Steam Deck: How to extend the battery life

Many gamers are finding the Steam Deck to be a new favorite, since it provides a surprisingly feasible choice for PC gaming on the road. However, in order to get the most out of Valve's portable console, you'll want to maximize its battery life. Here's how to do it.

Choose your games wisely

According to most estimates, a single charge of the Steam Deck can last anywhere from two to eight hours. Some of this is down to the game you're playing; a lo-fi indie game like Celeste, for example, will be less demanding on the console than, say, Elden Ring. So, if you've got a long flight ahead of you, consider exploring the large library of smaller films available. Of course, if you're only going to play for a few hours, opt for one of the major names like God of War.

Change up your graphics options

The Steam Deck performs admirably for such a small package, but there are a few areas where it tries to go above and beyond. The high-definition 1200800 display looks excellent and can run games at a smooth 60 frames per second, but chugging along at that speed might drain the battery.

The console's operating system includes a built-in framerate limiter in its options menu, which allows you to select a system-level framerate of 30 frames per second. That's more than enough for the Deck's modest but effective display, and many more graphically demanding games will only be able to attain 30 frames per second anyhow.

In a similar spirit, tinkering with the visual choices for whichever game you're playing is often worthwhile. The Steam Deck's display, as great as it is, is still significantly smaller than the normal gaming monitor, thus any visual flaws will be less obvious while playing. The longer the battery lasts, the more of those settings you can turn down a notch. Even something as easy as decreasing the screen's brightness can assist a lot if all else fails.

Tinker with more advanced settings

If you're willing to delve behind the hood, you can get even more battery life out of the Steam Deck.

Note: If you don't know what you're doing, messing around with some of the more advanced settings offered can have negative consequences, so be cautious.

You can discover some more items to fiddle with in the Steam Deck's settings that will help the console consume less power. Setting the GPU's clock speed to a constant amount, for example, will keep it running at a consistent level regardless of the game or other factors. This will frequently conserve battery life at the expense of visual fidelity in more demanding games, but it may have the reverse impact in lighter games, so be careful.

A setting to limit the system's TDP (thermal design power) is also available. Because this is effectively a gauge of how much power the processor consumes, it's a terrific way to reclaim some additional battery life. If you set it too low, though, your performance will suffer significantly, so strike a balance.

According to YouTuber The Phawx, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution can improve both performance and battery life, with some cases improving battery life by over an hour.