[Discussion] How is your Steam Deck's battery holding up?

If you keep it plugged I all the time, there’s a Decky Loader plugin called Powertools that has a handy charge limit for the battery. For a Deck you take places, limiting it to 80% is a good compromise that will increase battery life. For a Deck you leave plugged in all the time, I would recommend to set the limit to 50-60%, which is a good “resting” charge that doesn’t put any stress on the battery from being too drained or too full.

I know that when it hit 100% it's stop charging and let the battery discharge to 90-95% before charging it again

I'm surprise my battery health was not at 80%

Actually it would probably be even better then that if it wasn’t plugged in all the time. Without battery conservation on, the battery lifespan is reduced by being plugged in constantly.

Yeah, KDE is awesome. Was my first *nix desktop when I was learning.

You should mess with the desktop mode more often. It's called KDE Plasma desktop, and it's simply the most customizable software you can probably ever run into. It's insane how many things you can change on this thing.

Oh ok. Thanks for the clarification. I couldn't remember the exact details.

Uh, that’s used to keep the game from pausing when it autosaves, like it does on Windows. I don’t think they use it any other time.

I think I read somewhere that Factorio is more efficient running under Linux/Mac because it takes advantage of some quirk in the Unix forking mechanism that Windows can't use? I don't know if this means it would burn through battery even faster if the SD ran Windows, but it wouldn't surprise me…

I do this too. I can get about 2hrs on most games which is great for keeping me from staying up all night. Alas, Factorio sips battery though… sometimes I still fall down the dark hole of growing the factory for many many hours at a time.

The OLED deck in general just gets so much better battery life than the LCD. Getting 2.5 hours instead of 1.5 hours on a demanding game is a huge increase.

Wow, I did not know about the OLED with the bigger screen and presumably better battery life. I really want one now!

The data comes from the battery itself, as far as I know.

On the plus side, SD batteries are easily replaceable.

I have and as nice as it might be can’t really justify it right now.

Might be good to see more reviews and experiences over the next year.

I'm in the same boat with around 80%... Original 512gb and it's spent the last few years entirely plugged in. Eventually I'll have to use the more battery health as an excuse to upgrade to the OLED.

Have you looked at any of the OLED screen upgrades for the deck?

Yeah, I just never have the time to get around to it. I use it plugged into my projector most of the time anyway.

I'm assuming you meant 512GB, as 500MB wouldn't even hold the OS.

Also, you can get a replacement battery from iFixIt for $89.

TIL there’s a battery health monitor, thanks!

Mine says 99% health. I don't know how reliable a metric that is?

Lately, I've been playing on battery exclusively and basically going with the 1 gaming session = 1 battery charge regimen to self-regulate. I may need to re-evaluate this as the battery ages, but it's good discipline for me at the moment…

I'm getting a new OLED Steam Deck in the mail within the next hour or so, so I'm glad to hear its battery is handing well.

I have an original LCD Steam Deck from their initial announcement of the device, which is still showing 100% battery health. The battery doesn't last very long unplugged, though. I've had to make sure I have a charging cable everywhere I go. So I'm looking forward to the longer lifespan of the new Steam Deck.

I have seen similar features on phones. Luckily my LG G4 has replaceable batteries. I can confirm that multiple times I have seen my battery reported as fully healthy, only to open up the phone and find a spicy pillow.

So it may be useful for some things but I would not be too heavily reliant upon this without fully understanding where that % comes from.

I've had my OLED Steam Deck since launch (Nov 2023) and it still reports 98% battery health

I got a pre-order LCD Deck (256GB) from mid-October. While I don't game too much on mine but mainly do desktop work, mostly server management and web development, it holds about 3 or 4 hours depending on how heavy the task is. When I play No Man's Sky it'll last about an hour.

I can't see battery health as easily in GNOME tho. But I'm not complaining. This is while being plugged into a USB-C external 1080p OLED monitor and mouse and keyboard connected with Bluetooth.

For people wondering how the battery health is calculated, I'm guessing it's what the factory max charge was in watt hours and how many it comparably holds now during max charge. That's at least how I've seen battery health being calculated before!

100% on Steam Deck from December 2022

100% - first gen Deck

I am not a huge Deck user, meaning most of the PC time and games are played on my actual PC. The Deck is only a secondary device, for a few times here and there. I have over 130 hours on RetroArch, and a few hours on various other stuff. Therefore its expected that the battery is still in good condition.

Original 64G is showing ~84% health. Almost always plugged in to the dock.

Mine failed a couple of months into owning the 512gb original model. Only holds about a couple of minutes of charge when it isn't plugged in.

I've had my 512gb LCD since January of 2023 and it still has 100% battery health.

I have a first gen Deck, still at 98%.

I should check mine, I didn't know where I could find that info before.

It won't charge past 98%, not sure if that's how it always was though.

94 % 2022 LCD the Deck is my main gaming device and is mostly always docked or plug in when i play so it's not that bad and thanks for the TIL about checking battery health

Considering I got mine fixed less than a month ago and haven't been using it at much, I'd hope the battery would be at 100% health. Not 100% sure since I haven't been on desktop mode since getting it back, though.

Mate informed me a hour ago his OG LCD battery is dead and it only runs on external power now...

Good thing they are somewhat repairable!

Mine seems to have plenty of capacity left but has trouble powering my xr glasses below 60% if I'm gaming. Also if it's cold it will shut off under load until it's warmed up. I got mine really early around May 2022 I think.

OLED and original. Both are fine.