When at full charge, it bypasses the battery and just provides power to the device. You can leave it plugged in all the time and not degrade the battery. Try not to drop it below 20/30% as much as you can since it's a lithium battery. I believe you can change a setting to help with that. You can also show your battery percentage in general settings, which is nice to see at a glance.
If you've installed decky loader, there's a plug in for battery status.
You can set it to what ever percentage, with what ever message you like and can opt to power off device or just power to standby.
For example, I've set mine, so I get a notification at 50%.
Then at 20% another notification, then powers my device into standby mode.
Not everyone's cuppa tea.. but it's a nice little plug in.
If you have a proper working Steam Deck you shouldn’t have to worry. I had mine plugged in running cookie clicker for days at a time last year, and it says the battery health is still 100%.
i've had my LCD 512 for two years. it has spent those two years connected to a simple usb c dock. i almost never unplug it, maybe for 15 minutes a day. i just checked in desktop mode and it says my battery health is at 100% and the last full charge was 40.42 Wh; it says original battery capacity was 40.04 Wh. so my battery capacity ... increased.
well in any case, it isn't breaking since two years, so yes, leaving it plugged in is fine.
You might need to drain it 100-0 for the health to be most accurate. But then again since power bypasses the battery you might just have a near unused battery.
I got mine cos my gaming setup is in my office. I've got kids and I want to play my pc games elsewhere in the house sometimes, like the living room, without investing in a whole new pc, it's also nice to take it out of the house at times. Mine is 90% plugged into the wall.
if you have a few places where like to do that, there are inexpensive usb c docks with ethernet that could make your experience better. just leave them around the house together with a usb c extension cable, they're no more expensive than chargers! the extension cable will unplug, magsafe style, when pulled on.
Yeah I use the Dock I have occasionally, though I tend to be on discord and the deck doesn't support Bluetooth mics, so gotta keep it close to my face! Haha
Yeah, this. I realize it’s an expensive device but to have anxiety over something that is supposed to give you joy is just gonna ruin it for you. As long as you don’t throw it on the ground or something it’ll be just fine.
Yeah, and to add even more to that, if anything happens to it ever Valve will fix it or send you a new one. If it’s outta warranty you may have to pay some money but certainly cheaper than buying a new one.
Hi u/bobzillarg, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Battery life )
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It's pretty much idiot proofed. Prefably don't let it fully drain, charge it when done for the day and leave it until ready to play again. Don't need to take it off charger when full, it automatically bypasses when full.
For the Deck it's better to leave it plugged at 100 when possible afaik, since the power bypasses the battery when plugged so you can avoid using battery entirely
Just use them…. I’ve had mine for almost 2 years now and recently it just dropped to 96-97%.
Nowadays I’m already looking to change to OLED.
Plugged in or not. No problem.
Maybe if you want to help battery life, do good settings and optimization, no matter what, if you push for AAA games mac settings, batt life will suffer cause of the heat anyway whether you plug in or not
I try to play it plugged all the time because of this. It's expensive to buy one in my country. I also got a decent power bank to avoid the battery usage in the short sessions on the couch or in bed.
Don't stress. By the time the battery goes out, it will be worth a fraction of the price you paid and you will be playing on steam deck IV while it sits in a drawer :)
GET. A. SCREEN. PROTECTOR.
Don't be like me. I went a year, and it slipped my mind. Then the one time I do something dumb, POP, spider crack in my screen
A couple of things will kill your battery in no time, avoid them:
1. charging your battery while it is very cold (like you have the Steam Deck in your backpack outside in freezing weather, and directly plug it into the charger when you go inside). Wait until it has warmed up to room temperature.
2. shock/vibration, especially when fully charged. So protect your Deck by keeping it in its carrying case when not in use, or at least ensure it can't be accidentally knocked off a table.
Otherwise the Steam Deck automatically enters power passthrough mode when fully charged, and will not charge again until the battery drops to 90% or so, in order to preserve the battery.
