In accordance with Valve we are able to count on someplace between 2-8 hours of battery life from the Steam Deck, relying on how demanding a specific recreation is on the {hardware}. Now early testing from a number of YouTube channels provides us some actual knowledge to measure up in opposition to that declare, and it is clear that 2 hours is not absolutely the minimal for the Steam Deck’s battery. It ran out of juice a full 33 minutes faster in GamersNexus’ testing.
GamersNexus ran a spread of battery checks, together with Satan Could Cry 5 with an uncapped framerate and Vsync disabled. With these settings the Steam Deck lasted 87 minutes—and that was with brightness set to 50%. For comparability, DMC 5 lasted a full two hours with Vsync enabled, barely decrease settings, and a 60 fps framerate cap.
YouTuber The Phawx additionally ran intensive battery life checks to find out the worst case efficiency with the Steam Deck, and got here to a really related quantity utilizing the sport Management: 85-90 minutes. “For those who flip Vsync off and have low settings and 90 fps when there is not any cause to—you will have a 60Hz show—you may inadvertently have horrible battery life,” he says. Each channels examined one of many different video games Valve made obtainable for previews, Lifeless Cells, and acquired six hours of battery life with Vsync enabled. It is a signal that indie video games and older, much less graphically demanding PC video games will probably be capable to run for a number of hours on the Steam Deck, although neither check got here near Valve’s said higher restrict. “For the lifetime of me, I by no means managed to get to eight hours,” The Phawx mentioned.
This testing highlights one of many key variations between the Steam Deck and conventional recreation consoles just like the Nintendo Swap: configuring your video games with the correct settings will likely be important to getting probably the most juice out of the system. In Forza Horizon 5, The Phawx was capable of get round 4 hours of battery life by locking the framerate to 30 fps and making a couple of settings changes.
Taking pictures for 60 fps will broadly imply decrease battery life in trendy video games—about two hours, judging by what we have seen to this point—however older and lighter video games ought to be extra within the 4-6 hour vary. Whichever goal you shoot for, setting an fps restrict will make sure you’re not losing processing energy and battery life.
One different bit of fine information from GamersNexus’s testing: the Steam Deck is pretty fast to cost. Whereas turned on (and idle), the Steam Deck can cost to 80% battery in 100 minutes. It’s going to take one other 80 minutes to succeed in a full cost—identical to smartphones, the Steam Deck slows its charging charge after a sure level to protect the longevity of the lithium-ion battery.
Some early checks of the Steam Deck printed at the moment additionally revealed that micro SD card load times are surprisingly fast, usually even matching the inner SSD.
