The unit is nice and appears to be durable and has a good variety of ports (read the description in the link). Ok with that out of the way I purchased the ENKLEN USB-C Docking station ($99.99) on Amazon for my System76 Lemur Pro (2020) and thought I would share my experience and maybe answer some of the questions you may have.įirst off the unit is nice, it's weight and finish is almost equivalent to a NUC, maybe a little taller. Steam games get the Verified status if they play well on the handheld in 720p, so when you crank it up to 1440p, your mileage may vary.So let me just preface this post/review by saying even though I read/searched/posted many questions surrounding docks and specifically the System76 Lemur Pro I felt I did not find and concrete answers to my questions. Fortunately, you can scale the resolution up, but keep in mind that there is no performance difference on the Steam Deck between docked and undocked. That may look fine on the Steam Deck’s seven-inch screen, but blown up on a 24” inch monitor or, god forbid, a 60” TV, and you’re going to get a muddy mess of an image. It’s an important step though, because otherwise the in-game settings won’t let you push past 720p. It’s a little annoying, especially when you only remember to do it after you’ve already started the game. You’ll need to do this for every game you play, then set it back to 1280x720 when you’re done playing docked. The only finagling you need to do before you start a game is to access the preferences and set the resolution to match your display. As soon as you plug in your mouse and keyboard they immediately start working, even if you aren’t in the Steam Deck’s built-in desktop mode. Using the dock is incredibly straightforward, and I’m impressed by how well Valve has integrated support for desktop accessories. Most people won’t find this too bothersome since the mouse and keyboard are going to run towards the front anyway, but it is slightly harder to wrangle the trail of cables coming out of it. Syntech opted for a rounded design, which certainly makes the Deck more stable, but also makes the cables come out in all different directions. Valve is a thin bar that takes up minimal space, but doesn’t provide much stability for the docked Deck. The big difference is in the design of the dock. Related: Secret Lab Magnus Pro XL Review: Sitting, Standing, Thriving Syntech’s dock also only has a single HDMI instead of an HDMI and Display port like the official one, which is odd, but again, won’t matter to most people. The official dock has three USB 3.1 Gen1 ports while Syntech’s version has three 3.0 ports, but given you’re probably only going to be connecting mice, keyboards, and headsets, any difference here shouldn’t matter. The main differences between the two are minimal. Syntech, an electronic brand founded in 2017 that focuses on accessories for consumer tech, sent me its own version of the Steam Deck Dock, which has most of the features from the official dock at a fraction of the price. ![]() Luckily, Valve’s dock isn’t the only one. ![]() The official dock costs $80 on its own, which is a pretty significant price for an accessory. The docked use case for the Steam Deck is something Valve has taken for granted in the marketing, and refusing to bundle it with a dock was probably a mistake. The Steam Deck has plenty of limitations, but I’m impressed by how well it can serve as a desktop PC replacement, especially when docked. ![]() My video card alone set me back more than $700, and then I had to build an entire PC around it. Even if you aren’t specifically in the market for a handheld, the fact that you can get an all-in-one device like this that’s capable of running most modern games, for only $400, is incredible. At just $400, the Steam Deck can be an incredible entry to PC gaming.
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