I love my Steam Deck. So do a lot of other people. But the thing many of the early owners are missing is a good dock. Valve has an official one in the works but it’s not quite ready yet. Now, we have some indication as to perhaps why that is. It looks like the upcoming official Steam Deck Docking Station has had a stealthy pre-launch upgrade.
As highlighted by ReviewGeek, there has been a huge upgrade to the included USB-A ports on the Steam Deck Docking Station. When first revealed we were looking at a single USB 3.1 port joined by a pair of much slower USB 2.0 ports. Without any fanfare, Valve has upgraded those two USB 2.0 ports it seems to USB 3.1.
Why is this important? Any number of reasons, but when it comes to USB, speed is everything. USB 2.0 would have been OK for hooking up a mouse and keyboard, but the Steam Deck can be much more than just a handheld games console. Beneath that gamer-friendly exterior beats the heart of a full Linux desktop PC. You could conceivably use this thing as your desktop machine with all your favorite external storage and peripherals.
Storage is an important one, especially for those with larger Steam libraries. The built-in microSD card slot performs surprisingly well, but personally, I’ve got an external SSD I use to store my games as well. USB 3.1 will definitely help out with that. Likewise, a number of USB devices will simply require more than USB 2.0 to operate properly.
Valve has also clarified that the Steam Deck Docking Station will have Gigabit Ethernet, alongside the HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs. The Steam Deck Docking Station is wanted by so many partly for its connectivity, but also for its design. Currently, I use my Steam Deck with one of my existing USB-C docks, but my desk is a mess of cables when doing so. The official Valve accessory is designed to hold the Steam Deck but also make it a lot neater with the cables. It’s an instant buy as soon as it goes on sale sometime this “Spring.”
Source: Valve