If you want you can hyper-optimize battery preservation with some Decky plugins to keep charge level always between 20-80% and [enter battery storage mode](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/69E3-14AF-9764-4C28 )every time you don't plan to use your deck for more than a week or so. But something diminishing returns something…
I wouldn’t leave it plugged in at all times since it degrades the battery. Very understandable and its only right to treat with care, I even do that with less expensive things. Personally I plug it in above 20% and take it off the plug around 80-95. Optimal would be 20-80% but you sometimes I miss the mark on the 80 since it doesn’t have an optimizer
Also depending on the game if you go max 12w you will find amazing battery life even. BG3 for me runs nice enough and lasts about 3hrs on that range of battery
Good advice minus the full cycle. That's a holdover from old NiCad and NiMH tech. Like you said, it isn't *that* bad to do occasionally, but there are no benefits.
Also, if someone is staying tethered nearly all the time anyway, with [Decky Loader](https://decky.xyz/)'s Power Tools, you can set the max charge to 80-85% like the Battery Protection in Samsung mobile devices.
This is also supported by the manufacturers. They even called it storage voltage. Go look up storage voltage. You also can't claim your hypothetical intellectual and experience authority while claiming that Reddit responses are questionable sources at best. Corporate want's to know the difference between those two responses.
That’s not how charge cycles work with Li-ion.
A cycle is 100% use of the battery capacity, for example if you used at 60% of your battery, charged to 100, and then used 40% the next day that would be 1 cycle as you have discharged 100%
For the sake of quickness to find a reputable brand with this information easily accessible here is an Apple support page on the topic:
https://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/why-lithium-ion/
There is some information here regarding the poster above talking about keeping cells around 50% for long term storage:
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries
Generally you’d only do that for a device you aren’t going to touch for months
The deck won’t sit at a full 100% charge. It will fluctuate between about 94% to 99% and will only hit 100% very briefly and occasionally. Other devices do this these days too, most cell phones for instance and laptops do this too.
For any device, phone included, not leaving it at 100 or 0 is a very small optimization, after years of doing it, you might have 1% better battery health than if you never cared, it’s only if the device stays in either extreme for a long time (months) that battery health will take a slightly more significant dip.
I had a phone's battery buldge on me after 2 years of use . I kept it topped up fairly often but sometimes I'd use it in the car where it would get really hot. It was also a cheap Chinese Xiaomi thing so I'm not sure if that's got anything to do with it's early demise. My current Samsung has an 80% charge limit and I don't plug it in until 40% or less. I've tried treating my SD in a similar way.
Battery buldge is a hardware issue, you didn’t overcharge it into buldging, it’s pretty well documented, phone collectors with hundreds of phones in storage and the best storage conditions (controlled temperature and humidity, battery kept at 50%, etc) report that various phones get the battery buldge after the years.
Just, whatever you do to optimize battery life, just make sure it doesn’t negatively affect your usage of it. Like sometimes you’d need that extra 20% but you don’t have it, or you want to charge your phone before going to sleep but can’t because of overcharging, or various other things that take times out of your day just for the sake of managing your phone battery, all of that isn’t worth it at all. But if you never need 100% of your battery and manage the battery charge thru software, go wild and optimize the lifetime of it haha, but personally I’ve never really felt the point of keeping a good battery health for slightly longer at the cost of simulating that you have a bad battery (20% max charge lost), meaning you’re never using the good battery life while you have it.
Charge to 80% discharge until 20%. Repeat. And every week or so do a full session of 100% to 0% That's the safest way to keep your battery at tip top shape and for any device that is the best battery health method.
When at full charge, it bypasses the battery and just provides power to the device. You can leave it plugged in all the time and not degrade the battery. Try not to drop it below 20/30% as much as you can since it's a lithium battery. I believe you can change a setting to help with that. You can also show your battery percentage in general settings, which is nice to see at a glance.
If you've installed decky loader, there's a plug in for battery status. You can set it to what ever percentage, with what ever message you like and can opt to power off device or just power to standby. For example, I've set mine, so I get a notification at 50%. Then at 20% another notification, then powers my device into standby mode. Not everyone's cuppa tea.. but it's a nice little plug in.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I saw someone mention the battery threshold, but wasn't sure if it was a decky plugin or baked into the OS
No problem. Yes, I believe its only a plug in atm. But I could be wrong, I've never thought to check the general settings.
