About battery health

[Tourette's Guy]

Is it normal that the battery of my steam deck shows a battery health of 94%? This is my third day with the device and the battery health was 100% at first, then dropped to 87%. I did a full charge cycle and it raised to 95%. The day after, it dropped to 94%.

Should I worry about this? I do not want to RMA it since I got one with the silent fan and I'm pretty sure if I rma it I will get a replacement with the damn whiny fan.

[Mahjik]

Publicado originalmente por mrsanchito:

Another thing I noticed: my deck has been asleep since Monday at a full charge. Today, I started it back up and the battery went down to 64%. Is it really using that much juice while asleep? Seems like there's some room for efficiency in a later update

Mine was sleep as well for 'about' 4 days. It was around 75% when I turned it on. I purposely kept it unplugged while I was gone just to make sure no weird surges happened.

[Hank Hill's Disappointed Sigh]

Publicado originalmente por Tourette's Guy:

Well, my battery health is now 100% lol

Have you been playing it while plugged in or have you been cycling through the battery? How far do you typically drain it before charging again?

[Bene]

Publicado originalmente por Stupid.Sexy.Flanders:

Publicado originalmente por Tourette's Guy:

Well, my battery health is now 100% lol

Have you been playing it while plugged in or have you been cycling through the battery? How far do you typically drain it before charging again?

Since mine is also back to 100%: I usually play with the charger attached and rarely without. If the latter occurs and battery runs out, I plug it in while continuing playing. Have never recalibrated or the like.

[Tourette's Guy]

Publicado originalmente por Stupid.Sexy.Flanders:

Publicado originalmente por Tourette's Guy:

Well, my battery health is now 100% lol

Have you been playing it while plugged in or have you been cycling through the battery? How far do you typically drain it before charging again?

I did nothing at all. Just used the Deck normally and charged it normally.

[Hank Hill's Disappointed Sigh]

Publicado originalmente por Tourette's Guy:

Publicado originalmente por Stupid.Sexy.Flanders:

Have you been playing it while plugged in or have you been cycling through the battery? How far do you typically drain it before charging again?

I did nothing at all. Just used the Deck normally and charged it normally.

What is "normally" for your use case?
For instance "normally" for me is to play plugged in at home, and use it on battery only intermittently between jobs for usually an hour max. So the battery rarely gets below 70% before a recharge.

[Tourette's Guy]

Publicado originalmente por Stupid.Sexy.Flanders:

Publicado originalmente por Tourette's Guy:

I did nothing at all. Just used the Deck normally and charged it normally.

What is "normally" for your use case?
For instance "normally" for me is to play plugged in at home, and use it on battery only intermittently between jobs for usually an hour max. So the battery rarely gets below 70% before a recharge.

For me, "normal use" is to just use the Deck as a regular handheld, and I recharge it when battery reaches 20-30%. I never use it while it's charging.

[Idcrafter]

my steam deck shows after 4 days that the battery has only 84% health, you can see this info in the desktop mode pressing on the battery icon in the bottom taskbar

[Tourette's Guy]

Publicado originalmente por Idcrafter:

my steam deck shows after 4 days that the battery has only 84% health, you can see this info in the desktop mode pressing on the battery icon in the bottom taskbar

I think the battery health percentage is not that reliable at all. The health of my battery has been dancing between 87 and 100% for weeks. Now it's stable at 100%, but probably it will drop again, eventually. And probably it will raise again to 100%.

My conclusion is: as long as your battery has a normal duration and doesn't do weird things like draining itself abnormally fast, it's completely fine. Don't stress too much about that percentage, it's not completely accurate.

[smidlee]

On most laptops you can set it so your battery will only charged up to 80% or 60% max to increase battery health. I keep my laptop plugged in for 95% of the time.
My older PC doesn't have this feature and keep it plug in most of the time. It will not charge if the percentage is around 95%. Now it doesn't hold much of a charge at all.

So the battery rarely gets below 70% before a recharge.

If you never uses a full charge then it's best to keep the battery between 20% and 80% to increase battery health. If you only using 30% of the battery I would stop charging at 70%.
Even with electric cars it's best to keep the charge between 20-80% and only fully charge right before you plan to use the full charge.

[kingck]

how hard would a battery replacement be?

[smidlee]

It's like replacing a laptop battery. There is even a kit with the tools with the battery to replace it more carefully.

[kingck]

Publicado originalmente por smidlee:

It's like replacing a laptop battery. There is even a kit with the tools with the battery to replace it more carefully.

so its basically pretty easy

[Crawl]

Publicado originalmente por kingck:

Publicado originalmente por smidlee:

It's like replacing a laptop battery. There is even a kit with the tools with the battery to replace it more carefully.

so its basically pretty easy

The battery of the Steam Deck is one of the hardest parts to replace because it is stuck in place with adhesive. You'll most likely have to heat it up and do a lot of prying. Don't expect it to simply pop out.

[Tourette's Guy]

Publicado originalmente por kingck:

Publicado originalmente por smidlee:

It's like replacing a laptop battery. There is even a kit with the tools with the battery to replace it more carefully.

so its basically pretty easy

Not easy, you need to apply heat to the battery to soften the glue in order to remove it without breaking anything. You need to be careful when applying heat, since, you know, it's a battery, you shouldn't heat it up too much.

Definitely the Steam Deck battery is one of the most difficult parts to replace.

Anyways, if you properly use and charge your Steam Deck (don't let the battery go below 20% very often), it's very likely that Steam Deck 2 will be on the market for a while by the time your battery starts failing.

[Joreel]

You can also cycle your battery by taking it down to 1-2% and then charging it back to 100%(or as high as it'll go) as I've had to do this with phone and laptop batteries in the past when the % got stuck. It usually fixed it in 1 or 2 cycles. But like the poster above said, try not to go below 15-20% if you can help it as this can wear out your battery faster, but if you have to do a cycle of the battery, do it but not very often.