Even with a wired connection, I hate Steam Link. It's fine for streaming to the Steam Deck while playing on the Steam Deck, but Steam Deck -> TV has a lot of issues. I could probably resolve them if I faffed around enough, but I've spent enough hours trying instead of gaming.

The SD doesn't seem to support AV1 decoding, the resolution streaming resolution won't go to 4k despite forcing it in the settings, and the most annoying issue, if the framerate is not set to 90fps, there is 30ms of additional streaming latency. Which means, if I connect it to my 60fps living room tv, it will add 30ms of latency.

Then there are a bunch of minor issues, no virtual monitor, having to manually swap settings to windowed mode and hope the game offers the correct resolution for my TV (since my gaming rig is on an ultrawide), having to leave the gaming pc on and unlocked.

Apparently Apollo or Moonlight will solve some of the annoying issues, but I'm kind of soured on the streaming experience at this point. Streaming on the SD should Just Work.

steam link is a device as well as apparently a software; the steam link was a small device that only connected to steam software running on windows, it had 2 USB ports, an ethernet port, and an HDMI port.

it worked fine for me wirelessly, but for 1080p or more wired is more or less required. 720P on my projector it ran wirelessly fine.