I have always had a soft spot for Jsaux. Their tough, braided USB cables have stood me in good stead for years. And now the company has delivered us an alternative to the official Steam Deck (opens in new tab) dock.

The Jsaux Steam Deck Dock comes in two versions: the standard HB0602 (opens in new tab) and the upgraded HB0603 (opens in new tab), which mainly improves the USB port specifications. Sadly, both suffer from limitations when it comes to Ethernet speeds, but more on that later.

By and large, the Jsaux dock is a sturdy, good-looking piece of kit. I love the gunmetal gray color and it does a great job of making the Steam Deck look stylish. The cable is just the right length, reaching up to the Deck's charging port, with enough slack to take out the Deck while it's still plugged in.

The body is slightly dimpled, although it is clear that Jsaux has made durability a top priority with its premium aluminum alloy frame. My main concern is that the metal corners, while rounded, are terribly close to the screen of my Steam Deck. Maybe I'm just a worrier, though.

At the very least, if I ever get a puppy, it will be hard to chew through this dock.

As for connectivity, the official Steam Deck dock offers HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4, but Jsaux has chosen to supply up to 4K resolution at 60Hz through a single HDMI 2.0 output. Steam Deck is likely to struggle at such resolutions and will not justify 4K in the majority of use cases.

Of course, if you are using a Jsaux dock and one of the best 4K gaming monitors (opens in new tab), you can always play at a lower resolution and upscale using AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution (opens in new tab) technology This is a great way to get the best out of your monitors. Sadly, however, this dock does not allow the Steam Deck to be fully utilized as a portable 8K+ movie player. If you just want to use it as a portable workstation, the Jsaux dock will suffice, but an extra USB port or two would have been nice.

USB Type-C is available and can charge up to 100W (the Deck only requires 45W), so there is some room for charging peripherals. Nevertheless, another port would allow you to connect something else while charging. One possible way to free up one of these ports would be to connect the dock to a monitor with USB Type-C downstream (for charging and image output), but it should be noted that the DisplayLink chipset in many monitors is not currently supported by Linux It should be noted that the DisplayLink chipset in many monitors is not currently supported by Linux.

Oddly, Jsaux sent me a cheaper $40 (£35) version of the dock with two USB 2.0 ports instead of the $50 version with three USB 3.0 Type-A ports. My main question is this: why bother stumping up for such a downgrade?" As our own Dave says, "There is no place for USB 2.0 in a new PC dock in 2022."

What we do know is that Jsaux docks are limited to 1Gbps Ethernet. For reference, it takes about 5 minutes to download a 1080p movie at this speed, so you can imagine how long it would take to download a full size recent game (open in new tab). if you are paying for 1000Mbps or more, Wi-Fi may be faster If you're paying 1000Mbps or more, Wi-Fi might be faster.

Ethernet and USB limitations aside, there's still a lot to be said about the company that released the rugged and stylish Steam Deck dock before Valve offered an official dock.

But it's definitely worth spending the extra $10 for the HB0603 (opens in new tab) instead, especially if you play games using the USB 2.0 port, as the input delay is a bit noticeable. I'm betting that the official dock will be under $50, but it remains to be seen how much it will cost; the $50 HB0603 with USB 3.0 ports may still be a better deal, but if the official dock is close to that price at launch and can boast better Ethernet speeds, I would definitely spend my money on that one.