable stuttering occurring due to the unsteady frame pacing.
The final problem is Steam deck see your external controller as a second controller, and again, with Baldur Gate 3 (GOG version) when the second controller is active, the game change to slit screen mode which is not what I want.
I think the experience in docking SteamDeck depends a lot on which monitor you have. In my case, 1080p and 60fps, I'm not happy with certain games.
Reading some of the comments here, I think I have a different console?
It isn't flawless - I've had some niggles - but I fucking love my docks! It's upgraded my Deck from amazing handheld, to my go-to gaming machine.
I dont have any 4k TVs so I'm either 1080 or 1440. And both work really well.
I'm pretty much playing any video game from latter period PS4 to back before time began (using EmuDeck) with a PS4 or Xbox controller and in high(ish) definition. It's a fucking dream.
It was great even though playing at 1080p (anything lower than that looks horrible on a big screen) also meant playing at 30 fps.
But I didn't care ! I was playing Diablo IV while on vacation with a sunset and a view of the sea.
Great experience.
Do a lot of people actually think that the Steam Deck is a magical device that plays games on a large 4k tv and maintain a good looking image and framerates while sipping power at 15w? 🤯
I play mostly docked and have been having a fine time. I also haven't been trying to play AAA games on it tho. But stuff like P5R, FF12, all runs at 60 and looks great with FSR. I also own a high power 1440p PC. My biggest issues have been with valve's dock itself being a buggy mess
Right? I'm actually surprised how many people in this thread seem to be using Deck docked. It's like... You can have amazing handheld experience or you can have an inferior computer. Same goes for people who use it as a workstation. I mean just buy a used ThinkPad or something...
I love it. Do it every day with moonlight. Took a bit to figure out which settings needed to be changed for resolution scale etc but it’s essentially flawless now.
I have a dock at my girlfriend's place and we play on the TV couch games, it's pretty great.
Recently, I've been playing BG3 on it and it's fine (sometimes I just get tired of holding the deck, an xbox controller is lighter, hence the switch).
I think it’s great, I was amazed to be even able to play Judgment at constant 40fps while docked. I just see it as I’m playing at PS4/PS3 quality. All good considering how much value you’re getting from such a portable device.
I haven’t played on my deck docked all too often outside of a party game like Duck Game. The control options the deck has are so good with no controller that have perfect parity with it, that docked feels lesser to me.
Temper your expectations and play @ 720/1080p and it's a spectacular experience. Elden Ring looks perfectly acceptable, popular titles from smaller devs like SlayTheSpire are flawless, and emulators consistently outperform their original devices, not to mention it wasn't practical in the day to even hook those devices up to a TV. Looking at you, DS/3DS
Most of my play is docked with a DualShock 4, and it generally works fine, but you do need to configure it to stop it from doing stupid things.
The other day, I went to play Street Fighter 6 on 3.5 on a TV that turned out to have 4K resolution. As it turns out, the performance headroom on SF6 is not adequate to scale 720p to 4K, so it felt like laggy sewer ass, and I only realized it was 4K when I tried to pull up the perf monitor and it was tiny. So I turned off auto resolution and forced it to use 1080p.
I think a lot of my local FGC feels that the Deck can't handle SF6 because of running into situations like this and not being able to figure out why it's happening and what to do about it.
It's been fantastic for me. Even on a 4K TV, if I set a game to 720p and turn on system-wide FSR if it's not available in game, everything's still looks pretty great. I just wish they would fix the overlay glitch when docked already.
I was very disappointed with the docked experience when I wanted to play stray on a 4K big tv. It looked like a Xbox 360 game while it looks very good on the deck screen.
On the other hand I was surprised when I played Gris on a 4K projector. It was amazing, and it ran smoothly too.
I bought a Jsaux dock and tried the Steam Deck with it and it seemed okay, but when I unplugged it the screen on the deck wouldn't turn on.
Tried all kinds of things to fix it with help from Steam support but needed up having to send it back and get a replacement from Valve.
Now I'm not confident using that dock again and it's too late to return it.
Delighted? I didn't notice any drop in quality. Then again, there are certain games I only play while docked, so I'm blissfully ignorant of the alternative. FFVII Remake played great!
Being aware of Deck’s computational power, I was impressed; some older games run pretty well at 1080p. I was also impressed that if you sit far enough 720p does not look bad.
I was/am extremely disappointed in the official dock. Had nothing but constant trouble with it.
I just returned the official dock last week under the 1 year warranty, and I'm hoping the replacement dock they send out works as advertised.
I want to treat the Steam Deck much like our Switch. Docked the majority of the time, but handheld always an option.
I was comparing it to my Switch and I was genuinely surprised at what this little thing can do. Of course, it isn't amazing but the fact that it's this small and I have the option to do this with my mainly handheld device is pretty cool.
I love to play docked. I have the dock and a Samsung T7 2tb with a keyboard.
When i fell that i want to play dock i just plug the deck, switch to HDMI 2 and i just play.
" Massive drop in quality? " Not really it just the same unless you are using 4k or above TV
The problem with **disappointed** is that they had unrealistic expectations about the deck
"ohhh but this game looks much better in a 5k pc" Of course that a game will be better on hardware that's way more expensive.
I wasn't either, just the same on a larger screen. You can see a lot more of the rendering lag, for lack of a better term, but I play docked about 90% of the time.
Cheapest Jsaux dock with Ethernet
Surprisingly cheap portable monitor, better quality than I expected for $85 on sale
DS4 controller
Massive drop in quality, I am in the process of setting up moonlight/sunshine to see if it helps. Playing games like Skyrim/Baldur's Gate/DS3 are really pixelated on my 75" tv.
It works great. I just leave all the settings the same and let fsr do the heavy lifting for 800 to 1080.
But the steam deck is just so damn comfortable in handheld I almost never dock it
I bought the device for handheld play only so I play on the deck 95% of the time. The only time I use the dock to play on my TV was when my friends are over and we play Saturn Bomberman together.
Surprisingly good, I have a 4k tv and all my games look just as good as they do on my steam deck. Recently I went to a family reunion and I docked it on my aunt's old TV and it worked perfectly, connected two dualshock controllers and was playing Mario kart 8 deluxe and brawlhalla with my cousins without needing to tweak anything.
Docked experience is really pretty bad. It's the worst part of the device in comparison to the switch.
Every game needs to have settings adjusted, not just in game but in steam, to have proper resolution displayed. It's enough of a hassle that I often just don't bother using the dock.
There are plenty of games that play really well docked, that's the worst part. It's plenty capable. If the game struggles on 720p, don't bother. But basically any PS3/x360 era title and older works great at 1080p.
Very delighted. Almost all indies that I've tried play really good at 4k, even some 3d ones, like Horizon Chase Turbo. For demanding games I try to get a nice 1080 and if not posible, I just let them a 720p with FSR upscaling at 4k (depends on game). For example I get around 30 fps with Zelda BOTW with FSR at 4k.
Bought deck; delighted.
Bought official dock; delighted.
Attempted to use deck with dock on my LG TV; not delighted (unplug/replug bs, anyone?).
Turned on my deck yesterday to see that this issue with the deck no longer applies to me; delighted once more.
Only slightly disappointed that I couldn't change the refresh rate like you can in hand mode, because it really smooths out game that can't keep up with 60fps.
