Steam Deck Dock Experiments


Plugging things into a steam deck dock to see what happens

Posted: 2023-07-16
Est. Reading Time: 2 minutes
Author: Brady O'Leary

Today's blog post is a small and sweet one about what devices I have that work with a Steam Deck USB-C dock. I recently bought one during the Steam Summer Sale to use with my Steam Deck. However I was curious to see what else works with it.

Devices

Steam Deck

Attaching the dock to a Steam Deck
Attaching the dock to a Steam Deck

Given that this device was designed to work with the Steam Deck, it should come as no surprise that it works as intended. However, I have a silicone sleeve that I put my deck in, and as a result, it doesn't sit correctly in the dock, and the regular USB cable doesn't fit into the Deck without an extender.

Nintendo Switch

Attaching the dock to a Nintendo Switch
Attaching the dock to a Nintendo Switch

A Nintendo Switch is more picky about what USB-C docks it works with. Aside from the official docks, I have a cheap generic USB-C dongle I bought on Amazon that works corectly with it. From what I understand, it requires a special type of dongle that supports DisplayPort Alt mode with special proprietary Nintendo juice (I seem to recall that there's some magic bit or something that gets sent to the console). Needless to say it does not work with the Steam Deck Dock.

Samsung Galaxy S10

Attaching the dock to a Samsung Galaxy S10
Attaching the dock to a Samsung Galaxy S10

The Samsung Galaxy S10 worked well with the dock and I was able to use Samsung's Dex with it, however I was not able to get it to output at a 2K resolution over the DisplayPort on the dock.

PinePhone

Attaching the dock to a PinePhone
Attaching the dock to a PinePhone

Like the Nintendo Switch, the Pine Phone is also picky about what USB-C docks it works with correctly, though this is probably due to the USB driver for the phone (there were instances where USB completely stopped working on it requiring a restart). It did not work with the Steam Deck Dock.


In all, I think the dock was a good purchase, however I believe that some of the alternative USB-C docks could potentially be a better purchase, but I have not tried any others at the time of writing this.


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