Since getting my Steam Controller, I’ve been playing docked much more, and was curious how well it works for everyone else.
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.
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.
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.
Depends on the game.
Older games run at max at high resolution with no issues.
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.
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!
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!
i use it docked more than anything else with a 1080p monitor my old work was chucking. Works perfectly.
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!
It is not nearly so smooth and reliable as consoles like the Switch. On occasion, it outputs to the wrong audio device, or doesn’t pick up a controller. But, those are infrequent issues and I usually put up with them.
The Deck isn’t great for high-fidelity games on 1080p, but I’m okay with that since it wasn’t made for them. For docking, I like having it to play the many indie games where that’s not a strong requirement.