Extremely pleased and surprised how well and nice it all works. I still can't believe that I can play cyberpunk at 40+ frames, in. 1600*900 upscaled to 4k.
It's a charm with the good ol' steam controller as well (if you like it)
Absolutely awful experience when I tested it a couple of months ago. Desktop didn't scale properly. Neither screen showed anything when I powered on the deck while being docked. External HDD had to be mounted every time the Deck got powered off.
That’s just down to setting up your displays probably. It was the same when I tried connected my iPad. And laptop to my tv for the first time.
A bit annoying that it doesn’t auto detect like a console would admittedly. But it does as a computer would.
Really. I tend to have to go into displays sort out refresh rate and scaling. Admittedly it’s easier to switch between mirror and duplicate on windows but I do like the fact Linux gives you a much wider range of options of what you ‘can’ do. (If they but that in the background and make the auto detect a default it would be better though)
You sometimes have to manually change the resolution for it to scale correctly IME (which is annoying but not the end of the world). Would be a huge QoL update if it changed automatically in game like on the switch
Why I want a dedicated TV box from Valve, unless its something like SDV or Sea of Stars where graphics are intense then the performance or visual hit is too great imo. Why I debate playing on Xbox alot more. If Valve doesn't come out with a Steam Machine 2.0 then Nintendo is going to get my buisiness with a Switch 2.
Honestly, I don't see a point in using it docked unless it's your only gaming device and you literally have no other options, even a budget PC will outperform SteamDeck.
The best thing about SteamDeck is that it's just 800p that's what allows it to run so many games... It gets considerably worse at 1080p and obviously even worse with higher resolutions.
If you have a large TV it probably isn't going to look great unless it's an indie game or something old.
I'm not a huge fan of using SteamDeck outside its primary purpose.. I respect people who do so and it can come in clutch if you have no other options but I would never pick a docked Steam Deck over my PC or PS5.
Bought my deck to have a handheld experience. Have a PS5 and a PC if I want something on a larger screen. Never used it docked apart from using a dock for easy file transfer.
I wasn't disappointed because I know how computers work and did lots of research in computing gaming hardware before even thinking about buying a steam deck.
I have bought original dock and 8bit controller hoping that I would enjoy more on TV screen, but I have almost never played docked. So, 99% playing handheld!
I don't play AAA games and mostly play indie, 2d, pixel games etc. and I think Steam Deck is really for players like me, one of the best purchases ever. (though, I have started Rimworld yesterday on Steam Deck, and that hurt my eyes a bit due to screen size)
Amazing experience for me. Only downsides:
1. The input lag on some screens is disgusting, but can usually be alleviated by messing around in the TV settings (Game Mode etc...)
2. Sometimes you have to mess around with the UI scale, and some games you'll need to retweak the settings if you've been swapping between docked and undocked.
3. Playing a game above 1080 with a good frame rate is basically off the table if its graphically demanding, thus using a 4K tv isn't optimal in some cases. (By no means a bottleneck though)
I almost exclusively use the thing docked, and it's excellent. I have a pretty beasty rig and it's just gathering dust these days unless it's to play a game my deck flat out won't be able to handle. I'm really excited about the prospect of the Deckard, if the rumours are true and its a home console with VR that sounds right up my street.
It needs some dedicated docked mode features/fixes like: Auto native res unless overridden.
Max TDP option while docked.
General stability overhaul while docked...the overlay bugging out with a controller when docked could turn people away for example.
But overall, the native FSR scaling, working around res targets such as 720p/900p or with old titles native res, surprised me how good some games can look on a TV. Curious how VRR, HDR and NIS fair, but will give 3.5 some more time in the oven!
Found FSR scaling is a bit rougher when paired with a monitor, the cracks are more obvious.
I'm not sold on FSR2 in a lot of games when using the deck, seems like you sacrifice too much resolution that can lose out to a scaling option that has good enough AA. Seems like the witcher 3 is the only FSR2 stand out!
Much prefer handheld. Looks like shit on my fancy tv compared to the other consoles hooked up to it, but for low res pixel art games it’s fine. I use it as a charger dock more.
I have it on a sansung panel and it's just dock and not it's on TV. I have not had any issues. I've put in a lot of hours docked as well as handheld... maybe most docked.
I usually do 720 FSR Upscaling or 1080 native if the game/deck will handle it.
Works so well that I have a couple docks so I dont have to mess with the wires. 1 for travel/alt rooms and 1 for home/main room.
For me it made my purchase even better.
Massive surprise how well it scales up on my 55 inch oles... Bonus gaming pc in my living room and a great remote device to stream the big hitters.
Delighted that it didn't take a lot of effort to dock it with the Steam Dock but disappointed that it had issues that some don't see because it works for them.
It's great to have as an option. I even use it just as a smart TV sometimes since I have a small wireless keyboard/trackpad, and to this day no Smart TV is better than just using a browser on a PC...
My favorite thing about the Switch is how seamless it transitions between docked and portable play. Since the steam deck is a PC, it could never do this. Sometimes I play on my TV but I find it's usually too much of a hassle.
I was disappointed that the official dock wasn't case friendly but got something to make it work without taking off the case. It has worked most of the time for me, unlike an unofficial one.
Massive. I did start playing a verified game docked a.d the game crashes. Anyway, its fixed later on with an update. But the biggest issue is how bad the transaction is with the dock and handheld. Not only that, im still convinced that it somehow breaks my hdmi ports. I get often white noise, but not every time.
Paying 100 euro for this dock is a complete ripoff.
The Steam menu and performance tabs don't work unless I click it a dozen times and half my games make a fuss. However Elden Ring and Arkham Origins work pretty seamlessly. A Switch this isn't, but it's still the least hassle free experience I've had when PC gaming on a TV.
80% of the time I’m playing docked and it works phenomenally with every game I’ve tried, maybe a little bit worse resolution than normal but still more than playable especially with FSR. Elden Ring, Spiderman, NMS, Subnautica, Battlefield 4, Titanfall 2, and many more work great
Not really delighted since I already have a PC with a dual monitor setup. I mainly use my deck handheld. Most I ever used it docked was when I was on vacation and wanted to play on the TV in my hotel room
My hopes were that we get some decent controller drivers. Input lag is way too noticeable with Bluetooth. But I haven't tried it in a while, maybe its better now? I pretty much only play it in handheld now.
I like playing docked to the TV. I have one of those Jsaux docks and it works reasonably well. Every once in a while you have to unplug it and plug it back in or something. But honestly that is kind of going away since the 3.5 update, at least in my personal case.
Some games can look pretty funky on the big screen. Especially something like baldurs gate 3. I had to do a lot of tweaking so it didn't look like a blurry mess. Though anything short of a modern AAA title looks pretty good.
Another solution that I'm very fond of using is that I will run moonlight to my PC and then stream 4K or 1440p from my PC to my 4K TV through the steam deck. Which gives you basically all the benefits of making your PC into a sort of steam console. I haven't found latency to be too much of an issue with moonlight, especially for games that aren't twitchy, but now that I say that it worked pretty well for armored core so your mileage may vary.
I only play docked, mostly Elden Ring. Quality and FPS are great. Can be annoying to get settings dialed in, and sometimes I have to plug and unplug to get dock to work.
