Playing games Steam Deck to connect with UPERFECT Lapdock Review by Constant Geekery

Intro

I've got an interesting product to show you guys today is the UPERFECT. X-pro lapdock, it's a 15.6 inch. Portable battery-powered monitor with an integrated. Kickstand looks a little bit like a Surface Pro. I guess with it's detachable. Keyboard and trackpad here and is designed to connect via USB C to any device which supports USB C output. And of course, the steam deck is one of those devices. So could you use this device to turn your steam deck into a gaming laptop? Let's find out.

Overview & Disclouser

This laptop is primarily designed for use with things like Samsung's Dex mode, where you can connect your phone and then use it like a laptop. But I'll be testing that out in another video. So if you want to see that, don't forget to subscribe. But Uperfect specifically sent this over to me because they wanted me to test it with the steam deck. Any sight of the video before it goes Live on YouTube and we retain full editorial control. So we can give you our honest opinion of this device.

Why use a Lapdock with Steam Deck?

I'm sure, you know what a steam deck is. But if you're unfamiliar with this, this is the mighty gaming portable from Valve that gives you access to the vast majority of the Steam games library on the go. The slight downside, of course, is that not all PC, games are suited to playing on a 7-inch screen and sometimes you just need keyboard and mouse input. So perhaps UPERFECT lapdock could be Be the answer here valve are expecting Gamers to dock their deck and they put out their own steam deck, specific dock, which I've got here and I'll be reviewing that very soon on the channel. But of course, this stock requires you to bring your own monitor, keyboard and mouse. So let's have a rundown of the laptop first, and then, we'll see how it does with gaming.

Pricing & Specs

There are lots of different models available. But for this specific model, you can have it as 4K or 1080p the 4K model costs 440 pounds. Five hundred dollars and a 1080p model is 343 pounds or $390 and this is the 1080p model that we've got here, how they wouldn't be much point in having the 4K model for steam deck use because the steam deck doesn't have enough Graphics power to render games at that kind of resolution. Let's just remove the keyboard and trackpad for a moment and just look at the display itself. It's a 16.7 million color depth, which supports, 100% of the srgb color gamut the display. It. Sophie's, a w, LED backlit. IPS touch panel made by LG and it runs at 60 hertz, the viewing angle is nice and wider 178 degrees. And I have to say it looks really good, but it is quite reflective. Now that wouldn't be a problem apart from the fact that the peak brightness is only 216, it's 216 X would be fine. So long as you're not in a brightly lit room, I do think that lack of brightness is a bit of a shame though. As it does let down an otherwise. Display the display is touch-enabled, it's got ten point capacitive, multi-touch, and it supports things like to finger dragging to zoom in and that kind of thing. Provided the OS supports it and you'll be pleased to hear that steamos does support it. The on-screen menu for the display itself. Also supports touch, which makes life much easier though. There is also a push wheel interface control over here on the left hand side.

USB-C, PD & Charging

the build quality of the display itself is really good. The case is all made out of aluminum as is the kickstand and the whole thing feels sturdy. The kickstand has got this nice resistance to it that allows you to choose any kind of viewing angle. You can rotate it through 180 degrees if you want to. So really impressive. It looks stylish. It feels premium. The display itself is really Slim. I like the design. I like the fact that we've got rubber feet on the bottom. So when you've got it position like this, it's pretty stable on the desk surface. It's not going to slide around too much honestly. Initial thoughts are that? It's worth the price just for the monitor, but I'll come back to that on the right hand side here. We've got two USB ports, one is for power input and one is to connect to your device. Now it does support USB PD and it will pass through power to the steam deck. In fact, you can actually charge your steam deck from the internal battery of the lapdog though that will drain this battery. Very quickly charging speed do when you've got power plugged in through to the deck isn't particularly fast. It says it's going to take something like 6 hours to fully, charge the deck. And if you're playing a game and the deck is working hard and drawing power, then there's insufficient power being sent through to charge it. So it'll actually discharged as you're playing it. So if you want to charge and play, you're going to need to buy another USB hub to connect to your steam Deck

