Is setup_remote_docker default docker version on docs outdated?

The version you are viewing is the version of the Docker CLI application. To view the complete version profile you’ll want to run docker version(see below).

With Remote Docker(setup_remote_docker) a separate instance is made available running a remote version of Docker. DOCKER_HOST is set to remote-docker which holds the IP of the remote host.

#!/bin/bash -eo pipefail
docker version

Client: Docker Engine - Community
 Version:           19.03.8
 API version:       1.32 (downgraded from 1.40)
 Go version:        go1.12.17
 Git commit:        afacb8b7f0
 Built:             Wed Mar 11 01:22:56 2020
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Experimental:      false

Server:
 Engine:
  Version:          17.09.0-ce
  API version:      1.32 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.8.3
  Git commit:       afdb6d4
  Built:            Tue Sep 26 22:40:56 2017
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false