The Steam Deck Will Not Have Improved Performance When Docked

Valve revealed the Steam Deck last month. This is a portable gaming device that will let you play your PC gaming library on the go. People have been very excited for the device since its announcement, and it’s interesting to see what more we’ve learned since the announcement.

The latest piece of news comes from an interview PC Gamer had with the Steam Deck’s designer Greg Coomer. While the Steam Deck can be docked to connect more peripherals and even an external monitor (like a TV), it was revealed that docking the device will not change the amount of power the user can access. When asked if the team had considered it, Coomer said:

Yes, but we didn't choose to make it a really high priority design target... we felt that it was actually better all things considered to not modify based on docked status or mobile status.

We really wanted to prioritize for using it in what we thought would be the highest use case, which is actually mobile. And so since we were focusing on that, and we chose like a threshold where the machine will run well, and with a good frame rate with AAA games in that scenario. We didn't really feel like we should target also going after the dock scenario at higher resolutions. We wanted a simpler design target and to prioritize that.

What this means is that unlike the Nintendo Switch which is able to access more power when it’s docked, Steam Deck users will not have that luxury. The team has prioritized mobile gaming with a goal of at least 30 fps on a given game on the native 800p screen. This does mean that when connected to a TV or other monitor, a user could find that a game struggles to perform at higher resolutions. Since the device is essentially a PC, gamers will be able to adjust settings to find the optimal performance, but this is a bit of a bummer.