Battery Life Claims

The battery inside is apparently 10,000 milliamp hours. I'm not sure about this because it doesn't feel heavy enough for that or look large enough. UPERFECT a claiming eight hours of video playback and for Six hours in desktop use and I just don't understand those claims. It's a display, it's not going to processor in it. So what you're displaying shouldn't, really make that much difference. It's all about the backlight. How bright you have it and how long it's on for that's what's going to determine your battery life. So I would take those figures with a healthy pinch of salt. We certainly haven't got close to four to six hours in our testing. Just cleaning the display there as picking up fingerprints. I can't bear fingerprints on my display. Touchscreens are probably not for me.

HDMI Input & Ports

A nice touch that we have here is that there's a mini HDMI port on the side which means that you can also use this display then with devices that don't have USBC display out support. And I like the fact that this port is on the right hand side of the display. So that means that all of the main cables, your power input, and your display cables are all on one side and the monitor. There is another USB C port. On the left hand side, which you can use to plug in a hub or other USB devices like a wired keyboard. Dormouse. And there's also a headphone jack on this side. And that's a useful addition.
Onboard Speakers
There are stereo speakers on board as you'd expect on a device like this. They don't have much in the way of bass response, but they do actually sound pretty good and they're loud enough for playing at home. When you plug in the steam deck, it will automatically select those speakers and you can turn the volume up and down using the controls on the deck if you want to.

Keyboard & Trackpad

So, a very promising start I think let's attach the keyboard and trackpad. Now if you're using used to a Surface Pro, you're going to find this process pretty frustrating because the magnet placement is just I think I've done it. It's just not quite in the right space. I find that a little bit frustrating, I think that needs work and maybe that's something UPERFECT could improve with the next iteration. Something you might notice is that by attaching the keyboard and trackpad we've just lifted the front of the monitor up. So the rubber feet are no longer touching the desk which affect stability. It is still pretty good and the typing experience on the keys. I found them to be nicely weighted. There's a decent response to them, although the spacing is a little bit wider than I'm used to, we have got some shortcut keys, which are used with the FM button for things like volume and brightness. Although what I found in steamos is changing the brightness, using these Keys doesn't actually seem to do anything, so you probably need to use the on-screen menu. But again, with that brightness, you're probably never going to have it on anything other than maximum. I think the biggest downside to the keyboard is the Amount of board Flex that you've got. Now, unlike a Surface Pro where the keyboard kind of folds up and attaches magnetically to the front edge of the surface for extra support. We don't have anything like this on the lap, dog. So the keyboard is able to move and flex as you type. And that's not a particularly great feeling. When it comes to the trackpad is okay. If you're used to a Mac or a Windows Precision trackpad, then you're going to find this one a little bit there, it's got left and right click regions at the front of the track pad. But Can't click at the back. I find that slightly awkward but it does support tap to click. So overall then initial impressions are that the display is lovely. As long as you're not in a brightly lit room and the keyboard and trackpad feels like it needs a bit more work

Trackpad Gaming Bugs

Let's get to the important thing. How does it gain initially? We found that it was a little bit buggy when connecting directly to the steam deck, when the steam deck is in gaming mode, in a couple of the games that we tried, we found that the trackpad didn't work properly and it just seemed to bug out the game. Now that May have been something specific to our deck or it may be something that is fixed in a software update. But something to remember, of course, is that the steam deck is a PC and with a device like this, perhaps you're going to want to switch into desktop mode.

Gaming Experience

once we did that, everything works as intended and of course, you can launch games from the steamer with, in desktop mode, just like you can on any PC. So I'm spending a little bit of time using my steam deck as a Linux PC in desktop mode with this laptop and the experience. Surprise me. I'm actually thinking it might be interesting to try and use it for a day as my main work machine. Let me know if you'd like to see that in the comments section. And incidentally, I do try to read all your comments even if I don't have time to respond to all of them and it does help with the YouTube algorithm and supports the channel. So thank you in advance for all of your comments. Now, been spent a few hours playtesting this setup and he found that he had to quickly give up with the trackpad and he used a USB mouse instead. And actually, I expect this would be the case with most Gamers even if the trackpad was better on the device. Then spent some time with the long dark Jurassic world Evolution and Timber born. And his conclusion, was that it felt just like playing on his PC.

