Steam Deck battery life: How to get more charge from Valve’s handheld

Valve’s Steam Deck is an incredible machine with the ability to play thousands of PC games in handheld form, not to mention a wide-open system that has enabled users to do all kinds of crazy things with it. But if there’s one area where the Steam Deck could use a little help, it’s the battery life.

Playing system-intensive games on your Steam Deck can drain the battery in no time at all, and the thing uses so much juice that many of your existing chargers probably can’t supply it with power quickly enough to keep the frags going. Thankfully, there’s no reason to lose hope. You have many options to make your Steam Deck more useful.

Take a look at your performance settings

Let’s get the complex stuff out of the way first and dig into your Deck’s performance settings. Press the button when you have any open game. Get Quick AccessMenu button: The one that appears under the right trackpad with three dots. Performance settings(The battery icon). You will see the performance overlay slider by default. It allows you control the amount of performance-related information that you see. It’s possible to play with it, but the most important thing is to go into Advanced View menu.

This is where you’ll find the bulk of your performance settings. Note that, if you scroll down to the very bottom, you’ll see your battery’s current capacity, plus an estimate of how much time is remaining until it drains to empty with your current usage and settings.

Activate per-game profiles

You must first understand that the results of each game will be different. Many titles on Steam Deck weren’t designed with handheld devices in mind. In some cases, you might take all the steps you can and still find they make little to no difference, or that the game performs so poorly with lower settings that it’s not worth the trade-off.

Keep this in mind when you look at Use per-game profile setting. This will turn your default, universal settings into effect. With the setting toggled on, any tweaks you make will be saved to the currently open game’s individual performance profile. It is a very useful tool because every game has a different performance.

Scroll down to see the next settings Framerate LimitAnd Get a Refresh Rate. The first controls your game’s frames per second (fps), while the latter is how often your screen refreshes to show a new image. These settings are linked: For example, if you cap your Deck’s refresh rate at 40, your frame rate limits will change from 15/30/60 to 10/20/40.

Image by Valve

Limiting how many frames your game displays and how often your screen refreshes can affect battery life, but these settings can also have a significant impact on a game’s performance. Some games can run at just 30 FPS, but others will default to 60. It is possible to reduce frame rates in tiny increments, such as from 60 to 40%, without noticeably changing the game’s performance. In return, you’ll gain significantly more playtime.

These are just a few of the other options available.

You’ll find more options below the refresh rate slider. Half-Rate Shading or Variable Rate Shading cuts down on the number of on-screen pixels your game needs to calculate the shading (color) for, which can grant you some battery life, although it can also noticeably affect your game’s appearance by making it look like it’s running at a lower resolution.

Below that, you’ll find Thermal Power (TDP Limit), which lets you set a physical limit on how much wattage your Steam Deck’s processor can pull from the battery to run games. Standard output is 15. Watts. You can turn this all the way down to 3, but doing so can cause a massive performance hit, depending how much power each specific game uses — a metric determined by countless factors, from graphics intensity to a game’s age. If you’re using a lot of power with specific games, try seeing how low you can get this setting while maintaining acceptable performance.

Image by Valve

The same applies to the Manuel GPU Clock ControlThis option allows you to set an identical limit but only for the GPU. It is possible to adjust the limit per-game. Make sure to note whether these changes are actually having a positive effect — for example, capping the CPU and GPU usage on Deep Rock GalacticThe gameplay was a bit sloppy, but it had no effect on battery life.

The last thing is the Scaling Filter You can choose the level of resolution scaling you want, from four choices: integer, nearest and linear. These will have vastly different effects depending on the game, although you’re arguably better off simply capping each game’s resolution.

Cap your game resolution

Your Steam Deck’s screen is 1280×800 pixels, so why are you running games at 1080p or even higher? Start a new game in Deck by going to the IllustrationsOder Display settings menu and check what resolution it’s running at. If it’s higher than 1280×800, take it down until it’s at that or lower (then, if you want to, revisit the upscaling settings from the previous point).

While you’re in your game settings, check for any other ways that you might be able to reduce processor load while retaining performance. This can be as simple as flipping a single overall graphics quality setting from “high” to “medium,” or as complicated as tweaking individual options like shadow or particle quality. Again, you’ll need to experiment with each game individually, since these settings vary so widely from title to title.

Dim the light

You might be surprised to see an option this simple so far down the list, but it bears mentioning: If you’re in a low-light environment like a plane or your bedroom, turn down the brightness from the Setup quickMenu (also accessible via the three dots button to the right). The Steam Deck’s nice little screen uses up a lot of power displaying all those pixels for you.

You can also enable or disable automatic brightness adjustments, though you’ll have to dig a bit deeper into settings. The Steam button is to your left. Next navigate to Display in the General Settings menu. You’ll see the Allow adaptive brightnessYou can set it there. You can save your battery life by having the Deck turn down the brightness automatically when the environment is darker.

Deactivate ancillary functions

Many games these days require internet access. However, a lot of the single-player games you’re likely to play on Steam Deck don’t. If your current activity doesn’t necessitate being online, try turning Wi-Fi off. You’ll find Airplane ModeThe Setup quickToggling the switch on will turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Of course, if you’re not using a Bluetooth device like a keyboard, headset, or controller, then there’s no reason to leave it on, and you might conserve your battery even further by entering Airplane Mode strategically.

Instead of downloading your games, stream them instead

Here’s one option that’s surprisingly easy to overlook. It’s not always applicable, like when you take your Steam Deck out into the world with you. But let’s say you’re just sitting at home and you want to play some PC or console games while lying on the couch. You can stream your games to another platform, instead of playing them on the Deck.

Steam games make this easy. First, make sure that you have Steam Deck connected to your gaming computer. Then click “Next”. drop-down button next to a game’s InstallOder PlayClick the button to access your Deck. Then, your gaming console should appear. Next, select it and press Stream, and voilà — you’re gaming on your Steam Deck while using significantly less processing power.

It can prove more difficult to stream non-Steam or console games. A program called “Streaming PC Games” can be used to stream non-Steam PC gaming. Moonlight to access your desktop PC’s game streaming capabilities through GeForce Experience, as long as you have an Nvidia graphics card. Your Steam Deck can be used to connect to the PlayStation console. Remote accessUse an app called Chiaki. In both cases, you’ll need to enter the Deck’s desktop mode to set these up, and likely check out a guide for the exact functions you’re looking for, but it can be worth it.

A powerful charger is essential

Lastly, whether you’re traveling with your Steam Deck or you simply want it to be playable in every room of your house, you’re going to want to invest in some powerful chargers. Even power bricks and portable batteries that have no issue charging other, weaker handhelds — for example, a Nintendo Switch — while you’re gaming won’t necessarily have strong enough output to do the same for the Deck. Luckily, your Steam Deck will helpfully let you know when you’ve plugged in a charger that can’t keep up with its power usage.

Whether you’re buying an external charger pack or simply a wall outlet charger brick, you’ll want to make sure that it’s Steam Deck capable. Steam Deck users often recommend this 65-watt Baseus charging brick. However, any power bank with at least 45W per port should be able to work. Look for recommendations in Reddit or other online forums, and look through product reviews before you make your final purchase. Chances are, if you’re considering a specific charger for your Deck, someone else has already tested whether it’s powerful enough, and left a note about their experience somewhere online.