How to Fix Steam Deck Battery Drain
Is the battery life of your Steam Deck draining too quickly? There are several factors that can cause this problem such as an outdated software version, high brightness, or you are using 60 framerate. To fix this terrible battery life issue, you will need to perform a series of troubleshooting steps.
Steam Deck is a portable gaming hardware made by Valve. Steam Deck is a portable, all-in-one system that supports PC gaming. All of your titles will be available in your Steam Deck’s game library after you connect into your Steam account. To get a better notion of caompatibility with Steam Deck you may check each game’s compatibility rating. You can dynamically filter any view in your library by compatibility rating if you’re seeking for a certain experience. The Steam Deck was made for lengthy play sessions with full-size controls placed just where you need them, whether you’re using trackpads or thumbsticks. The back of the device is made to easily fit a range of hands.
Steam Deck Technical Specifications:
Processor:
AMD APU
CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)
APU power: 4-15W
RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (5500 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)
Storage:
64 GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1)
256 GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2*)
512 GB high-speed NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2*)
Resolution: 1280 x 800px (16:10 aspect ratio)
Display size: 7″ diagonal
Brightness: 400 nits typical
Refresh rate: 60Hz
Touch enabled: Yes
Sensors: Ambient light sensor
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0 (support for controllers, accessories and audio)
Wi-Fi: Dual-band Wi-Fi radio, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, 2 x 2 MIMO, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Channels: Stereo with embedded DSP for an immersive listening experience
Microphones: Dual microphone array
Headphone / mic jack: 3.5mm stereo headphone / headset jack
Digital: Multichannel audio via DisplayPort over USB-C, standard USB-C, or Bluetooth 5.0
Input: 45W USB Type-C PD3.0 power supply
Battery: 40Whr battery. 2 – 8 hours of gameplay
microSD: UHS-I supports SD, SDXC and SDHC
External connectivity for controllers & displays: USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4 Alt-mode support; up to 8K @60Hz or 4K @120Hz, USB 3.2 Gen 2
Fixing Battery Life Drain on Steam Deck
One of the issues that you might experience with your Steam Deck is when its battery seems to drain too quickly. This can be an annoying experience especially if you want to enjoy playing Steam Deck.
Fix #1 Adjust the Brightness of your Steam Deck
Your Steam Deck handheld device will use more battery life the brighter its screen is set to be. Therefore, it is a good idea to balance the brightness of your device to meet your surroundings by setting the screen brightness level.
Adjusting Brightness
Step 1: Press the Steam Button.
Step 2: Go to Settings.
Step 3: Select Display tab.
Step 4: Adjust Brightness.
Try to observe if your Steam Deck’s battery life has improve.
Fix #2 Adjust Graphics Settings
Battery drains a higher graphics settings with your Steam Deck. Try adjusting Steam Deck’s performance settings as well as the game’s visual settings for specific games. You need to change it to low settings so that Steam Deck battery life will not drain faster. You can change how much power the Steam Deck will use and the thermal power limit, you can also adjust the processing power and have the framerate limit to 30 fps.
Fix #3 Airplane Mode
If you are playing modern games that can be played offline then you can try to put the Steam Deck to airplane mode so that the battery life will not drained.
Fix #4 Reinstall SteamOS
For many users doing a reinstall with the SteamOS fix their issue. You can try this troubleshooting if the earlier solutions above does not work about the Steam Deck battery issue.
Steam Deck Recovery Instructions
Step 1: Download the recovery image on Steam.
Step 2: Prepare a USB key (8GB minimum) for recovery image:
- On Windows use the Rufus utility. Select the recovery file and write it to your USB drive.
- On MacOS you can use Balena Etcher to write the recovery file to your USB drive.
- On Linux you can also use Balena Etcher to write the recovery file to your USB drive – or from the command line:
bzcat steamdeck-recovery-4.img.bz2 | dd if=/dev/stdin of=/dev/sdX oflag=sync status=progress bs=128M(set /dev/sdX to the USB device you inserted)
Step 3: Use a USB-C adapter or hub to plug the boot disk in.
Step 4: If it isn’t turned off already, turn off your device. In order to enter the Boot Manager, hold down the Volume Down button while pressing the Power button. When the chime sounds, release the Volume Down button.
Step 5: In the Boot Manager, boot from the ‘EFI USB Device’.
Step 6: Once the Steam booted you can choose recovery options for Steam deck.
Re-image Steam Deck – Performs factory reset
Clear local user data – Reformats the home partitions
Reinstall Steam OS – This will reinstall SteamOS
Recovery tools – Make changes to the Steam Deck boot partition.