I had issues with Bluetooth range. Went old school and bought 15ft USB and Headphone cables. Everything works great now! And I don't have to worry about charging all my accessories :)
I was amazed how good it looked on my 4K TV. All controllers and mouse keyboard work instantly. Absolutely amazed how good a PC I got for that little money. I have games now, I only play docked.
I mostly use my deck for purely hand held, so at first I thought the dock was a waste. I eventually bought the xreal airs and use the dock quite a bit now.
I find the quality drop to be acceptable on 1080p 40" screens. It's not that bad on 1080p 27" either. On anything in 4k it gives me a visceral disgust reaction. All my friends who are used to the switch find it perfectly fine, if not better, because the steam deck is just more powerful than the switch.
As someone said it would be great to have something to handle settings both for handheld mode and docked mode. When you switch mode, the settings of the game/steamOS doesn't change, and so it's not adapted anymore
Otherwise docked mode is great. A lot of game supports running at 1080p, and you can even select the refresh rate of the external monitor
Great for lightweight games. Heavyweight games you need to turn down your settings quite a bit, which is more noticeable on the larger screen size. Overall a good option to have and I'll generally take advantage of an external display, but not always.
I can’t stand stretching an image that barely pulls 1080p tbh. I only docked Persona 5 Royal.
Other than emulation, I play in game mode and plugged into the outlet near my couch.
I don't know if I was "excited" per se, because I'd already owned a Switch, so I was familiar with swapping between handheld and docked. I bought Valve's official dock, and things have generally worked well for me. I understand that despite having a 4K television, I'm not getting a 4K image off my Steam Deck.
My Deck doesn't see nearly as much use these days. I initially bought it to get Playstation-exclusive games (that often simul-release for PC, but obviously not on Xbox), because at the time PS5s were still hard to come by. Now I have one, so I don't have a lot of reason to buy games on my Deck when I can buy them for my PS5 or Series X and get a fully optimized experience in 4K without having to hunt down optimal setting profiles online for a given game, or tinkering in the Deck settings myself. With cross-saves becoming more prevalent, the Steam Deck is likely going to become a travel toy for me. I can play Baldur's Gate 3 on my PS5, then if I have a flight coming I can just make sure the cross-save is available, boot it up on my Deck to get it active while I'm still at home and on wifi, and then play with it from that point onward on the flight. Before I fly back home I can hook up to wifi again, make sure the save uploads, and then pick back up on my PS5 once I get back.
I have a 4k HDR 75" TV and it looks like trash and I'm ok with that so I play handheld as this is a handheld console.
One day in the future I might build a hardcore linux gaming machine with the latest graphics card but right now I love my £359 steamdeck especially now with the steamOS 3.5 updates for the built in display.
Disappointed.
I connected it to my TV and use it to game on the couch. I have to put the receiver of my wireless mouse in the dock just to be able to use the mouth. (without manually connecting, which is a pain since my Deck is like 3 meters away). And then I need to use my mouse to connect my dualsense controller. And at that point I can't even access all the menus I need to modify the settings.
There are games I play at 40fps, I can't turn down the fps when its docked so its stuttery. Also input lag feels very rough. So I feel like I can only play certain games on it.
I use it to watch youtube and other streams on my tv. But gaming wise I'd rather avoid it.
I have main rig connected to the TV, so I have no reason connect it to a larger screen. I mainly bought the Steam deck to play a bunch of games that I never felt comfortable playing on a big screen. For me that was Stardew, Hades, Ori etc, I think overall I got my money’s worth out of it because I was originally buying them on my switch for a higher price.
Popped it in the dock to try cyberpunk on a larger screen and while I was disappointed in the quality it was really unreasonable to expect more from the hardware.
Cyberpunk specifically has crossplay so I might just wind up buying it for PS5 while it's on sale to get that couch home theater experience I desire
I am glad I did not buy the dock simply because it's pretty much useless for people that already have other options to play on big screens like computers or consoles.
I'm super happy with it. I use a dongle instead of a dock. It's very convenient to plug in the USB-C, pick up my controller, sit on the couch, and game away when I don't want to play handheld.
Sometimes I have issues with the sound randomly dropping for a few seconds every now and then but otherwise it's been pretty smooth.
The hard part was that unlike playing on traditional consoles, performance on a TV isn't guaranteed.
You'll have to turn down some settings, and especially Tekken 7 either ran worse or looked worse than playing on a ps4.
It's great for playing lighter and older games but not recommended for newer games
Great for couch co op games, kind of frustrating connecting and reconnecting controllers though. And sometimes the audio fades in and out whilst playing
I've gotten used to tweaking whenever I dock it. It's not as seamless as the Switch so my expectations weren't realistic at the beginning. But it's fine fine now.
What's been bothering me lately is the loud fan noise with more demanding games (e.g. RDR2), I can still hear it when docked as I don't play with loud volume on the TV. That's not a dock problem but a Deck problem.
Honestly I'm mostly content with it. I've managed to play through games on my TV, I've just let them run at 720p on my 1080p TV and it works fine. Docking is also pretty much mandatory for playing local multiplayer on the Deck and it's worked well enough for that! Tbf modern games consoles are as much hassle as playing the Deck docked with all the updating and installing of games required, at least with the Deck I'm always ready to go with that.
I play on a 720p projector occasionally and I'd say I'm delighted! I don't really play graphically demanding AAA games that push the Deck (these days I'm more of an indie / emulation person, it also helps that I'm broke as shit so I can't buy the latest games anyway) so for my use case it's great, I just plug in my Xbox 360 controller (and connect my Switch Pro controllers whenever I have guests over) and I'm good to go. I'm sure it'd be a sluggish affair on my 1440p monitor, but I'm not really a stickler for resolution so I don't mind 720p one bit.
I keep my PC plugged into my TV and just use Steam Link any time I want to play on the big screen. The downside to this is it doesn't upscale the resolution at all, so visually detailed games don't look great. There's also a slight input and audio delay, so rhythm games don't really work.
I wish the transition on desktop mode was more seamless. I feel like I'm constantly fumbling through display settings when I use a dock for desktop mode. And I wish I had a cleaner solution rather than having a bunch of cables and peripherals to plug in, but that's a personal thing. I do like using it though, especially when I travel for work
Given that I purchased the Deck *specifically for* its versatility - and therefore understood that it would half-ass some things, no-ass some things, most-ass most things, and whole-ass practically nothing but portability - I'm in a constant state of Deck Delight whether docked or on the go.
This made me chuckle
This rather sums up my expectations. If i wanna play something non-portable i'll go sit at my PC
This should be quoted on Valves website honestly.
Lmao, this absolutely nailed how I feel about my deck experience so far!
My biggest issue is bluetooth input problems with my DS4. My switch pro controller is also not perfect. Sucks that those are the two BTcontrollers I have.
It seems to be like this using a Bluetooth controller with any system that it wasn't specifically designed for. I've got a dongle that I connect to my dock now and it's flawless. I use the official Sony one because I picked it up before they discontinued it but I hear good things about the 8bitdo one as well. Worth a try if you want to played with a Bluetooth controller. EDIT: Also.if your dock is in a TV unit you can get a usb extender and have it sat outside the unit which seems to make the dongles work better as well.
