PC case maker NZXT is going after PC gaming in the living room with the Doko, a $100 micro-console the company announced on Tuesday. Instead of making a cause for a living room form-factor PC, NZXT threw software and hardware engineering teams at the task of streaming from a desktop PC to a less powerful system in the living room.
Unlike Valve’s and Razer’s in-home streaming options, NZXT’s Doko isn’t just for games. It’s essentially desktop mirroring, so anything your computer can do, Doko can show on your living room TV. It has four USB ports to accept inputs from controllers or a keyboard and mouse.
At $100, Doko is likely cheaper than the minimum spec PC needed to support Steam in-home streaming in the living room. But it also has a couple drawbacks: latency is a few frames at 50-80 ms over hardline Ethernet, and the streaming is limited to 30 fps. We’ve played around with the Doko a bit pre-release and found some games, like Broforce, easily playable with little perceptible lag. We’ll be testing the Doko more in the coming weeks to see how it stacks up against other living room streaming options.