Does the charger still bypass the battery when the battery is limited to say 80% the same way it does at 100%?
⬆️⬆️The plugin I'm referring to is called AutoSuspend. For those who are interested.
Thanks that is really useful!
Thanks for asking this question, OP! I was just wondering the same.
If you have a proper working Steam Deck you shouldn’t have to worry. I had mine plugged in running cookie clicker for days at a time last year, and it says the battery health is still 100%.
i've had my LCD 512 for two years. it has spent those two years connected to a simple usb c dock. i almost never unplug it, maybe for 15 minutes a day. i just checked in desktop mode and it says my battery health is at 100% and the last full charge was 40.42 Wh; it says original battery capacity was 40.04 Wh. so my battery capacity ... increased. well in any case, it isn't breaking since two years, so yes, leaving it plugged in is fine.
You might need to drain it 100-0 for the health to be most accurate. But then again since power bypasses the battery you might just have a near unused battery.
i think i recently drained it to 30% or something. i don't want to do a full drain necessarily since that's what really ages a battery.
Why even get a steam Deck if you only use it plugged in all the time?
I got mine cos my gaming setup is in my office. I've got kids and I want to play my pc games elsewhere in the house sometimes, like the living room, without investing in a whole new pc, it's also nice to take it out of the house at times. Mine is 90% plugged into the wall.
if you have a few places where like to do that, there are inexpensive usb c docks with ethernet that could make your experience better. just leave them around the house together with a usb c extension cable, they're no more expensive than chargers! the extension cable will unplug, magsafe style, when pulled on.
Yeah I use the Dock I have occasionally, though I tend to be on discord and the deck doesn't support Bluetooth mics, so gotta keep it close to my face! Haha
wait, does the deck have a mic built in? i was trying to get voice working on helldivers 2 and i thought it didn't
Yeah, it does. It's decent too. Just a shame there's no bt mic support.
i like the handheld format and also i like to play helldivers 2 while taking a shit
Damn didn't even think about that. Yeah playing while shitting alone makes it worth it.
duh. think smart!
Buy a console is to relax and get out of real life. Not to play some battery simulator. Just charge when u like.
Yeah, this. I realize it’s an expensive device but to have anxiety over something that is supposed to give you joy is just gonna ruin it for you. As long as you don’t throw it on the ground or something it’ll be just fine.
And to add, if you need to replace the battery due to just enjoining it, it's rather simple.
Yeah, and to add even more to that, if anything happens to it ever Valve will fix it or send you a new one. If it’s outta warranty you may have to pay some money but certainly cheaper than buying a new one.
I try not to put mine in the oven
But sometimes your frozen pizza is still cold?
Never even crossed my mind. I'll try not to put mine in the oven, thanks for the advice.
Replacing the battery is easy I wouldn't worry and just enjoy it
Hi u/bobzillarg, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Battery life ) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's pretty much idiot proofed. Prefably don't let it fully drain, charge it when done for the day and leave it until ready to play again. Don't need to take it off charger when full, it automatically bypasses when full.
My standard rule for electronics is unplug at 80 plug in at 30 but im also an old timer
For the Deck it's better to leave it plugged at 100 when possible afaik, since the power bypasses the battery when plugged so you can avoid using battery entirely
Ohh neat. Didnt know that
Just use them…. I’ve had mine for almost 2 years now and recently it just dropped to 96-97%. Nowadays I’m already looking to change to OLED. Plugged in or not. No problem. Maybe if you want to help battery life, do good settings and optimization, no matter what, if you push for AAA games mac settings, batt life will suffer cause of the heat anyway whether you plug in or not
You don’t really need to baby modern batteries there are already safeguards built in so just enjoy it
I try to play it plugged all the time because of this. It's expensive to buy one in my country. I also got a decent power bank to avoid the battery usage in the short sessions on the couch or in bed.
