Battery life

[M!TZ!]

Hi all,
Love my steam deck, its pretty amazing.
I do have one issue though, I don't get anywhere near the expected battery life.
I have tried the bios battery glitch fix and the battery is indeed fully drained.
I do play with full performance etc, but i was still expecting alot more life form the battery.
Anyone else having this issue?

Actually there is another thing thats really bothering me, they need to get rust playable on it. or eac needs to sort their ♥♥♥♥ out, so dumb we cant play a huge game just because of this.

[Mahjik]

What game/games are you playing and what playtime are you getting?

[M!TZ!]

rn im playing dying light, and id say way under an hr from full charge

[invision2212]

What is the battery health? It can be checked in desktop mode in the lower right corner

[M!TZ!]

Originally posted by invision2212:

What is the battery health? It can be checked in desktop mode in the lower right corner

Thx ill check rn

[M!TZ!]

it says 98% for battery health so idk, maybe its just the way it is

[class101 [OLED deck]]

You have all the powersaving setting available in the quick access menu

Screen brightness, refresh rates, frame rate, tdp etc... They can help out to save some battery while keeping high quality graphics

[ReBoot]

Check with other Dying Light owners how much they're getting at what settings. In my personal experience, the Deck lasts anywhere between 1 and 4 hours. Others have reported even longer (but I sure as ♥♥♥♥ won't drop my framerate just to get 2 or so more hours of gameplay).

Or start lowering settings yourself. Others have already mentioned screen brightness, frame/refresh rates & TDP. Lowering in-game settings helps as well. Check if lowering the resolution and then FSR-upscaling improves things as well.

[[?]legit]

The battery life is bad, especially in demanding games like rust. You shouldn't expect more than 80 - 90 mins.

[Ranko]

Originally posted by invision2212:

What is the battery health? It can be checked in desktop mode in the lower right corner

battery health is a mostly nonsense statistic, don't trust it, as all its doing is guessing. Numbers can fluctuate wildly. I've gone from 80 one week to back to upper 90s another couple weeks in.

Originally posted by Mango:

Hi all,
Love my steam deck, its pretty amazing.
I do have one issue though, I don't get anywhere near the expected battery life.
I have tried the bios battery glitch fix and the battery is indeed fully drained.
I do play with full performance etc, but i was still expecting alot more life form the battery.
Anyone else having this issue?

Actually there is another thing thats really bothering me, they need to get rust playable on it. or eac needs to sort their ♥♥♥♥ out, so dumb we cant play a huge game just because of this.

Keep tweaking settings and using FSR, I hear dying light is both a very demanding and not very optimized game

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Mango:

I do play with full performance etc,

Depending on what you're playing and what you mean by "full performance", I would bet this is your issue.

The Steam Deck doesn't limit how much power and performance it will dedicate to a game. It will push it as hard as it's able if you let it, which can mean 1-1.5 hours in really demanding games.

So don't let it.

Turn your settings down. Limit the framerate. Limit the TDP.

I've seen a test comparing the battery life of the Steam Deck (Which has complaints about battery life) to the battery life of the Nintendo Switch (Which has very few complaints about battery life) when playing The Witcher 3. They chose this game because it's a demanding title that can tax the system.

Pushing as hard as it can the Steam Deck only gets about 1.5 hours on that game, while the Switch got 2-3 hours for the OG Switch and 4-5 hours for the newer model with the improved battery. The Deck version looked gorgeous at 60 FPS on high settings and 720p though, while the Switch version was beaten severely by the ugly stick on very low settings running at 540p or even lower at 30 fps.

Adjust the settings on the Deck though to match the Switch, limiting the TDP and framerate to 30, and you can get Switch level battery life. They then tuned the settings for maximal fidelity while still getting good battery life, and they were able to enjoy about 3 hours of play locked at 40 fps with mostly high settings and a TDP locked at 8 watts.

The upcoming new update adds AMD FSR 2.1, which should help improve things even more.

Valve has given you the tools to make the most of your battery life while still having a great experience. Use them.

[[?]legit]

Originally posted by 8bitbeard:

Turn your settings down. Limit the framerate. Limit the TDP.

That's definitely not an option for any modern 3D game.

Limiting the fps below 60 fps will result into a terrible gameplay experience.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by legit:

Limiting the fps below 60 fps will result into a terrible gameplay experience.

If you need 60 fps, you can still fine tune the settings to maximize battery life. In the Witcher 3 example I would probably lock the frames to 60 and set the TDP to 10 watts with a mixture of medium and high settings.

30 isn't really as bad as some say though. People acclimate. 40 is a good compromise, feeling smoother than 30 while not being as taxing as 60. I played though the entirety of Nier: Automata at 40, and that's a very fast paced game.

[day7326]

The battery life is terrible on the steam deck, I feel like I'm constantly charging mine up. Although like you, I love my steam deck and I can't complain too much considering what this thing can do.

[Ranko]

Originally posted by legit:

Originally posted by 8bitbeard:

Turn your settings down. Limit the framerate. Limit the TDP.

That's definitely not an option for any modern 3D game.

Limiting the fps below 60 fps will result into a terrible gameplay experience.

try 40hz and 40fps, you'll be surprised. Also limiting to 30 fps is pretty reasonable if you want better battery life.

[[?]legit]

Originally posted by Ranko:

Originally posted by legit:

That's definitely not an option for any modern 3D game.

Limiting the fps below 60 fps will result into a terrible gameplay experience.

try 40hz and 40fps, you'll be surprised. Also limiting to 30 fps is pretty reasonable if you want better battery life.

I tried it, it felt terrible. Absolutely unplayable. 60 fps already feels bad when coming from higher refresh rate monitors, anything below that is crazy. The better battery life isn't really worth it if you can't enjoy your games.