I use the deck extensively in docked mode on my 4K 55" TV to play co-op games with my wife or friends, and for such a large screen, I always prefer 1080p definition for gaming, except on some too greedy games where I make do with 720p with FSR enabled.

For the SteamOS interface, I always set it to UHD@60.

Then yesterday I said to myself, I’m going to test 1080p, it’s quite sufficient for a 55" panel, and it’s very pretty too.

WHAT A CHANGE!!!

The interface is no longer slow at all, it’s become hyper-responsive, the bluetooth controller input lag has completely disappeared, when I press the Steam button in the middle of a game to modify the steaminput controller settings, the interface opens directly without any lag, in 4K it was a horror, very slow with terrible input lag!

The FPS counter is much more visible because it’s bigger!

And to top it all off, some games where I had freezes and big framerate drops (especially PES2021) have completely disappeared, with constant 60FPS now at 1080p.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to set the SteamOS interface to 4K and run a game at 1080p with it, I’ve noticed that now.

If you play a lot on your 4K TV, do the test and you’ll see, because I think a lot of people naturally make this mistake because we usually choose the best quality thinking it’s better, for me it was just the interface that was in 4K and not the games so I wasn’t going to lose performance, well I was totally wrong!

Switch everything to 1080p! Forget 4K on your TV!