Love a bit of colour in your gaming life? JSAUX have two new releases ready to order today with the RGB Docking Station and the RGB transparent backplate for Steam Deck.
I honestly wouldn’t bother with the official Dock. I’m sure it’s a good product but it’s a bit pricey and doesn’t offer much over third-party ones.
What I would be careful of is potential malware in the cheap Chinese docks. I plugged one into a packet sniffer and it was attempting to poll my network and connect to weird IP’s (and that traffic was NOT from the Deck as it wasn’t connected). These things could be more than just dumb hubs internally.
I had the JSAUX HB0603 and Valve’s, and JSAUX is solid. I went for Valve because of the 3×USB-A with 3.1 Gen 2/“3.2”. But the HB1201 is likely better with more 3.1 Gen 2/“3.2” ports, while HB0601 is USB 3.0 only. JSAUX tend to have a more forgiving right angle connector, while you absolutely need a extender with Valve’s to reach a Steam Deck in a case (particularly the Dbrand Killswitch). I also found Valve is better at detecting 4K resolutions in Desktop Mode, while JSAUX just goes into 1920×1080, which can be preferable (4K is very illegible). On the other hand, I absolutely did not like JSAUX HB0603 being “better” constructed out of aluminum, because it easily scratches plastic, but the HB0601 and 1201 might be different with plastic lips.
Still on the fence about buying a dock. How does JSAUX quality compare to valve?
I can’t imagine playing anything without the trackpads and my original steam controller has been lost in the void of moving.
Reeaally hoping they announce the steam controller 2 with square trackpads.
I honestly wouldn’t bother with the official Dock. I’m sure it’s a good product but it’s a bit pricey and doesn’t offer much over third-party ones.
What I would be careful of is potential malware in the cheap Chinese docks. I plugged one into a packet sniffer and it was attempting to poll my network and connect to weird IP’s (and that traffic was NOT from the Deck as it wasn’t connected). These things could be more than just dumb hubs internally.
I had the JSAUX HB0603 and Valve’s, and JSAUX is solid. I went for Valve because of the 3×USB-A with 3.1 Gen 2/“3.2”. But the HB1201 is likely better with more 3.1 Gen 2/“3.2” ports, while HB0601 is USB 3.0 only. JSAUX tend to have a more forgiving right angle connector, while you absolutely need a extender with Valve’s to reach a Steam Deck in a case (particularly the Dbrand Killswitch). I also found Valve is better at detecting 4K resolutions in Desktop Mode, while JSAUX just goes into 1920×1080, which can be preferable (4K is very illegible). On the other hand, I absolutely did not like JSAUX HB0603 being “better” constructed out of aluminum, because it easily scratches plastic, but the HB0601 and 1201 might be different with plastic lips.