Steam Deck OLED charge speeds

[omicronpersei8]

I noticed with a new OLED steam deck the charge status LED is white with the Valve charger and orange/green with any other charger (Pixel 15W, Apple 20W, etc).

Upon further testing:
- Pixel 15W or Apple 20W USB C chargers have green/orange LED and extremely slow to charge. 10 hours from 50%. TEN HOURS?! Changes to green when fully charged.
- Included charger has a white LED and fast charges. Approx 1 hour from 50%. Changes to green when fully charged.

I also could not find anything in the FAQ about different LED colors but orange/green seems to indicate slow charging.

Why would the deck not fast charge on higher wattage USB-PD chargers?
Even a 15W charger with the deck in standby should 50% charge in way less than 10 hours.

I need a USB C power analyzer to figure out what is going on with the charge current but it appears to fall back to a very low wattage/PD profile with any other charger and is possibly not properly negotiating PD profiles?

Edit: Adding some analysis.
I did more testing with a power meter. All are USB C chargers. Non PD means the power meter says it is not charging via negotiated PD.
Pixel 18W - 14W non PD
Apple 20W - 14W non PD
Apple 30W - 27W PD
Apple 61W - 41W PD. White charge LED
Apple 87W - 11W non PD
Apple 96W - 41W PD. White charge LED
Apple 140W - 41W PD. White charge LED
Anker Nano II 45W - 41W PD. White charge LED

For reference the Valve charger is a 45W USB-C power supply with "Power Delivery 3.0". It shows a White charge LED.

[omicronpersei8]

Confirming the Anker Nano II 45W also charges at full PD speed with a white LED.

[Jenaverse]

omicronpersei8 の投稿を引用：

Confirming the Anker Nano II 45W also charges at full PD speed with a white LED.

Nice, nice! Can you confirm it charges while also in use with games especially demanding ones?

[KMO]

At lot of the previous discussion overlooked the fact that the Steam Deck uses a lot of power to run - usually around 10W when not doing much, but it could be up to 25W.

A non-PD power supply barely gives enough power to run without charging - it can't even maintain charge while running something intensive - it's only going to charge effectively while sleeping/off.

The LCD maximum battery charge rate was about 20W, and I suspect the deck won't even attempt 20W charging while on unless the PSU is at least 45W, to give itself lots of headroom for running.

The 45W power total was quite neatly split for LCD - roughly 25W to run and 20W to charge, so even running something quite intensive had little effect on charging time - you could charge at basically full rate no matter what you were doing, as long as you had a 45W supply.

The situation has changed significantly for OLED. My tests show the battery starting charging at 34W, slowly dropping to 30W at 80-90%, then tailing rapidly tailing off (viewed in the in the desktop Energy Monitor)

But the total power input capability remains 45W - this means that the OLED can't achieve its maximum 30-34W charge rate while running anything significant.

There seems to be a general rule to limit charging to 20W, same as the LCD, whenever there's any significant system load. Not sure what the rule is exactly, but it's definitely a binary mode switch, rather than dropping to intermediate numbers like 25W.

And this rule also seems to kick in when plugged into the official Steam Deck Dock - that locks you to 20W charging.

[Prezidentas]

Some thoughts:

• Non-PD charger gives the LCD deck maximum of 2.5w because it only supports PD. Perhaps it's different on the OLED?
  
• Maximum charge rate was about 23-24w for the LCD deck at around 60%, though it did start from around 20w when at 0%
  
• I'd imagine that there is no hard split when charging and playing, it probably tries to maintain original charging speed and only limits when there isn't enough power in the charger.
  
• Also, the dock also consumes power, so while the charger will adverise 45w PD charging, the dock will deduct its own power from the number and give the deck a lower number. My crappy HDMI and USB travel adapter takes away 6w, I wonder how much the official dock takes.

[omicronpersei8]

Jenaverse の投稿を引用：

omicronpersei8 の投稿を引用：

Confirming the Anker Nano II 45W also charges at full PD speed with a white LED.

Nice, nice! Can you confirm it charges while also in use with games especially demanding ones?

Yes, it charges during demanding games (The Ascent is one of the most demanding I've played so far) and indicates the same charging time as the Valve charger.

Anything 45W and PD is most likely going to perform the same as the Valve charger which is 45W.

My power meter unfortunately seems to have stopped working so I can't follow on KMO's work and see if a higher wattage (>45W) charger allows the higher 34W charge speed while also in use.

[Mr Wednesday]

Waldherz彡 の投稿を引用：

The deck needs PD 3.0 or newer charging protocols. If your power supply cant provide that, the deck will charge at 10W or less, even if you use 22.3W QC 3.0 charger.

Get a Cto C PD 3 or newer charger, or use the one valve supplied.

Am I able to use a 100 watt Anker charger with the Steam Deck Oled?

[Prezidentas]

Mr Wednesday の投稿を引用：

Waldherz彡 の投稿を引用：

The deck needs PD 3.0 or newer charging protocols. If your power supply cant provide that, the deck will charge at 10W or less, even if you use 22.3W QC 3.0 charger.

Get a Cto C PD 3 or newer charger, or use the one valve supplied.

Am I able to use a 100 watt Anker charger with the Steam Deck Oled?

sure?

[ymo1965]

Ive had my OLED for about 9 months now and only now am I seeing charging issues. I plugged it in to charge last evening, woke up at 5am and realised I had left it in charging. Well, I went down stairs and checked the OLED and it was only at 68% after nearly 10 hours. Checked reddit forums and found this fix that helped me.

Press and hold - (minus) VOL and '...' bottom right of Deck. After a few seconds your LED will flash rapidly. I think it resets the CMOS in the deck. Here's the original post I got it from (its at the top of the post). Even after 10 mins or so the charging shot up like normal. Hope this helps.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1absvp0/brand_new_steam_deck_oled_will_not_turn_on_or/

[Darkblue]

I have a problem with charging the steam deck, basically (via a current meter in watts) normally the steam deck when turned off has a consumption of about 25w but it stops at about 10w both with a third-party charger and with the original charger then randomly (I don't know at what point) the wattage goes back to 25w, the problem also happens when turned on instead of working at about 45w it goes to about 20w. Does anyone have any ideas or have had the same problem? thanks to all the answers.

[Prezidentas]

Darkblue の投稿を引用：

I have a problem with charging the steam deck, basically (via a current meter in watts) normally the steam deck when turned off has a consumption of about 25w but it stops at about 10w both with a third-party charger and with the original charger then randomly (I don't know at what point) the wattage goes back to 25w, the problem also happens when turned on instead of working at about 45w it goes to about 20w. Does anyone have any ideas or have had the same problem? thanks to all the answers.

isn't there a key combo to reset the charge controller? might try that if you find how to actually do it

[Coffee]

Darkblue の投稿を引用：

I have a problem with charging the steam deck, basically (via a current meter in watts) normally the steam deck when turned off has a consumption of about 25w but it stops at about 10w both with a third-party charger and with the original charger then randomly (I don't know at what point) the wattage goes back to 25w, the problem also happens when turned on instead of working at about 45w it goes to about 20w. Does anyone have any ideas or have had the same problem? thanks to all the answers.

It doesn't fully use all the wattage all the time.