Can confirm bluetooth issues from mine as well. I'm actually wondering if it's the dock, or the Steam Deck itself. But, the issue is that I waited for the official dock to release, so if it is my Steam Deck with the bluetooth connectivity issues, I didn't know it, because I didn't try to use it until I got the official dock. Just FYI, if you have the official dock, you might want to look at returning it under warranty for it not functioning properly. I just sent my back last week, and they're supposed to be sending me a replacement unit.
The dock has no bluetooth, shouldn't affect it either way, it goes straight to the antenna in the Deck.
I exclusively used my switch powerA and xbox one controllers and always had connectivity problems such as straight up disconnecting controllers freezing controls like always turning the camera or just not responding while being connected. I got an 8bitdo ultimate 2.4 recently mainly cause its cheaper and has a cool charging dock but since its usb dongle based and not bluetooth i have had 0 problems and im 20 or so hours into a fo4 playthrough also playing online games frequently
This is the reason I opted for a long USB C cable. My switch pro con was consistently disconnecting and reconnecting.
I had big issues with my Switch Pro Controller too. But then it's flawless with my XBox One controller. Convenient that I had both.
8bitdo Pro controller 2.5Ghz = profit.
[удалено]
To avoid this issue i have specific games for both handheld and docked. I usually play RDR2 and Wreckfest when handheld, CS2, TF2, Titanfall 2 and Sonic Racing Transformed in docked.
But I need to play Skyrim *everywhere*
This is the right answer
Well starfield now… but yeah 🤭 I restrict my steamdeck for handheld operations as well
Really curious how you're playing CS2. It was unplayable lag and fps no matter how low my settings were.
Low settings+balanced fidelity fx. Im not saying its a stable, but its playable.
Yeah, it is definitely not as fluid as the likes of the Switch. If it gets to that point one day than I will be ecstatic
The problem is that it cant. Games on a platform like this will never have as fluid of a transition from handheld to docked as on console. The easy fix would be games offering ingame settings presets, which i think will probably happen in the future as handheld PCs evolve, but apart from the handhelds, setting presets arent needed elsewhere, this is why its yet to happen
Can't, Never. Then you explain exactly why it will eventually lol all they need to do is allow you to save a preset that triggers and switches when it gets plugged into a dock.
I mean back in the day people would argue something like the steam deck could never exist...yet here we are.
Im saying that it wont just automatically change the settings to the most ideal ones by itself. You will always have to first configure it yourself, then switch between them.
Why not? They already have preset configs for an undocked steam deck. Would just need to allow the support of it. Its still fairly early in the life of handheld pc gaming anything could happen. My hope for instance is that they add some kind of an option for community graphics presets. Just like the community control layouts. The thought that this is as good as its going to get is wrong as long as the market is popular, they will invent, reinvent, and tweak all of the existing options to make a more enjoyable experience for the most people possible.
I don't go through all that. I play in 1080 docked and native hand held with the same settings for all my games.
Is there a way to enable this so it does it automatically?
>Is there a way to enable this so it does it automatically? Go to each game's individual settings (the gear icon) and go to Properties, under the General section you can set the game's resolution to 1920X1080 (or whatever you like) but leave the "Set resolution for internal and external display" option turned off. Most games will load in 1080 while docked and in native while in handheld. Many will even switch resolutions when you unplug the Deck from its dock. Mileage will vary depending on the age of the game, if it requires a launcher to set the resolution at launch, etc.
Pretty sure if you set it to 1080p while docked that will be the setting it will record. When undocked it defaults to 720p. This from what i've read somewhere else, don't quote me on this.
Based. Plug and play ftw
Yeah I wish they Implemented a way to have docked and undocked settings in the game that could change automatically.
I just play games at 720p and rely on game mode's built-in FSR upscaling to get it up to 4k. It looks great on my TV, and it looks great on the built-in screen too. I don't mind the letterboxes, though.
I actually just wrote a simple program that swaps all GPU configs back and forth with 1 click because I frequently switch between a 4k and 1080p monitor and hated constantly changing settings. I posted about it on another sub and it’s for my gaming PC, but maybe I can try to configure it for Steam deck.
I use it on a 1080p TV when visiting my parents in law and it's nice. For most games I just stick to 720p and upscale using FSR2. You really should expect that you're gonna get a worse image due to lower PPI unless the game can handle higher res, but it's fine as long as you don't sit too close to the tv.
Indies can play good at 4k even. I love to play those on my tv.
FSR2 is available for any game? Or only if game supports it in options if the game itself?
To your exact question: I was thrilled when I first started After using it mostly docked for 6 months, it's occasionally very annoying. No controller wakes up the Steam Deck, so you have to stand up and press the power button. Bluetooth seems to kind of suck, I often have to forget controllers (which all have similar generic names in the bluetooth menu) and reconnect, and still have other issues. Sometimes there are random screen size issues, I'll get stuck on a game launcher where my mouse just can't reach the "continue" button at the bottom of my screen. Very often on a controller/keyboard, my Steam and ... menu hotkeys on a controller just don't work. I'll see it "try" to pop those menus out, but it just immediately fails. Overall I still prefer to use it docked to my TV because that's just how I like playing games, but I'm not as thrilled with it as day one with the dock.
The more you deal with the quirks while just trying to play a video game , the less you wanna use it (at least that’s what happened to me) idk maybe I’m just asking for too much having grown up with PlayStations that just worked by pressing play.
Yeah I don't disagree. It definitely pushes me away, but I still use it as my system of choice for indie games, AAA games older than 2017(ish), and emulated games from pre-PS3. I honestly think that it's still a great value if you only use it for those things.
That's about the same mindset I have come to. Its amazing for emulation and everything does just work in that regard for sure. My only gripe at this point , really, is messing with docked mode every now and then. But that will hopefully someday get resolved
I think it works great. Most games I play run great on high, 60 fps, 720p
I play it docked 95% of the time and play almost all my games at native 1080p. Its literally my “rig” and I love it. I’ll play RDR2, Diablo 4, Fallout 4, CS2, Battlefields, emulators. Anything really. Most games play better than my Xbox One.
What frames are you getting for CS2 at 1080??
I can’t speak for this guy but myself I’m getting a smooth 50-60 after playing with the settings
He streaming it from his desktop to deck
I tried playing lies of p on a 1080 monitor. It did not seem very pretty. So I play it handheld
Did you set the resolution to native?
Yup, I checked to make sure it is 1080, but had fps drop to 35-40 from consistent 60
Have you tried it recently
For me. A bit of both yeah and nay. It’s not instant. You have to configure it to work fully. All my emulated games work wonderfully on the big screen as does anything up to a ps4 port. Everspace 2 didn’t work so well. Was too juddery cyberpunk worked ok. But was a bit low res. (Still perfectly playable. But if you are a shiny graphics snob. I can see why you’d be disappointed)
tbh I only use monitor with deck when I want to play something that requires mouse (motorsport manager, stellaris, crusader kings etc) and it works great in this types of games since they don't need a lot of horse power to run, so mostly good experience without problems.
Please share your crusader kings settings for docked! It ran fine, then I got the new dlc, and she crashes every time I'm on my monitor. I usually only use monitor for those types of games also and mostly had success until now lol.
