I am considering buying a steam deck, but as I live in New Zealand I’m having to pay high import fees (~$1300 NZD total) so I want to be sure on a few things before I pull the trigger.

  1. Can the steam deck have multiple bluetooth connections at once? From my understanding if I had an xbox controller connected via bt, the audio jack doesn’t work, so would I be able to bypass this by having a bluetooth headset connected to SD at the same time as the controller?

  2. Do I need a dock to connect the steam deck to the TV? I have heard that it can be connected with a USB-C to hdmi adapter, but would the battery drain if it was connected this way?

  3. Is oled worth waiting ~2 months for? It seems like the earliest it will be available in my country is in mid January, and since I will probably be playing it on the tv most of the time I’m not too worried about the screen itself, but I’ve seen it does have some nice features like wake via Bluetooth controller.

Thank you for taking the time to read my questions any answers would be greatly appreciated :)

  • CodexHereBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    1. Yep, you can have multiple BT devices connected at once. I typically have my xbox controller, bt headset, and a bt speaker connected at all times! From my understanding the way the Xbox itself handles the audio is through a wifi-direct connection, not bluetooth. Can confirm that BT connected xbox controller does NOT allow audio. Default audio operations in KDE/Gamescope will route to last connected device. If you install qpwgraph you can control audio routing pretty easily in KDE - I usually have game audio going to headset and music from chrome/youtube going to my bt speaker for background noise.

    2. A lot of the USB-C dongles like this one have a USBC-PD (Power Delivery) capable port, so you can get away with using that if yours does. Having said that, literally any Steam Deck dock is worth it just for displaying your handheld! You can find them for $20-40USD on Amazon, and right now lots have discounts due to Black Friday sales!

    3. Honestly that’s your call… Personally, I play on the TV most of the time, and the LCD still looks pretty damn good when I do play handheld. For me, it’s a “what I don’t know, won’t hurt me” situation, and you can get the LCD version for pretty darn cheap (compared to retail) these days thanks to the OLED release. Unfortunately, and I don’t understand why, the wake on bluetooth doesn’t work on the LCD w/SteamOS 3.5.7.

    Feel free to ask any more questions you might have and I can do my best to answer!

    • mxbaker20OPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thank you for the detailed response! I think I will just get the LCD version because I’m too impatient to wait 2 months haha. Those were my main concerns, but do you know if point and click style games (like the original fallout, heroes of might and magic etc) map well - or at all to controllers? Or would I be better off playing those in handheld mode with the trackpads? Thanks again

      • CodexHereBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        The controller layout mapping can be buggy at times, but it’s REALLY capable at what it does.

        I haven’t been stifled by the controller configuration on any game. I’ve been playing RimWorld lately which is heavily menu-driven, selections, etc. I also play some RTS’ like Red Alert.

        Also keep in mind the screen is touch capable, so there’s a lot of possibilities.