Have not even tried with emulation since my Steam library backlog will probably outlive me but plenty of people say its great. I do know that, unlike the Switch, the Deck doesn’t scale up when you use the Dock. That might lead to some pretty gnarly looking games depending on how big your TV is.
But it’s a great device. Steam really hit it out of the park with this one.
I got one of these and it’s worked pretty well for me! Casting from the PS5 also works pretty well using an app called Chiaki (There isn’t a native app from Sony unfortunately).
I was using a thunderbolt dock because that’s what I already had, which worked very well. Thunderbolt docks are great because they have more than enough power to handle charging and video output. The downside is that they are expensive. I stopped docking it at home once I built a new PC.
You can definitely go with a third party dock, just make sure that it has the power passthrough to support the Deck and any peripherals. If you can get a dock with 80w+ you should be fine. I do use an Anker 553 USB-C hub when travelling if I want to connect it to a TV.
Note that in console mode the Steam Deck will have limited output resolutions. You may need to boot into desktop mode to access higher output resolutions for your TV. But keep in mind, the Deck is designed to play games at 720-800p and any graphically intensive games will struggle at higher resolutions when connected. For anything that isn’t graphically intensive, you should be fine. That said I played BG3 on my Steam Deck connected to my TV without too many issues for quite a while.
Nice! That’s the one I have in my cart right now! Can the Steam Deck fit in it even with a case?
And that’s good to hear! I’ll check Chiaki out once I get the Deck.
What are your thought (if any) on the dock that lingsdook suggested?
I don’t use any shells or cases at all (Other than the carrying case) so I’m not sure. Proceed at your own caution 
I didn’t have room for a standing dock where I was mounting my Steam Deck so I used a thunderbolt cable running from the dock. If you have room, I don’t see an issue. I don’t really know JSAUX well other than they are one of the millions of Chinese OEMs that sell products on Amazon. That doesn’t mean anything negative, I just don’t know of their real-world reliability.
Have you considered the official Steam dock?
Considered it, but it’s a bit over my budget. Trying to keep the overall costs low.
As long as what you buy is PD compliant it should be fine. 100w power supply should be more than enough. Note that I just read reviews for the JSAUX dock that claim you have to supply your own cables so make sure you buy USB-C compliant PD cables rated for 100w.
Unrelated to this topic, but what have been your experiences with Cloud Saves, and going from Steam Deck to PC and vice-versa?
Great. It’s partially what convinced me to build a new PC because I wanted something a bit more powerful connected to my TV and that could sync with my Steam Deck. There are a few games that don’t sync though. The publisher Raw Fury handles cloud syncing for all the games they publish, and they ran into an issue with their implementation and basically dropped Steam cloud saves, so games like Norco and Sable don’t sync, which is inconvenient. But for the most part it works very well.
99% good. I have occasionally hit the error message that Steam Cloud is out of sync and I don’t launch that game until the save syncs, which very rarely doesn’t happen until much later. As a result of never loading when unsynced, I’ve never encountered the dreaded “old save overwrites new save” that I’ve seen people complain about.
Generally, I love being able to pick up my game later on either my Deck or laptop.
They mostly work great! I had a bit of a hassle with Baldur’s Gate 3 saves because of their file size over time (I didn’t realize for a while that the game had options to limit the amount of auto/quicksaves), but other games have worked pretty seamlessly.
I’ve been fortunate with Steam Deck and my PC, and this never happens. However if I use GeForce Now it happens at least 60% of the time 
lol, the only game I’ve played that regularly has a 12-15GB save file 
It looks nice, but I haven’t bothered yet! I already have six consoles hooked up in the living room so I haven’t been in a hurry to re-manage that rat’s nest of cables. 
As others have mentioned, I thought I’d use mine as an emulation device way more often, but the Steam experience is so nice that it’s primarily been an excuse to dive deep into my PC catalog.
What I have emulated works great, though!
Chiaki is great! The UI’s kinda meh, so I wasn’t expecting much, but once it gets up and running it’s wonderful.
This is very rare, but I have encountered a few older indie games with native Linux builds where the Linux saves to a different location than the Windows saves. The save files technically “sync,” they just sync to a location the Linux build never checks! 
Psychonauts was one of these, can’t remember the other one.
In those cases, sometimes you can manually swap to the Windows build with Proton.
Yeah, I’ve started to notice the more obscure titles in my Steam/Epic/GOG collection that I probably would prefer playing on my Deck than on my PC!
On second thought, I probably wouldn’t use my Deck to cast the PS5. I think I’ll just use it strictly for emulation and my PC games. My internet is not strong enough for casting anyways.
But yes, I’ve just been starry-eyed over this device and have been expressing how awesome it is to all my friends!
Also, what is Proton?? I keep seeing the term, but don’t know what it is.
Proton is the compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux (which is what SteamOS is).
There’s a community-maintained database of Proton compatibility, which I always check instead of going off of Steam’s verification alone: https://www.protondb.com/
There are also community-maintained versions of Proton you can install that can sometimes improve compatibility of some games, but I wouldn’t bother unless you run into something that doesn’t work with regular ol’ vanilla Proton.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but man, the $300 I spent to buy this Deck has been money well spent. This thing is amazingggg.
I tried emulating PS3 games on it but I feel like it’s too hit or miss, so I’ll just continue using RPCS3 on my PC. But any emulator pre-7th gen have worked incredibly well. I’ve yet to try any Wii games, but hopefully that works well too because I really want to play the Super Mario Galaxy games!