I’ve been thinking about this for a while. With the repairability of the steam deck and the power available to it, it seems like a no brainer to use it for a bit of school work or casual browsing, Discord etc. Like you would a normal desktop.
There’s a new product type popping up called LapDock that’s basically a hollowed out laptop but often with a giant battery, UPerfect has one and as well as the NexDock and they seem promising.
My personal biggest gripe is screen resolution and colour accuracy, as well as battery life. As I also do photography colour accuracy would be a great plus for me and as for resolution, I’ve been using 2k and higher screens for years and going back to 1080p seems like a bit of a turn off. However, UPerfect has monitor only types but having to set that up ontop of a mouse and keyboard while out and about seems less than ideal in comparison to a laptop.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone who’s tried it? Anyone who’ve tried desktop mode on high Res screens and seen any downsides, stutters, playback trouble, etc?
Edit:
I went out and bought myself a USB-C Hub with a PD port, HDMI and 2 USB to get a feel for the desktop experience on my TV at home. Since I do most of my work related things in Windows I installed it on a separate partition using GParted to shrink the home folder and then went through the Windows installer. After installing Valves drivers from their help page without errors everything seemed to work absolutely amazingly!
Everything from 4K playback to Windows animations all goes smoothly. It’s a trouble free Windows installation which from my previous experiences is a nice change of pace. The only hiccups I can notice is the occasional stutter and some Windows feeling laggy when resizing and moving, mainly the settings window and other WinUI software with lots of detailing and graphics to them.
I tried installing Deathloop through Xbox Game Pass and that worked wonderfully too. It installed quickly and I tried setting the resolution to 4K and got a solid 15 FPS! I tried 1440p as well and got around 30 and then went to 1080p where I got around 45. Not quite enough for me as I get slight headaches when below 60 but good enough I feel like. In the end for gaming it doesn’t really matter since I have handheld for that. Alternatively up-scaling.
As I’ve tried the Windows experience on the Steam Deck now I’m gonna continue my experimenting with SteamOS and see how that goes. My biggest issue so far has been that the USB-C Hub in Windows works perfectly at 4K 60Hz but SteamOS doesn’t seem to be detecting the 60Hz mode at all when the screen is at 4K. I’m gonna troubleshoot and see what I can find. If anyone has had any similar issues and know how to resolve them any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
All in all the desktop experience on the Steam Deck is amazingly smooth. Truly feels like a proper Desktop when things are setup the way I need them to be and I couldn’t be happier. The question for a laptop replacement is still in the air for me however. Now that I know that the desktop experience will be as smooth as it is I’m wondering which right way to go about it would be. As a lot of people in the comments on this thread and others mention that the build quality of the NexDock is absolutely terrible, a portable monitor seems to be the better way. I suppose in the end it would boil down to either living with bad build quality to get the more seamless experience. or chucking along a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with a portable monitor which could potentially not be too big of a hassle depending on how lazy I’m feeling during the days.
More thoughts would be welcome! Especially if there’s any other users who have any experience with external displays and how they’re using them!
I mean, yes, you could do this. Is it viable? Sort of, but only while docked - you’re not going to get a lot done on the go on the deck unless you’re carrying a portable monitor, mouse and keyboard and at that point you’re carrying more than a laptop around.
Personally I really like my 16in screen on my work+games laptop and it has much better performance and cooling than the steam deck. If I had to pick just one it’d probably be the laptop.
But yeah, knock yourself out, it’s probably a fun project if nothing else.
I’m thinking it’ll probably be way better for sustainability as well. Since I do need the performance I do and the Deck hits that performance within a good margin having to spend €12000 on a laptop with good build quality and good specs just for it to break or have some shit happen to it after the warranty is out feels like shit. So I’m thinking because the setup is semi-modular and each of the part of the setup isn’t super expensive it can still be worth it in the long-ish run. My steam deck break? I buy a new part from ifixit. The monitor breaks? Worst case scenario I can get a new one and possibly an upgrade since this market is new and moving. Keyboard and mouse breaks? Easy to replace that too.
Downside of course being the clunkiness of having to carry around all that and the time spent setting it up rather than just getting the laptop up and fold it up.