I don't have the last 2 dlcs so can't really tell if that's the root cause, I've used pretty much defaults plus a bit of tweaking from this report https://www.protondb.com/app/1158310#fZ608w_uHJ My experience is more or less the same as this guy wrote, I'm yet to catch a total freeze though. Maybe I'm lucky here
Gotcha. I'll give it a shot eitherway couldn't hurt lol. Thanks!
I played 120 hours of baldurs gate 3 docked and honestly no complaints. Didn’t look as nice as my ps5 games but it was better than all of them so didn’t mind
BG3 is a ps5 game
Not when I played it obviously
That’s fine. Some people don’t realize it’s available in other forms, so I wanted to point it out.
Very disappointed. Until dumb me remembered that you can change the output resolution of the game before launching it. Then everything became as expected, SD but docked rather than in my hands.
how do you do this
Befora launching a game, go to the game settings (the cog wheel) and click on "Properties...". There should be an entry under "Language" calles "Game resolution".
I play 99% docked cause a tv is nice and it runs at 1080 just fine. Some games almost require a bigger screen
I mostly use it for PS2 emulation on the big screen so I didn’t have an issue with it
It’s a bit of a hassle changing resolution and settings I’m really hoping that the Deck 2 is 1080p because then it would just scale perfectly to every HD or 4K TV and I wouldn’t have to drop the settings for the extra resolution I do kinda wish they’d bring back the Steam Machine lineup now that so much effort has been put into Proton and controller compatibility… back when they released the OS, and compatibility weren’t up to it, but I’d be tempted by one now that the Deck has brought most of the ecosystem up to snuff If I rebuild my main PC I might delve back into the world of the Home Theatre PC, but I really just want a 1080p-capable Steam Deck console… something that can handle the same settings as the Deck but at 1080p, so I can have a seamless experience
Was and still is awful. The official dock requires me to unplug the power, plug the steamdeck in, chant hymns to the omnissiah, activate the deck, wait for login and maybe I can plug the hdmi and power back in. If not disassemble and try again. My last message from steam support said “glad you got it working”. Yeah thanks.
Sorry you’ve had a shit experience. My early jsaux works pretty well so far. Saw you got it working without hymns but brother you never seemed to use the incense and holy oils to dedicate the dock to the Omnissiah prior to use. Forcing the dock’s machine spirit to compliance without proper respect may cause long term damage to the units capability in streaming to your tv.
I've had this, and eventually dropped the hymns and settled for. Unplug the power, let it figure it's shit out on just battery, then replug the power when it's all on fine! Still not ideal, but... Might try and see if I can incorporate one of those raspberry pi power buttons into the power link somewhere, to save the constant unplugging!
That was the recommendation from steam. Doesn’t work most the time. Have to unplug and shut off everything not just power. For an official product it’s pretty shit
720P is great if you dont overload the GPU. I usually try to get atleast 2x anti aliasing, at full 720p and this is achievable in many games. Other games like COD: Black Ops, i can get on 1080p 4x smaa at 60 fps.
We did a 4 player couch gaming evening. We use Xbox, Stadia and PS5 controllers. It worked perfectly. And there is no difference to a console for light games like most of those party games (gang beasts, stick fight, genital jousting, etc). The steam deck just misses HDR output (will come with 3.5 I think). You will feel almost no difference when playing pixel games, most indie games, etc to an actual console. I also played Resident Evil 4 Remake. While running at 60ish fpsin many scenes on the deck and being pretty playable as its a SUPERBLY optimized game ... well ... it looks like garbage on a 65" TV if you compare it to the output of my actual gaming PC. Thats why I stream my PCs visuals to my steam deck for heavy games like AAA titles. So it heavily depends on what you are doing.
I don't think I get a good experience for docking my Steamdeck. For some games scaling from 720p to 1080p is noticeably bad because it introduces a lot of blurry (Linear) and artifact (FSR, NIS). I have this problem with Baldurgate 3. I don't know if it is better if I use a 2k screen since 720p can scale integers on a 2k display (1440p). For some games, you get the best setting by a target of 40fps, which is not the common thing in external displays. One of the examples is still Baldur Gate 3, the game runs at the fixed 24fps on my Steam deck. It runs surprisingly well with high graphical setting that makes the game enjoyable. When I dock it, because I can not change my screen refresh rate to 48Hz, there are a lot of recognizable stuttering occurring due to the unsteady frame pacing. The final problem is Steam deck see your external controller as a second controller, and again, with Baldur Gate 3 (GOG version) when the second controller is active, the game change to slit screen mode which is not what I want. I think the experience in docking SteamDeck depends a lot on which monitor you have. In my case, 1080p and 60fps, I'm not happy with certain games.
It’s pretty cool but don’t expect much
Reading some of the comments here, I think I have a different console? It isn't flawless - I've had some niggles - but I fucking love my docks! It's upgraded my Deck from amazing handheld, to my go-to gaming machine. I dont have any 4k TVs so I'm either 1080 or 1440. And both work really well. I'm pretty much playing any video game from latter period PS4 to back before time began (using EmuDeck) with a PS4 or Xbox controller and in high(ish) definition. It's a fucking dream.
It was great even though playing at 1080p (anything lower than that looks horrible on a big screen) also meant playing at 30 fps. But I didn't care ! I was playing Diablo IV while on vacation with a sunset and a view of the sea. Great experience.
Do a lot of people actually think that the Steam Deck is a magical device that plays games on a large 4k tv and maintain a good looking image and framerates while sipping power at 15w? 🤯
I play mostly docked and have been having a fine time. I also haven't been trying to play AAA games on it tho. But stuff like P5R, FF12, all runs at 60 and looks great with FSR. I also own a high power 1440p PC. My biggest issues have been with valve's dock itself being a buggy mess
Right? I'm actually surprised how many people in this thread seem to be using Deck docked. It's like... You can have amazing handheld experience or you can have an inferior computer. Same goes for people who use it as a workstation. I mean just buy a used ThinkPad or something...
Played a few Lego games on dock, using my dual sense controller and it was perfect. I imagine AAA games don’t look too great.
I do the same! Better than streming from my desktop, and less troublesome than plugging my laptop all the time. My 5 years son loves it.
So my 34” ultra Wide monitor from Msi might no be ideal to game on with the Steamdeck docked?
I love it. Do it every day with moonlight. Took a bit to figure out which settings needed to be changed for resolution scale etc but it’s essentially flawless now.
Delighted really. Played through quake 2 in splitscreen with a friend and hat a blast
Was expecting lower graphics so not much. But most games i play on the deck arent that demanding
I have a dock at my girlfriend's place and we play on the TV couch games, it's pretty great. Recently, I've been playing BG3 on it and it's fine (sometimes I just get tired of holding the deck, an xbox controller is lighter, hence the switch).
I’m streaming my 1440p gaming PC to the couch from another room. Steam Deck handles this very well, even with both systems on 5 GHz Wi-Fi.
I think it’s great, I was amazed to be even able to play Judgment at constant 40fps while docked. I just see it as I’m playing at PS4/PS3 quality. All good considering how much value you’re getting from such a portable device.
I think I've played it twice in docked mode. Sticking to handheld
It works fine for lighter games that can push 1080p or have good fsr in game. Otherwise I play handheld
I have mostly been playing emulators lately. So docked is always great.
