Dockingstation and battery

[Izeyash]

I knew that the steam deck had poor battery life you can prolong by just using battery saving options: lower resolution, fsr and so on.

With the upcoming release of the dockingstation, I plan to take the steamdeck with me on travels instead of my laptop, the weight difference is insane.

I read somewhere that simultaneously charging and discharging the battery is bad for its life, so will the steam deck have a feature where it will use power from the outlet, ignoring the battery or will it use the battery regardless? I know laptops have this feature, especially laptops that are advertised for gaming, that are designed to be specifically portable but to harness the full performance need to be plugged in for extended sessions.

I just don't want to replace my battery just because I wanted to use it as a desktop in this specific scenario.

[SockDog]

Other have said that once the battery charge reaches 90% the Deck switches to direct power only.

[tekchip]

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/steam-deck-initial-review/

From a little less than 3/4 of the way through the article:

What I’ve seen is that the Deck can charge up quite quickly, and it will do so up to around the 80% mark in little over an hour. After that, it slows down to protect the life of the battery.

Valve explained over email:
If your device has been left on the charger for long periods of time, it may report less than 100% when taking it off the charger. This is normal – we allow the battery to slowly discharge after long periods of time under charge to optimize long-term battery health.

[darrenphillips666]

Charging and using the steam deck at the same time doesn’t affect the battery that way

Lithium batteries lifespan is shortened by Running it flat and charging to max.
Keeping it topped up instead will extend the lifetime of your battery