Proper battery maintenance? :: Steam Deck General Discussions

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Dimwit Donald (very high IQ) Jul 14, 2023 @ 12:44pm

Proper battery maintenance?

Any tips what to do and not to do to keep your battery capacity from deteriorating quickly? Like: will it slowly kill my battery, if I keep the charger plugged in all the time?

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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments

PopinFRESH Jul 14, 2023 @ 2:11pm

No the Steam deck charging circuit is designed to maintain battery life. It won’t keep trickle charging it to keep it at 100% if you leave it plugged in. It will charge up to full and will stop charging until it drops below about 80%

Drak3 Jul 14, 2023 @ 2:28pm

Technically, yes it'll slowly deteriorate the battery if you leave in plugged in perpetually. However, the Deck's charge circuit is designed to mitigate this as much as possible.

Best maintenance is to not run the battery completely dead, discharge it to around 20-25% periodically, and otherwise use it as you wish. In the grand scheme of things, by the time it matters, the Deck might be bordering obsolete and a new model available.

invision2212 Jul 14, 2023 @ 7:11pm

I’ve had my steam deck a year now, and I only play it plugged in. I never use the battery mode and it’s currently at 95% battery health.

Dimwit Donald (very high IQ) Jul 14, 2023 @ 10:33pm

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:
No the Steam deck charging circuit is designed to maintain battery life. It won’t keep trickle charging it to keep it at 100% if you leave it plugged in. It will charge up to full and will stop charging until it drops below about 80%

Originally posted by Drak3:
Technically, yes it'll slowly deteriorate the battery if you leave in plugged in perpetually. However, the Deck's charge circuit is designed to mitigate this as much as possible.

Best maintenance is to not run the battery completely dead, discharge it to around 20-25% periodically, and otherwise use it as you wish. In the grand scheme of things, by the time it matters, the Deck might be bordering obsolete and a new model available.

That's good to know.

Originally posted by invision2212:
I’ve had my steam deck a year now, and I only play it plugged in. I never use the battery mode and it’s currently at 95% battery health.

Is there a way to show battery health or how can you tell?

Gormar Jul 14, 2023 @ 11:24pm

Originally posted by Albatross:
Is there a way to show battery health or how can you tell?

You can check battery health while in Desktop mode when you right click battery icon inside system tray and choose properties or something like that.

As to this discussion it is hard to get any meaningful guidance here because you never knows for how many hours any particular Steam Deck was used. IIRC there is no way to tell how many full charging cycles battery went. Personally I try to use Steam Deck on the charger but with disabled battery charging with Power Tools plugin for Decky Loader. Thanks to that I don't charge higher than 80% and start charging back when battery is below 30%.

Last edited by Gormar; Jul 14, 2023 @ 11:24pm