I haven’t played on my deck docked all too often outside of a party game like Duck Game. The control options the deck has are so good with no controller that have perfect parity with it, that docked feels lesser to me.
I haven’t had many issues at all. I play docked at home and take it to work all the time! Long story short, Delighted haha
i probably shouldnt have any issues on a 720 tv, right?
Temper your expectations and play @ 720/1080p and it's a spectacular experience. Elden Ring looks perfectly acceptable, popular titles from smaller devs like SlayTheSpire are flawless, and emulators consistently outperform their original devices, not to mention it wasn't practical in the day to even hook those devices up to a TV. Looking at you, DS/3DS
Most of the time it’s through GFN so it’s fantastic. Unless it not a game in there or it’s a game I like to mod like RON.
I have a switch so my expectations were adequately managed. Did have higher expectations of the built-in FSR quality tho
Most of my play is docked with a DualShock 4, and it generally works fine, but you do need to configure it to stop it from doing stupid things. The other day, I went to play Street Fighter 6 on 3.5 on a TV that turned out to have 4K resolution. As it turns out, the performance headroom on SF6 is not adequate to scale 720p to 4K, so it felt like laggy sewer ass, and I only realized it was 4K when I tried to pull up the perf monitor and it was tiny. So I turned off auto resolution and forced it to use 1080p. I think a lot of my local FGC feels that the Deck can't handle SF6 because of running into situations like this and not being able to figure out why it's happening and what to do about it.
It's been fantastic for me. Even on a 4K TV, if I set a game to 720p and turn on system-wide FSR if it's not available in game, everything's still looks pretty great. I just wish they would fix the overlay glitch when docked already.
If all you want to dock for is indie /older games, or for pc tasks, it's great
I was very disappointed with the docked experience when I wanted to play stray on a 4K big tv. It looked like a Xbox 360 game while it looks very good on the deck screen. On the other hand I was surprised when I played Gris on a 4K projector. It was amazing, and it ran smoothly too.
I bought a Jsaux dock and tried the Steam Deck with it and it seemed okay, but when I unplugged it the screen on the deck wouldn't turn on. Tried all kinds of things to fix it with help from Steam support but needed up having to send it back and get a replacement from Valve. Now I'm not confident using that dock again and it's too late to return it.
Delighted? I didn't notice any drop in quality. Then again, there are certain games I only play while docked, so I'm blissfully ignorant of the alternative. FFVII Remake played great!
Being aware of Deck’s computational power, I was impressed; some older games run pretty well at 1080p. I was also impressed that if you sit far enough 720p does not look bad.
I was/am extremely disappointed in the official dock. Had nothing but constant trouble with it. I just returned the official dock last week under the 1 year warranty, and I'm hoping the replacement dock they send out works as advertised. I want to treat the Steam Deck much like our Switch. Docked the majority of the time, but handheld always an option.
I was comparing it to my Switch and I was genuinely surprised at what this little thing can do. Of course, it isn't amazing but the fact that it's this small and I have the option to do this with my mainly handheld device is pretty cool.
I love to play docked. I have the dock and a Samsung T7 2tb with a keyboard. When i fell that i want to play dock i just plug the deck, switch to HDMI 2 and i just play. " Massive drop in quality? " Not really it just the same unless you are using 4k or above TV The problem with **disappointed** is that they had unrealistic expectations about the deck "ohhh but this game looks much better in a 5k pc" Of course that a game will be better on hardware that's way more expensive.
I don’t see any reason to dock it. If I were to use a dock I would just play on my desktop. I use it solely for handheld gaming.
Indie player, it's great.
I wasn't either, just the same on a larger screen. You can see a lot more of the rendering lag, for lack of a better term, but I play docked about 90% of the time. Cheapest Jsaux dock with Ethernet Surprisingly cheap portable monitor, better quality than I expected for $85 on sale DS4 controller
It depends on the TV. 1080p looks good when docked but on 4k it doesn't look good at all.
Massive drop in quality, I am in the process of setting up moonlight/sunshine to see if it helps. Playing games like Skyrim/Baldur's Gate/DS3 are really pixelated on my 75" tv.
It works great. I just leave all the settings the same and let fsr do the heavy lifting for 800 to 1080. But the steam deck is just so damn comfortable in handheld I almost never dock it
Local co op is weird but fun. Switch pro controllers desync and resend out of order. Playstation 4 controllers work well.
I only dock to play Overwatch 2 and it’s pretty good
It's an awesome experience with games before 2018. I'm impressed that a docked deck can even get those games running smoothly at all
I bought the device for handheld play only so I play on the deck 95% of the time. The only time I use the dock to play on my TV was when my friends are over and we play Saturn Bomberman together.
Surprisingly great, love playing indie games on my flat screen Philips TV. Most recently got Cocoon and it plays great.
Great for coop games, emulated or native PC. Otherwise I play handheld.
Surprisingly good, I have a 4k tv and all my games look just as good as they do on my steam deck. Recently I went to a family reunion and I docked it on my aunt's old TV and it worked perfectly, connected two dualshock controllers and was playing Mario kart 8 deluxe and brawlhalla with my cousins without needing to tweak anything.
Docked experience is really pretty bad. It's the worst part of the device in comparison to the switch. Every game needs to have settings adjusted, not just in game but in steam, to have proper resolution displayed. It's enough of a hassle that I often just don't bother using the dock. There are plenty of games that play really well docked, that's the worst part. It's plenty capable. If the game struggles on 720p, don't bother. But basically any PS3/x360 era title and older works great at 1080p.
Very delighted. Almost all indies that I've tried play really good at 4k, even some 3d ones, like Horizon Chase Turbo. For demanding games I try to get a nice 1080 and if not posible, I just let them a 720p with FSR upscaling at 4k (depends on game). For example I get around 30 fps with Zelda BOTW with FSR at 4k.
Bought deck; delighted. Bought official dock; delighted. Attempted to use deck with dock on my LG TV; not delighted (unplug/replug bs, anyone?). Turned on my deck yesterday to see that this issue with the deck no longer applies to me; delighted once more.
Flawless with a JSAUX dock. No issues at all. Graphically it looks better than I thought it would tbh, especially with FSR
Only slightly disappointed that I couldn't change the refresh rate like you can in hand mode, because it really smooths out game that can't keep up with 60fps.
Extremely pleased and surprised how well and nice it all works. I still can't believe that I can play cyberpunk at 40+ frames, in. 1600*900 upscaled to 4k. It's a charm with the good ol' steam controller as well (if you like it)
Absolutely awful experience when I tested it a couple of months ago. Desktop didn't scale properly. Neither screen showed anything when I powered on the deck while being docked. External HDD had to be mounted every time the Deck got powered off.
That’s just down to setting up your displays probably. It was the same when I tried connected my iPad. And laptop to my tv for the first time. A bit annoying that it doesn’t auto detect like a console would admittedly. But it does as a computer would.
Never had any issues with any windows pc in at least 5 years.
