I've had a NexDock for about 7 years or so. Definitely a nice tool to have. I don't really have a normal laptop besides my work laptop anymore. I primarily just use my NexDock with either my phone or my Steam Deck. I've also used the dock with Raspberry Pis in the past.
The older model that I have has a pretty terrible trackpad, does not have a touch screen, and does not fold back (I normally use my ergonomic keyboard with it). I think these are all resolved in newer models though.
I have one of the originals too, I only use it in an emergency (e.g. maintaining a Raspberry Pi) because the trackpad is so awful - I can't type on it because the cursor jumps all over the place.
That basically shattered my dream of leaving my work laptop at home on short business trips. Well, that and it weighs as much as a laptop anyway so there wasn't actually a benefit.
I've just been using a small folding bluetooth keyboard and a mini-bluetooth mouse. Both are easy to carry around and fit in pockets. I find the steam deck's screen large enough to use on its own, although sometimes I plug it into an external monitor over HDMI.
I use an overlay of /usr to add things to make the steam deck more useful.
Can you elaborate on your /usr overlay? I haven't gone very far with modifying my software setup on the Steam Deck, but I have been considering it for a while.
Ummm sure. Basically I didn't want to irrecoverably screw up my steam deck. So, I setup a partition on the SD card and pointed a /usr overlay at it.
mount -t overlay -o "lowerdir=/usr,upperdir=/run/media/OVERLAY/overlay/usr,workdir=/run/media/OVERLAY/workdir/usr" none /usr
Personal choice, I didn't set it to automount, since I really wanted to ensure boot process was same. I just mount it later.
Idea being that every once in a while I pop out the SD card, run the standard steam update, then wipe the overlay and reinstall the stuff I was using (I have a script to make that more convenient). If it seems I really did somehow mess up their setup beyond repair I can just remove the card, reboot (I did do that once, but I don't think it was my fault).
Main issue I've run into is the fact that Valve upstream repo is a hackish snapshot of Arch that is not maintained and was not entirely consistent at time of creation and is using old gpg keys. So, while 95% of stuff installs using it, there's 5% that requires installing while ignoring the signature and just trusting valve's server, or pulling in an older lib (I symlinked in one from valve's steam runtime once).
The other not-ideal thing about Valve is they really don't prioritise security patching, at all. It's astounding given the device does have an sshd running. Not to mention older problems like wifi vulnerabilities. Fortunately the recent ssh cve has a config workaround, or I'd probably just force-install an sshd from arch instead, or disable starting at boot.
... oh and pulling in new signatures for people does help sometimes. pacman -S archlinux-keyring , pacman-key / --populate / --refresh-keys /-r exact@name.org ... and since /etc persists during updates, sometimes you have to tell pacman to --overwrite since a prior install might still exist there. You could work around that by backing up /etc but, eh, it hasn't been a problem so far :D - there were no collisions on first install to /etc for any of them, so I assume everything was playing nice with existing valve /etc. And, well, valve did make that directory writeable ...
Not op, I have the previous model with the keyboard, and it works well but a bit janky: the screen and the keyboard are pretty good, the combination of touch screen e touchpad make it usable without a mouse for most workload.
I use it for anything, gaming, web surfing, developing and sometimes even work (it does raise a few eyebrows when I take it out of the bag)
The big problem is the connection between nextdock and steamdeck: if I connect it directly via single usb-c cable I lose the ability to charge the steamdeck (the nextdock does not supply enough energy for keeping the steamdeck charged) and I also lose a lot of io (next dock as only one fullsize usb 3.0 port) so instead I use the steam-deck-dock and connect it to the nextdock with two cable (hdmi e usb) so that I can keep the steamdeck fully charged.
I would love to find an usb-c cable splitter so that I can have a device simultaneously connected to an usb-c pd charger and a second connection only for usb data, there are some but none of them support usb alt mode necessary to use external screen.
WRT splitter. I've just been using a mini hub from Anker with pass-through charging. I keep it in the battery bag for my steam deck case. Also handy if I need to plug in an extra SD card.
I can obviously only use it with ample desk space for both the dock and the Deck, but for my use case (usually visiting family or my local maker space) desk space is not an issue. As for the experience of using it, it just feels like it's a reasonably spec'd gaming laptop when I use it with the Deck.
The older model that I have has a pretty terrible trackpad, does not have a touch screen, and does not fold back (I normally use my ergonomic keyboard with it). I think these are all resolved in newer models though.