Gabe Newell’s company has clarified the Ethernet port’s speeds, and Valve has also made some significant additions around the USB 3.1 ports.

The Steam Deck, Valve’s portable PC, is now available, and some lucky pre-orderers have already received the device, which comes with SteamOS as standard, but if you want to get fancy, you can also put Windows on the device. Like the Nintendo Switch, this machine will also have a dock. We’re using the future tense because there’s currently no component available to connect the handheld PC to televisions and monitors while charged simultaneously, similar to the popular platform of the big N.

However, the Steam Deck dock hasn’t even launched yet, but Gabe Newell and his team have already tuned it (!), presumably because demand for the device is excellent, and Valve doesn’t want it to be the weakest link. So far, it’s been official that the dock will have one USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 ports, and the company has not specified the Ethernet connection speed. Instead, the dock will now have three USB 3.1 ports, and the Ethernet will be gigabit, giving faster upload and download speeds and more stable USB speeds.

It is a very different approach to the Nintendo Switch. First, a non-dockable, 100% handheld version came out after the base model (the Switch Lite), and then, the larger and different display Switch OLED, launched last October, had to arrive before the Japanese company redesigned the dock!

The Steam Deck is currently planned to be shipped to the first customers towards the end of spring, so Valve may start shipping the first units to the US, Canada, UK and EU around the end of May or early June, so we might even get the dock if we pre-ordered it and would respond to the notification in time…

Source: WCCFTech