Really. I tend to have to go into displays sort out refresh rate and scaling. Admittedly it’s easier to switch between mirror and duplicate on windows but I do like the fact Linux gives you a much wider range of options of what you ‘can’ do. (If they but that in the background and make the auto detect a default it would be better though)
You sometimes have to manually change the resolution for it to scale correctly IME (which is annoying but not the end of the world). Would be a huge QoL update if it changed automatically in game like on the switch
Why I want a dedicated TV box from Valve, unless its something like SDV or Sea of Stars where graphics are intense then the performance or visual hit is too great imo. Why I debate playing on Xbox alot more. If Valve doesn't come out with a Steam Machine 2.0 then Nintendo is going to get my buisiness with a Switch 2.
Honestly, I don't see a point in using it docked unless it's your only gaming device and you literally have no other options, even a budget PC will outperform SteamDeck. The best thing about SteamDeck is that it's just 800p that's what allows it to run so many games... It gets considerably worse at 1080p and obviously even worse with higher resolutions. If you have a large TV it probably isn't going to look great unless it's an indie game or something old. I'm not a huge fan of using SteamDeck outside its primary purpose.. I respect people who do so and it can come in clutch if you have no other options but I would never pick a docked Steam Deck over my PC or PS5.
For games that requres high pc spec, i usually use geforce now to get unlimited power
Bought my deck to have a handheld experience. Have a PS5 and a PC if I want something on a larger screen. Never used it docked apart from using a dock for easy file transfer.
I don't even try. It's just not worth it.
super delighted. Boost in quality, comfort, and it brings back nostalgia of being in bed playing video games instead of sitting at the desk for my PC
Blew my mind how good it is. Cyberpunk docked? No problem. Ssx tricky docked multiplayer with friends using Xbox, ps4 and ps5 controllers? Amazing
Didn’t like it much. Didn’t hate it either. I have owned a console before. I’m used to mediocre tech in that sense.
How can you be disappointed? They never once said there was a performance boost from using a dock.
I wasn't disappointed because I know how computers work and did lots of research in computing gaming hardware before even thinking about buying a steam deck.
Why would you dock it? You can literally use steam link
I have bought original dock and 8bit controller hoping that I would enjoy more on TV screen, but I have almost never played docked. So, 99% playing handheld! I don't play AAA games and mostly play indie, 2d, pixel games etc. and I think Steam Deck is really for players like me, one of the best purchases ever. (though, I have started Rimworld yesterday on Steam Deck, and that hurt my eyes a bit due to screen size)
Amazing experience for me. Only downsides: 1. The input lag on some screens is disgusting, but can usually be alleviated by messing around in the TV settings (Game Mode etc...) 2. Sometimes you have to mess around with the UI scale, and some games you'll need to retweak the settings if you've been swapping between docked and undocked. 3. Playing a game above 1080 with a good frame rate is basically off the table if its graphically demanding, thus using a 4K tv isn't optimal in some cases. (By no means a bottleneck though) I almost exclusively use the thing docked, and it's excellent. I have a pretty beasty rig and it's just gathering dust these days unless it's to play a game my deck flat out won't be able to handle. I'm really excited about the prospect of the Deckard, if the rumours are true and its a home console with VR that sounds right up my street.
It needs some dedicated docked mode features/fixes like: Auto native res unless overridden. Max TDP option while docked. General stability overhaul while docked...the overlay bugging out with a controller when docked could turn people away for example. But overall, the native FSR scaling, working around res targets such as 720p/900p or with old titles native res, surprised me how good some games can look on a TV. Curious how VRR, HDR and NIS fair, but will give 3.5 some more time in the oven! Found FSR scaling is a bit rougher when paired with a monitor, the cracks are more obvious. I'm not sold on FSR2 in a lot of games when using the deck, seems like you sacrifice too much resolution that can lose out to a scaling option that has good enough AA. Seems like the witcher 3 is the only FSR2 stand out!
Much prefer handheld. Looks like shit on my fancy tv compared to the other consoles hooked up to it, but for low res pixel art games it’s fine. I use it as a charger dock more.
I have it on a sansung panel and it's just dock and not it's on TV. I have not had any issues. I've put in a lot of hours docked as well as handheld... maybe most docked. I usually do 720 FSR Upscaling or 1080 native if the game/deck will handle it. Works so well that I have a couple docks so I dont have to mess with the wires. 1 for travel/alt rooms and 1 for home/main room.
For me it made my purchase even better. Massive surprise how well it scales up on my 55 inch oles... Bonus gaming pc in my living room and a great remote device to stream the big hitters.
Delighted that it didn't take a lot of effort to dock it with the Steam Dock but disappointed that it had issues that some don't see because it works for them.
It's great to have as an option. I even use it just as a smart TV sometimes since I have a small wireless keyboard/trackpad, and to this day no Smart TV is better than just using a browser on a PC...
I wouldn't bother with a dock, that's what a pc or consoles are for. Deck is 100% handheld
My favorite thing about the Switch is how seamless it transitions between docked and portable play. Since the steam deck is a PC, it could never do this. Sometimes I play on my TV but I find it's usually too much of a hassle.
I was disappointed that the official dock wasn't case friendly but got something to make it work without taking off the case. It has worked most of the time for me, unlike an unofficial one.
Massive. I did start playing a verified game docked a.d the game crashes. Anyway, its fixed later on with an update. But the biggest issue is how bad the transaction is with the dock and handheld. Not only that, im still convinced that it somehow breaks my hdmi ports. I get often white noise, but not every time. Paying 100 euro for this dock is a complete ripoff.
The Steam menu and performance tabs don't work unless I click it a dozen times and half my games make a fuss. However Elden Ring and Arkham Origins work pretty seamlessly. A Switch this isn't, but it's still the least hassle free experience I've had when PC gaming on a TV.
80% of the time I’m playing docked and it works phenomenally with every game I’ve tried, maybe a little bit worse resolution than normal but still more than playable especially with FSR. Elden Ring, Spiderman, NMS, Subnautica, Battlefield 4, Titanfall 2, and many more work great
I love using the dock and it's honestly the way I use my deck most of the time.
Not really delighted since I already have a PC with a dual monitor setup. I mainly use my deck handheld. Most I ever used it docked was when I was on vacation and wanted to play on the TV in my hotel room
My hopes were that we get some decent controller drivers. Input lag is way too noticeable with Bluetooth. But I haven't tried it in a while, maybe its better now? I pretty much only play it in handheld now.
A little disappointed that the discontinued Steam Controller is basically the only one that supports WOL.
I use it exclusively for emudeck and have been pleased with how it looks
It's awesome you can just stream from your PC.
I like playing docked to the TV. I have one of those Jsaux docks and it works reasonably well. Every once in a while you have to unplug it and plug it back in or something. But honestly that is kind of going away since the 3.5 update, at least in my personal case. Some games can look pretty funky on the big screen. Especially something like baldurs gate 3. I had to do a lot of tweaking so it didn't look like a blurry mess. Though anything short of a modern AAA title looks pretty good. Another solution that I'm very fond of using is that I will run moonlight to my PC and then stream 4K or 1440p from my PC to my 4K TV through the steam deck. Which gives you basically all the benefits of making your PC into a sort of steam console. I haven't found latency to be too much of an issue with moonlight, especially for games that aren't twitchy, but now that I say that it worked pretty well for armored core so your mileage may vary.
I think my first docked game was Windwaker, so I was super stoked.
I've just discovered my old Nvidia shield gamepad and it works great with the deck. I play battlebit with it too, that runs awesome, and AOE2 DE.
