I've been thinking about this for a while. With the repairability of the steam deck and the power available to it, it seems like a no brainer to use it for a bit of school work or casual browsing, Discord etc. Like you would a normal desktop.
There's a new product type popping up called LapDock that's basically a hollowed out laptop but often with a giant battery, UPerfect has one and as well as the NexDock and they seem promising.
My personal biggest gripe is screen resolution and colour accuracy, as well as battery life. As I also do photography colour accuracy would be a great plus for me and as for resolution, I've been using 2k and higher screens for years and going back to 1080p seems like a bit of a turn off. However, UPerfect has monitor only types but having to set that up ontop of a mouse and keyboard while out and about seems less than ideal in comparison to a laptop.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone who's tried it? Anyone who've tried desktop mode on high Res screens and seen any downsides, stutters, playback trouble, etc?
Edit:
I went out and bought myself a USB-C Hub with a PD port, HDMI and 2 USB to get a feel for the desktop experience on my TV at home. Since I do most of my work related things in Windows I installed it on a separate partition using GParted to shrink the home folder and then went through the Windows installer. After installing Valves drivers from their help page without errors everything seemed to work absolutely amazingly!
Everything from 4K playback to Windows animations all goes smoothly. It's a trouble free Windows installation which from my previous experiences is a nice change of pace. The only hiccups I can notice is the occasional stutter and some Windows feeling laggy when resizing and moving, mainly the settings window and other WinUI software with lots of detailing and graphics to them.
I tried installing Deathloop through Xbox Game Pass and that worked wonderfully too. It installed quickly and I tried setting the resolution to 4K and got a solid 15 FPS! I tried 1440p as well and got around 30 and then went to 1080p where I got around 45. Not quite enough for me as I get slight headaches when below 60 but good enough I feel like. In the end for gaming it doesn't really matter since I have handheld for that. Alternatively up-scaling.
As I've tried the Windows experience on the Steam Deck now I'm gonna continue my experimenting with SteamOS and see how that goes. My biggest issue so far has been that the USB-C Hub in Windows works perfectly at 4K 60Hz but SteamOS doesn't seem to be detecting the 60Hz mode at all when the screen is at 4K. I'm gonna troubleshoot and see what I can find. If anyone has had any similar issues and know how to resolve them any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
All in all the desktop experience on the Steam Deck is amazingly smooth. Truly feels like a proper Desktop when things are setup the way I need them to be and I couldn't be happier. The question for a laptop replacement is still in the air for me however. Now that I know that the desktop experience will be as smooth as it is I'm wondering which right way to go about it would be. As a lot of people in the comments on this thread and others mention that the build quality of the NexDock is absolutely terrible, a portable monitor seems to be the better way. I suppose in the end it would boil down to either living with bad build quality to get the more seamless experience. or chucking along a bluetooth mouse and keyboard with a portable monitor which could potentially not be too big of a hassle depending on how lazy I'm feeling during the days.
More thoughts would be welcome! Especially if there's any other users who have any experience with external displays and how they're using them!
I pretty much use my Steam Deck instead of my laptop so the time now. I mostly take advantage of keyboards, much, and monitors available at my destinations though, so it's much more portable.
For you typically Café office warrior, you're going to need to pack a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, as well as put up with a small screen. The monitors and laptop-style housings you mention can mitigate that though.
Still, it's kind of an inferior laptop option overall. You'll either have to make do without some laptop features or end up packing more gear than with a laptop. The Steam Deck is optimized for gaming, a laptop is optimized for… officing outside an office?
Where the Steam Deck might even though is where it can be docked. It may be large for a handheld gaming device, but it is smaller than most laptops.
You will still have to accept some limitations. SteamOS is designed to support gaming. One thing I've noticed is no support for printing (cups). I'm sure there are others. If you were a University student and you could only buy an inexpensive laptop or a Steam Deck, I'd get the inexpensive laptop. If you have a desktop with a mechanical keyboard and buffer big monitors, and you just need a supplemental device in a pinch, and are mostly looking to play games? Then the Steam Deck would be perfect.
For me, the Steam Deck has effectively completely replaced my laptop, but I'm not typing up TPS reports at Starbucks all day. I'm mostly playing games, and accepting a substandard "serious computing" experience or packing some essentials or just using it for non-gaming in a few locations.
When it comes to SteamOS limiations, I'm most likely going to end up dualbooting with Windows so that won't be much of an issue! As for printing, I never really print anything since I'm getting an education in IT systems administrations and virtualization so we never really print out our assignments. But good thing to keep in mind!
I don't sit by cafés too much either but do have a few buildings I go to that are not home or not school, since I prefer to study outside of my apartment I like to bring things with me. For most weeks I'm either at my local community music school for music where there's space to set up the setup but can be a bit clunky for sure if one compares to a laptop and folds up rather than setting up the screen plugging in the steam deck and then make sure the bluetooth is paired to the mouse and keyboard or if I get one of those Lapdocks I can short the steps a bit but will essentially be the same issue. A bit lower mobility and a bit more work to get running immediately.
My school works mostly contains of setting up VMs and working with Azure/AWS and the Windows partition will definitely help out in that regard.