The official Steam Deck dock is finally available to purchase directly from Valve, after several long months of delays and teases. However, it carries a somewhat more premium price point than some comparable third-party options on the market, but there is a way the company could make it slightly cheaper.
Coming in at $89 USD / £79 GBP, the official Steam Deck dock packs just about everything you could want from this kind of device. It boasts three USB 3.1 Type-A connectors, Gigabit Ethernet, as well as a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 input. This plethora of ports makes it easy to connect Valve’s portable powerhouse to everything from the best gaming monitor in your office to the smart TV in your living room.
It also comes with its own power adaptor, but considering that the one that comes with the Steam Deck works just fine, we’d love to see the dock be made available without it in order to drive its price down. This would be similar to the practice of selling displays without stands that’s becoming more common among monitor manufacturers, a precedent we’d be happy to see continue here.
We’ll have to wait until we get Valve’s official offerings in house for a review before we can say how it stacks up against the best Steam Deck dock on the market right now. For now, if can’t justify the cost of the official peripheral, consider the Jsaux Steam Deck dock, which offers much of the same functionality while being significantly cheaper.