I’m also using the deck as a work machine and for that I connect an external monitor, keyboard, mouse. Getting the monitor to display correctly is quite the hassle though.
Suspends, reboots, turning off the dock’s power overnight or switching tween gaming and desktop mode all can cause issues with the external display being detected properly. Sometimes the deck uses it’s internal display instead. Or worse both screens stay black and I have to restart the deck by holding the power button. Other times the desktop environment uses the wrong resolution and I have to manually adjust it. Or the resolution is correct but the image is off center (leaving a black bar on one edge of the monitor and missing rows of pixels on the opposite side).
¿Are others experiencing these issues as well? I never have trouble with the other peripherals (keyboard, mouse, network cable).
I purchased Steam’s official dock cause I wanted the additional charger. ¿Can owners of docks from alternate manufacturers report how well external displays connect? Might be worth a switch to save me all the hassle.
edit: I just learned that you won’t receive updates to the dock unless you follow this procedure:
- power everything off (shut down deck completely, don’t just sleep it)
- remove all peripherals connected to the dock (except network cable if you use that for your connection)
- start the deck
- if there are any updates for the the dock, they should show in the options of gaming mode
🤨 why tho, valve? why not show dock updates always? how am I supposed to know about them otherwise… 😮💨
I don’t use my Steam Deck as a work machine, but I’ve also found getting external displays to be a bit of a chore. I’ve never gotten the DP to work and the HDMI is hit or miss.
That being said, the external display ports work more consistently with other hardware, like my laptop, so I think the issue lies with the Steam Deck.