Steam Deck users, has anyone found a compact docking setup?
I live in a pretty compact house, and have my work office upstairs in a corner of one of my kids bedrooms.
Obviously, gaming in there after they are asleep is a no go! Our one tv is usually given over to my wife on evenings I break out the Steam Deck - which has been my first foray back into gaming since having kids and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
However, I'm interested if anyone has found a neat solution to use it in e.g. desktop mode without a conventional monitor or TV to dock with, that I could break out quickly on a breakfast bar and then stow easily.
I'm envisaging some kinda of Frankensteined cheap laptop shell housing to contain the screen and keyboard-
Steam Deck -> USB C Dock -> HDMI out to laptop screen and USB out to keyboard.
Anyone familiar with something resembling this kind of setup, or something similar?
Honestly for tabletop use like that, I find the Deck's built in screen to be big enough. I have the Killswitch case which has a kickstand, but you can also get a Deckmate to attach a kickstand or get a holder for it. Then just a Bluetooth keyboard with a trackpad mouse and you're all set
Just the other day I was watching a youtube video where they approached someone playing on the most ridiculous setup I've ever seen. It looked like they had a board on their lap with a keyboard and mouse and on top of an articulated arm between their arms and their face they had what looked like a steam deck. Looked jerry-rigged as all getup, but I can't deny I admired the practicality of the solution.
You know, I didn't even consider that option as I was so focused on trying to replicate a standard PC setup. A Deckmate sounds like a good investment that will cover at least some of the use cases I had in mind.
I have a nexdock which I occasionaly use. It sounds exactly like what you want and works great!
https://nexdock.com/explore-nexdock/
Manufactoring quality isn't stellar though... My unit has quite some backlight bleed.
That is pretty much exactly what I was looking for - thanks, I'll look into it!
I don't know about any all-in-one solutions, but you can buy high-quality and reasonably priced portable monitors and compact wireless keyboards these days. E.g. The ASUS ZenScreen, and Keychron K7.
p.s. I own 2 Keychron keyboards, a K1 and K3, and highly recommend them. And while I can't vouch for the ZenScreen specifically, I have 3 other ASUS monitors that have served me well.
I've only seen a "portable monitor" before that was a laptop screen jerryrigged with a rats nest of cables - tech has obviously come along! The ZenScreen & portable keyboard looks like an neat solution
The portable screen market has exploded in the last two years.
You can get a 15.6” full HD display with 144Hz support for 100-120€ nowadays. Even the speakers aren’t bad. They’re fully powered via USB-C so the image and power use the same cable.
I use mine as a second monitor when travelling with a laptop and in the evening it becomes the display for my Stem Deck
You can find a bunch of them off Amazon, most are carbon copies of each others, just wait for a good deal.
People geeked out over the JSAUX dock before Valve dropped theirs, it might be worth looking at.
People geeked over the price of the JSAUX, but forgot that the official one comes with a 65W charger.
JSAUX is also metal and provides a little more sturdy feel than the official one. You can also use the existing 65W charger if you primarily play docked (like myself).
One possible setup with JSAUX is to use the M.2 SSD dock and load windows/some Linux OS to be used as desktop computer. To me it seems like a laptop with extra steps, but running a disk-heavy OS like Windows would definitely see an improvement in performance over using an SD card.
I don't believe you will find a laptop that will accept HDMI input and display that on its screen.
You'd be surprised.
Could probably use something like this though.
Capture cards aren't fun to play games through; they all introduce input lag.
Ah I was hoping there would be a passthrough-like mode that minimized that
I mean, I can stream my PC screen in 1080p 30 miles with the last bit over a 4g network with only 10ms added latency, I would hope this could do better.
Heck, the Deck has KDE connect in desktop mode. Use the virtual screen for that! I'll give it a go and report back.
Lag will vary depending on the specific device and resolution. I've got a cheap no-name HDMI capture device I bought on Amazon and it's juuuuust slow enough to be annoying in shooty-type games. If you're playing less twitchy games it doesn't matter as much, of course.
Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkMwLbIQlOg
I think I'd recommend getting an external bluetooth input (controller or keyboard/mouse or both depending) and use the steam deck itself as the screen if you need it more compact than even a small monitor with the dock would give you.
I live in a college dorm, and since there is no television, I'm able to use the steam deck screen as is and pair a Bluetooth controller to it. Alternatively, Its possible to use Valve's remote screen share to share the steam decks screen onto my laptop, and use the built in keyboard and mouse there. Both I think are possible for your situation, since this setup takes up barely any space and I can even use it on my bed. Lastly, to not wake up my roommate, I just link some Bluetooth headphones or earbuds and I'm good to go.