I’ve always had a soft spot for Jsaux. The sturdy braided USB cables have served me well for years, and now the company has deigned to offer us an alternative to the official Steam Deck (opens in new tab) dock, while Valve is twirling its thumbs.
There are two versions of the Jsaux Steam Deck Dock: the standard HB0602 (opens in new tab)and the improved HB0603 (opens in new tab) which mainly improves the specifications of the USB port. Unfortunately, both suffer from limitations when it comes to Ethernet speeds, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
For the most part, the Jsaux dock is a sturdy, good-looking piece of equipment. I love the gunmetal gray, and it does a great job of showcasing the Steam Deck in style. Nestled in its small silicone-coated corner, the Deck doesn’t slide around when you move it from one surface to another, and the cable is just the right length to reach the Deck’s charging port, with enough slack to extend the Deck. while keeping it connected.
It’s clear that Jsaux has made durability a top priority with its Premium Aluminum Alloy frame, although there is a bit of a hollowness to the body. My main concern here is the metal corners, while mostly rounded, are terrifyingly close to my Steam Deck’s screen. Maybe I’m just a worrier.
At least I know if I get a puppy it will be hard to chew through this dock.
Jsaux Steam Deck Dock Specifications
Connections: 2x USB 2.0 Type-A, 1x USB Type-C (100W), 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x RJ45 Ethernet input.
Material: Premium Aluminum Alloy, Gunmetal Grey
Fashion model: HB0603
Price: $39.99 (opens in new tab) (£35) / $49.99 (opens in new tab)
As for connectivity, while the official Steam Deck dock HDMI 2.0 . will bid and DisplayPort 1.4, Jsaux chose to deliver up to 4K resolutions at 60Hz through a single HDMI 2.0 output. Most use cases don’t warrant 4K, as the Steam Deck will likely struggle with those resolutions.
Of course you can always play at a lower resolution and use AMD’s Fidelity FX Super Resolution (opens in new tab) tech to scale up, if you use the Jsaux dock with one of the best 4K gaming monitors (opens in new tab). Unfortunately, this dock doesn’t allow you to take full advantage of the Steam Deck as a portable 8K+ movie player. However, if you only want to use it as a portable workstation, you’ve got the Jsaux dock covered, although an extra USB port or two might have been nice.
A USB Type-C is available that charges up to 100W (the Deck only requires 45W), so there’s some leeway for charging peripherals. Although, again, another port would have been a great addition so you could charge and connected something else to it. To free up one of these ports, consider connecting the dock to a monitor with a USB Type-C downstream (for charging and display output), but it’s important to note that the DisplayLink chipset in many monitoring is not supported until now on Linux.
For some strange reason, Jsaux sent me the cheaper $40 (£35) version of the dock with its dual USB 2.0 ports, as opposed to the $50 version with three USB 3.0 Type-A ports. My main question is this: why bother to skimp on such a downgrade? As our Dave says, “There’s no room for USB 2.0 on a new PC dock in 2022,” which is exactly why Valve delayed the official Dock to upgrade to USB 3.1 (opens in new tab).
What we do know is that the Jsaux dock is limited to 100Mbps Ethernet. For reference, it takes about 5 minutes to download a movie in 1080p at those speeds, so you can imagine how long it might take to download the full size of some of the current games (opens in new tab). For some users, this limitation will negate the need to plug in an Ethernet cable; your wifi can be even faster if you pay for more than 100 Mbps.
Ethernet and USB limitations aside, there’s still a lot to say about a company that released a sturdy, stylish Steam Deck dock before Valve managed to bring us an official one.
But it’s well worth spending that extra $10 on the HB0603 (opens in new tab) instead, mainly because there’s a bit of noticeable input latency when using those USB 2.0 ports to play games. While we bet the official dock is around $50 or less, we still have no idea how much it will cost. The $50 HB0603 with its USB 3.0 ports might be even more affordable, but if the official Dock comes close to that price at launch and boasts better Ethernet speeds, I’ll definitely spend my money on it.
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