Resolution

Now it's important to say that he left. The game is running at the default, steam debt resolution of 720p and he was perfectly happy with the way it looked. I think it looks fine as well, but there is nothing stopping. You changing the resolution to 1080p if you want to, but there isn't an important note. If you're running the steam deck in its default gaming mode, then you can't select a resolution higher than 1280 by 720 the native resolution of the deck. So you do need to go into Linux desktop mode if you want to change resolution. Once you do that, you'll find that you have options for resolutions up to the 1080p resolution of this display a but obviously it depends on how demanding the game is as to whether the steam that can render it at 60 frames per second. I'll just quickly tried the long dark at 1080p. And I found I was getting 35 to 45 frames per second and that's completely playable for a casual game, but it's not going to please. Anyone who likes to play competitive, first-person shooters.

Steam Overlay

Something else to note is that the Steam and menu buttons on the steam deck. Don't seem to work in desktop mode. So instead, you need to use shift tab to get access to the standard steam overlay, which is a shame, because I would have liked to have use the performance data overlay that comes with the steam deck, but that's just not available. It seems when you're running desktop mode

 

Controller & Dextop mode

That's nothing stopping. You just picking up the deck and using it as a controller, whilst you're connected to the laptop. All of the normal controller inputs work fine in desktop mode, but you could also connect a Bluetooth controller. If you prefer that, now, just to clarify, why we're using desktop mode, it was specifically because it resolved bugs with this specific keyboard, and trackpad for us in our situation. If you're just planning to dock your deck onto a display, perhaps using the new steam deck, do you don't need. To use desktop mode. 

Conclusions

So overall, this is a pretty interesting experience and I think we need to draw some conclusions. And I believe there are two separate questions to answer here. First of all, is the lapdog, a good partner for your steam deck. Yes. And no. It really depends on how much time you spend playing games that need keyboard and mouse input or just need a bigger display. And if you spend a lot of time playing those sorts of games, then is the steam deck, the right solution, and by the time, you've bought your debt. And something like the lab doc, you getting quite close to the price of a reasonable gaming laptop. On the other hand, if you primarily play controller base games, but you want to have an occasional solution for other games, then I can see the benefit of something like this. It is an all-in-one docking solution, which is completely portable, and it does fold up nice and neat, makes it ideal for travel. And there's no reason why you couldn't use it to get some work, done to it since the lapdog is versatile, and it can connect to any USB C or HDMI Source, it's perhaps a nice thing to have around if you have other devices that could make use of it and then perhaps the purchase price makes more sense. When it comes to the steam deck though, I think there are some pretty big downsides, you won't be able to make full use of the 1080p resolution with top-tier titles and that power pass through issue is really a problem. It seems that you're going to need to charge first and then play rather than play while charging the second question. I think we need to answer is whether this UPERFECT. Laptop is a good product, and is it worth the asking price overall? I think so, for some people now, sure the keyboard and trackpad, we haven't been very complimentary about and they're not the best, but it doesn't mean that they're useless. There are plenty of laptops out there with worse key action and works track pads. And at the end of the day, you can always take it off and use your preferred keyboard and mouse. Anyway, the display itself is really nice. It's well-made. Nice build quality, but it's let down by the lack of brightness. And the The overall reflectivity of the glass and I think that brightness situation does actually impact the portability of the device. Imagine if you're taking it traveling, well, it'll be fine. Once you sat in your hotel room of an evening, but sat in a bright airport lounge, possibly not so much. And now perhaps UPERFECT could improve that with the next generation of these devices and something like, 400, nits, I think is where they need to be getting to. It's probably true that some people won't be bothered by that and they'll see the usefulness of having such Versatile. Set up, it does open up new possibilities for your steam deck and I'm really excited to explore those possibilities both with this product and also, with the official Dock.

 

To get this review video, check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIMfPsZIExk


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