Hello!
I often see people with different setups to dock their steam deck and play, steam deck docked to portable monitor, custom stands, TVs, or whatever.
But I’ve only seen people using it as their main PC while actively searching for it, and I get the feeling that that’s not a very common use, and that surprises me, as I believe its a hell of an offer to buy the cheapest model (like now 330€ LCD), and run that docked as your PC. When you want to play or bring it to the couch, you can do so because you got a cheap steam deck not a cheap pc. (I know laptops exist, but c’mon)
Anyway, my uses for the steam deck are:
- Gaming (Town to City is my new favourite)
- Programming
- Studying
- Consuming media
- Breaking and fixing my home server
Normal stuff for a PC with the added bonus of
- I get tired and go to bed
- I get tired, undock it and dock it back on the living room to play on the couch
- Get out of classes to rest and play it on the car for half an hour
Anyway, I’m getting further and further away from the title, but again, this thing fascinates me. I used to have;
Main pc + 2 screens
then it was
Main pc +1 screen + 1GF with 1 Steamdeck with 1 screen
And now
1 me with 1 steamdeck and sometimes both screens (which really impressed me when I first saw it), and my gf with my used to be main PC.
And so, for you, what are your favourite or niche use cases for it? Do you daily drive it as a PC? Do you feel like the steam deck lacks anything for a good desktop experience?
pd. Yes, I really made the post image for this one post, and it absolutely took me too much time for what it is.
My Steam Deck has been my primary and only PC for almost 2 years. My laptop that I had broke and instead of buying a new one I decided to buy adapters and a portable monitor. I rarely game on it but manage my homelab and do web development.
I’ve been trying some different distros over time and currently I’ve been sticking with NixOS, however it’s been giving me some minor inconveniences here and there so I’ve been thinking of moving back to Nobara again.
When I do game I never really leave desktop mode and just play it normally. Lately I’ve been playing Peak, No Man’s Sky, Stardew Valley and occasionally some VRChat.
Overall, it’s great, my steam deck works well as a secondary screen while plugged into my monitor. I place my chats and stuff there and then I do whatever else on the main screen.
Is it LCD or OLED? I’ve heard a couple of times people keep the steam deck screen off while docked to prevent burn-in on OLEDs, but idk if that is a real concern with the steamdeck?
Mines an LCD. So I don’t really worry about burn in on it. However my portable monitor is an OLED which I do worry about burn in on so I have my screen off time quite low.
It’s my daily driver as well, I’ve had both LCD and OLED, and native display is normally off for both when I’m docked to my monitor. Personal preference, I don’t need the small Deck screen as a second monitor 99% of the time when I’m setting five feet (1.5m) away, and I don’t like losing my mouse cursor in it.
OLED burn in isn’t an issue because you can replace the screen inexpensively if it does burn, and I’ve never heard of burn in on an OLED SD. Can keep the screen off anyway because it’s too small to be of use on a desk.
Burn in is a problem on stuff like OLED tvs because your options are to warranty or chuck the tv and get a new one if it burns. Steam deck is repairable.