Steam Deck sure is an exciting piece of hardware. But as with all portable devices, the autonomy of use in portable mode, ie. battery life is crucial, because you don’t want your system to shut down in the middle of the game when you decide to take this monstrosity of a portable Steam machine outside the house.
As it is essentially a mobile PC and not an actual handheld console, Steam Deck more or less leaves the entire optimization process to the users themselves, so it’s up to you to optimize battery life by adjusting many settings in the system and the games themselves. So, let’s find out some ways and best practices on how to properly optimize battery life on Steam Deck.
Related: This Steam Deck Mod Changed My (Gaming) Life
How to Optimize Battery Life on Steam Deck?
Here are some general tips on how to improve the battery life on Steam Deck:
- Restrict power usage by lowering the watts, and test it to see how low you can while still getting a passable fps
- Lower and lock the fps and refresh rate in Steam Deck’s settings to 30 or 40
- Lower screen brightness
- Lower the resolution in-game (FSR can help here but more on that later)
- Lower the graphics settings in-game
- Disable all of the features you don’t use like Game Rumble and Steam haptics, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.
And about the FSR (FidelityFX™ Super Resolution, it is AMD’s take on DLSS), you will get the best results if you leave the native resolution on, and set up FSR to performance, instead of just going for the lowest resolution possible. This way it will work as intended and give you the best balance of picture quality and battery life. The only problem is that FSR can only be properly utilized in the games that directly support it.
Of course, for the best results, the settings are on a game-to-game basis. For each title you want to try on the Deck you can always check the settings other users tested and posted on forums or Reddit because still, most games do not have special optimization for Steam Deck, so you need to figure out the best way to make your game look decent, run well and save some battery life – good luck with that!
For more Steam Deck here on Prima Games check out some of the following – Is Death Stranding Steam Deck Compatible? – Answered, Best Farming and Life Sims on Steam Deck, and Holiday Gift Guide for the Ultimate Steam Deck Fan (2022).