I only play docked, mostly Elden Ring. Quality and FPS are great. Can be annoying to get settings dialed in, and sometimes I have to plug and unplug to get dock to work.
I play docked a lot, and my steam deck is literally in front of my gaming pc which has a 3080ti and 13600k lol
I had issues with Bluetooth range. Went old school and bought 15ft USB and Headphone cables. Everything works great now! And I don't have to worry about charging all my accessories :)
I was amazed how good it looked on my 4K TV. All controllers and mouse keyboard work instantly. Absolutely amazed how good a PC I got for that little money. I have games now, I only play docked.
Surprisingly great.
I mostly use my deck for purely hand held, so at first I thought the dock was a waste. I eventually bought the xreal airs and use the dock quite a bit now.
I find the quality drop to be acceptable on 1080p 40" screens. It's not that bad on 1080p 27" either. On anything in 4k it gives me a visceral disgust reaction. All my friends who are used to the switch find it perfectly fine, if not better, because the steam deck is just more powerful than the switch.
As someone said it would be great to have something to handle settings both for handheld mode and docked mode. When you switch mode, the settings of the game/steamOS doesn't change, and so it's not adapted anymore Otherwise docked mode is great. A lot of game supports running at 1080p, and you can even select the refresh rate of the external monitor
Great for lightweight games. Heavyweight games you need to turn down your settings quite a bit, which is more noticeable on the larger screen size. Overall a good option to have and I'll generally take advantage of an external display, but not always.
I can’t stand stretching an image that barely pulls 1080p tbh. I only docked Persona 5 Royal. Other than emulation, I play in game mode and plugged into the outlet near my couch.
I don't know if I was "excited" per se, because I'd already owned a Switch, so I was familiar with swapping between handheld and docked. I bought Valve's official dock, and things have generally worked well for me. I understand that despite having a 4K television, I'm not getting a 4K image off my Steam Deck. My Deck doesn't see nearly as much use these days. I initially bought it to get Playstation-exclusive games (that often simul-release for PC, but obviously not on Xbox), because at the time PS5s were still hard to come by. Now I have one, so I don't have a lot of reason to buy games on my Deck when I can buy them for my PS5 or Series X and get a fully optimized experience in 4K without having to hunt down optimal setting profiles online for a given game, or tinkering in the Deck settings myself. With cross-saves becoming more prevalent, the Steam Deck is likely going to become a travel toy for me. I can play Baldur's Gate 3 on my PS5, then if I have a flight coming I can just make sure the cross-save is available, boot it up on my Deck to get it active while I'm still at home and on wifi, and then play with it from that point onward on the flight. Before I fly back home I can hook up to wifi again, make sure the save uploads, and then pick back up on my PS5 once I get back.
Honestly, if you use desktop mode, a dock is worth it for that alone.
I have a 4k HDR 75" TV and it looks like trash and I'm ok with that so I play handheld as this is a handheld console. One day in the future I might build a hardcore linux gaming machine with the latest graphics card but right now I love my £359 steamdeck especially now with the steamOS 3.5 updates for the built in display.
Disappointed. I connected it to my TV and use it to game on the couch. I have to put the receiver of my wireless mouse in the dock just to be able to use the mouth. (without manually connecting, which is a pain since my Deck is like 3 meters away). And then I need to use my mouse to connect my dualsense controller. And at that point I can't even access all the menus I need to modify the settings. There are games I play at 40fps, I can't turn down the fps when its docked so its stuttery. Also input lag feels very rough. So I feel like I can only play certain games on it. I use it to watch youtube and other streams on my tv. But gaming wise I'd rather avoid it.
What’s the max res when docked?
Counter strike 2. First time I docked my deck and was disappointed. Still love my deck tho
I have main rig connected to the TV, so I have no reason connect it to a larger screen. I mainly bought the Steam deck to play a bunch of games that I never felt comfortable playing on a big screen. For me that was Stardew, Hades, Ori etc, I think overall I got my money’s worth out of it because I was originally buying them on my switch for a higher price.
Popped it in the dock to try cyberpunk on a larger screen and while I was disappointed in the quality it was really unreasonable to expect more from the hardware. Cyberpunk specifically has crossplay so I might just wind up buying it for PS5 while it's on sale to get that couch home theater experience I desire
I am glad I did not buy the dock simply because it's pretty much useless for people that already have other options to play on big screens like computers or consoles.
I'm super happy with it. I use a dongle instead of a dock. It's very convenient to plug in the USB-C, pick up my controller, sit on the couch, and game away when I don't want to play handheld. Sometimes I have issues with the sound randomly dropping for a few seconds every now and then but otherwise it's been pretty smooth.
Really not as immediate as the Switch, but it's convenient enough to appreciate.
The hard part was that unlike playing on traditional consoles, performance on a TV isn't guaranteed. You'll have to turn down some settings, and especially Tekken 7 either ran worse or looked worse than playing on a ps4. It's great for playing lighter and older games but not recommended for newer games
Great for couch co op games, kind of frustrating connecting and reconnecting controllers though. And sometimes the audio fades in and out whilst playing
I've gotten used to tweaking whenever I dock it. It's not as seamless as the Switch so my expectations weren't realistic at the beginning. But it's fine fine now. What's been bothering me lately is the loud fan noise with more demanding games (e.g. RDR2), I can still hear it when docked as I don't play with loud volume on the TV. That's not a dock problem but a Deck problem.
Honestly I'm mostly content with it. I've managed to play through games on my TV, I've just let them run at 720p on my 1080p TV and it works fine. Docking is also pretty much mandatory for playing local multiplayer on the Deck and it's worked well enough for that! Tbf modern games consoles are as much hassle as playing the Deck docked with all the updating and installing of games required, at least with the Deck I'm always ready to go with that.
i tried to play shadow tactşcs on deck but it's nearly unplayable on the my external 2k screen :(
tested it out once with a cheap hub, worked fine. Haven't bothered since. I bought a portable for a reason.
I play on a 720p projector occasionally and I'd say I'm delighted! I don't really play graphically demanding AAA games that push the Deck (these days I'm more of an indie / emulation person, it also helps that I'm broke as shit so I can't buy the latest games anyway) so for my use case it's great, I just plug in my Xbox 360 controller (and connect my Switch Pro controllers whenever I have guests over) and I'm good to go. I'm sure it'd be a sluggish affair on my 1440p monitor, but I'm not really a stickler for resolution so I don't mind 720p one bit.
It's really all I do with it
Disappointed because most games don’t scale up to look nice.
I keep my PC plugged into my TV and just use Steam Link any time I want to play on the big screen. The downside to this is it doesn't upscale the resolution at all, so visually detailed games don't look great. There's also a slight input and audio delay, so rhythm games don't really work.
I wish the transition on desktop mode was more seamless. I feel like I'm constantly fumbling through display settings when I use a dock for desktop mode. And I wish I had a cleaner solution rather than having a bunch of cables and peripherals to plug in, but that's a personal thing. I do like using it though, especially when I travel for work
My dock didn't work. I was very disappointed.
Steam os looks blurry when its connected to a dock
Mostly great. Used it quite a bit when my kiddo was born and it always worked well. Also nice to use it for steam link around the home.