The Official Steam Deck Dock is also available for order now too. Compared to the other steam deck dock prices on the market, the pricing seems very fair.
Certainly it is not the cheapest dock available, but it has a good selection of features, fast USB ports (ver. 3.1 USB connectors), Display port & HDMI video outputs, an extra power adapter for the Steam Deck, and so on.
Sure some people have some complaints, but overall i’m happy with Valve’s offering here. Plunked down some money to get the official dock.
I suggest the cheapest version of the Steam Deck, and then just get a decent sized Micro SD card to load games, and save the onboard space for OS needs.
Has anyone yet got their hands on the JSAUX dock with the m/2 slot? That seems to be a nice option if you want a docked library or other docked use case, I really need to pick a dock up at some point.
As for the steam deck versions, yeah the 64GB is fine, although i did sell my 64GB model after getting a 512GB, oppertunity knocked so why not.
I thought about that new JSAUX dock, but decided against it for two reasons.
First it costs you a USB slot (I know, not a big deal because you can just add a hub to the dock if you want… but it was one of the considerations)
Second, the cost of an external USB drive is is lower than the added price on the JSAUX dock, when compared to the official dock, it adds another 40 dollars to the price. external M.2 enclosures can be had for 17 dollars on newegg currently (for the cheapest one - which actually looks alright)
So. 40 dollars to have one built in. Or 17 dollars to get one I can plug into anything, for me - I valued the 3rd usb slot and would rather have an entirely separate m.2 enclosure I could easily use with anything instead of having one stuck in the dock itself.
also, typically if you buy an external drive these days, the price of the USB enclosure is even further reduced due to being bundled with the external drive. That’s been my experience with external drives at least…
Of course consider your needs when purchasing any piece of hardware. That’s just how my own reasoning went when I decided on the official dock instead of the JSAUX dock with an M.2 slot.
If you have a particular need for the feature, and if it is worth the cost to you, then go for it! It should work fine with the Steam Deck’s features.
Edit - There was one other thing. The official dock his Display Port & HDMI - the JSAUX dock only has HDMI.
I personally prefer Display Port because it is an untainted signal. VS HDMI which has all that silly/pointless copy protection encryption built in.
Drat, they did just expand pre-orders into some markets in Asia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. So hopefully your region will have something soon too =)
My guess is they are not opening up to more markets to hopefully avoid pre-order delays before they have stock ready in those areas.
Yeah =/ I know there are some places that it is particularly difficult to ship items. I know some people in the Phillipines for example, shipping a 3 pound package from the US costs around 50 usd currently, Australia and New Zealand is about 40 usd. Makes it somewhat difficult to get things back and forth, even small packages can be expensive to ship very far.
Of course if you know someone who lives in a region somewhat close to you, where the steam deck is being sold. Maybe they could buy one and ship it to you? It would still work fine, as long as you have access to STEAM in your country. The only tricky part would be getting the hardware to you. And of course any warranty service would be particularly problematic until Valve started officially selling them in your region.
Shipping is a always the bane of our existence