I gave the Steam Deck proper desktop mode with a dock and mouse and it replaced my travel laptop.

The Steam Deck is a powerful device, and I’m not talking about the frames it pushes on AAA games, at least not here. I’ve said before that the Deck beats a budget gaming laptop on long trips, and much of what I’ve argued has been due to the form factor, because in situations where you can’t find a table to put your laptop on, the portable is the clear winner.

Best of all, the Deck not only keeps me busy on an 8-hour flight, but makes my next leg productive, easier on the eyes, faster for my workflow, and a little bigger for all my entertainment needs. To do all this, you need to add a dock, which sells for $40. Here, I think the deck is better for my travel computing needs than my old Lenovo Legion 5 Pro.

The entire desktop setup fits in my trunk

$40 for dock, mouse, keyboard and portable monitor if needed

Most of my travel gear fits in my trunk. I have a 7-in-1 USB-C dock for $40 on Amazon. It’s much smaller than Valve’s official dock, costs half as much, and offers a spec sheet that better suits my needs. With it, I can get 4K output at 60Hz via HDMI, three USB-A 3.2 ports rated at 10Gbps, and 100W of power delivery. I’m willing to bet you can get a dock with similar specs online for a similar or lower price.

The rest of the kit consists of a Bluetooth mouse that comes conveniently with a 2.4GHz USB dongle, a slim wireless keyboard, and a USB-C 1080p portable monitor when the occasion calls for it. The deck’s 45W charger handles power through the dock, so there’s no second power brick to pack. That’s something I appreciate after years of carrying a 5-pound charger for my Lenovo Legion 5 that weighed as much as the deck itself.

My hotel desk turns into a full office in less than a minute

SteamOS handles my browser tabs, Slack pings, and emails without complaint

Setting everything up is less time-consuming than finding a comfortable place for my large laptop (which needs to be conveniently placed next to a power outlet for more than an hour of work). I can simply drop the deck into the dock, pop out the portable monitor, wake up the keyboard, and plug the mouse receiver into the dock. At some point, I’m looking at a more comfortable desktop than a 7-inch screen.

Ironically, I can even say that Valve intended this very situation for SteamOS. Desktop mode. This feature gives me access to a full Linux desktop with a taskbar, file manager, Firefox, and the Discover software center.

Now, you could argue that the lobby and conference room computers you find in most hotels can do all that, but the problem is the friction in using them. They don’t have my bookmarks, logged in sessions, or access to Google Drive.

The deck does a trick my laptop has never learned

Pause the game on the big screen and resume it later on the smaller screen

Steam deck after the workday is over I probably bought it primarily for a dedicated entertainment system. Since I can seamlessly switch to game mode and have the full Steam library on my hotel TV, it’s easy to just go back, pair any controllers I’ve collected, pair via Bluetooth, and turn the setup into something that looks like my living room. Since I carry my browser data with me, Netflix and my YouTube accounts come with me, meaning I don’t have to type in my login credentials into the hotel’s smart TV and remember to log out when I’m done.

I also have some underrated luxuries that my Legion laptop doesn’t have. When a long gaming session is over, I can press the power button and the deck will stop the session instead of closing it.

The next morning, I can take it out of the dock, put it in my bag, and pick up where I left off on the display in the departure lounge. It’s an easy transition between docked and handheld use that Windows has never been able to manage, and it makes owning the deck a more immersive experience than owning any other portable gaming console.

It’s shaped like a console, but it’s as powerful as a computer

Most users who buy a Steam Deck believe it’s a game console like the Nintendo Switch or PSP, and when I first bought it, that’s what I bought it for. However, over time, the deck made me realize the difference between a handheld gaming console and a portable computer. While the deck is certainly in shape for gaming, it’s a device that can handle the weight of my on-the-go workload and still be the gaming device I bought when work is done.