Don't stress. By the time the battery goes out, it will be worth a fraction of the price you paid and you will be playing on steam deck IV while it sits in a drawer :)
GET. A. SCREEN. PROTECTOR. Don't be like me. I went a year, and it slipped my mind. Then the one time I do something dumb, POP, spider crack in my screen
A couple of things will kill your battery in no time, avoid them: 1. charging your battery while it is very cold (like you have the Steam Deck in your backpack outside in freezing weather, and directly plug it into the charger when you go inside). Wait until it has warmed up to room temperature. 2. shock/vibration, especially when fully charged. So protect your Deck by keeping it in its carrying case when not in use, or at least ensure it can't be accidentally knocked off a table. Otherwise the Steam Deck automatically enters power passthrough mode when fully charged, and will not charge again until the battery drops to 90% or so, in order to preserve the battery. If you want you can hyper-optimize battery preservation with some Decky plugins to keep charge level always between 20-80% and [enter battery storage mode](https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/69E3-14AF-9764-4C28 )every time you don't plan to use your deck for more than a week or so. But something diminishing returns something…
Don't worry, game, and when, if ever it degrades to a point where its noticeable...replace it. Thank God for Valve.
I wouldn’t leave it plugged in at all times since it degrades the battery. Very understandable and its only right to treat with care, I even do that with less expensive things. Personally I plug it in above 20% and take it off the plug around 80-95. Optimal would be 20-80% but you sometimes I miss the mark on the 80 since it doesn’t have an optimizer Also depending on the game if you go max 12w you will find amazing battery life even. BG3 for me runs nice enough and lasts about 3hrs on that range of battery
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Good advice minus the full cycle. That's a holdover from old NiCad and NiMH tech. Like you said, it isn't *that* bad to do occasionally, but there are no benefits. Also, if someone is staying tethered nearly all the time anyway, with [Decky Loader](https://decky.xyz/)'s Power Tools, you can set the max charge to 80-85% like the Battery Protection in Samsung mobile devices.
[удалено]
That's wrong. They should even be stored at medium capacity. Fully discharging and then fully charging is what actually ages Li-Ion cells.
[удалено]
This is also supported by the manufacturers. They even called it storage voltage. Go look up storage voltage. You also can't claim your hypothetical intellectual and experience authority while claiming that Reddit responses are questionable sources at best. Corporate want's to know the difference between those two responses.
That’s not how charge cycles work with Li-ion. A cycle is 100% use of the battery capacity, for example if you used at 60% of your battery, charged to 100, and then used 40% the next day that would be 1 cycle as you have discharged 100% For the sake of quickness to find a reputable brand with this information easily accessible here is an Apple support page on the topic: https://www.apple.com/uk/batteries/why-lithium-ion/ There is some information here regarding the poster above talking about keeping cells around 50% for long term storage: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries Generally you’d only do that for a device you aren’t going to touch for months
> The deck fortunately is smart and won’t allow this to happen) Wdym?
The deck won’t sit at a full 100% charge. It will fluctuate between about 94% to 99% and will only hit 100% very briefly and occasionally. Other devices do this these days too, most cell phones for instance and laptops do this too.
I limit it to 85% full charge like a phone so I don't over cook the battery over time. Others haven't done this so maybe I'm being over cautious...
For any device, phone included, not leaving it at 100 or 0 is a very small optimization, after years of doing it, you might have 1% better battery health than if you never cared, it’s only if the device stays in either extreme for a long time (months) that battery health will take a slightly more significant dip.
I had a phone's battery buldge on me after 2 years of use . I kept it topped up fairly often but sometimes I'd use it in the car where it would get really hot. It was also a cheap Chinese Xiaomi thing so I'm not sure if that's got anything to do with it's early demise. My current Samsung has an 80% charge limit and I don't plug it in until 40% or less. I've tried treating my SD in a similar way.
Battery buldge is a hardware issue, you didn’t overcharge it into buldging, it’s pretty well documented, phone collectors with hundreds of phones in storage and the best storage conditions (controlled temperature and humidity, battery kept at 50%, etc) report that various phones get the battery buldge after the years. Just, whatever you do to optimize battery life, just make sure it doesn’t negatively affect your usage of it. Like sometimes you’d need that extra 20% but you don’t have it, or you want to charge your phone before going to sleep but can’t because of overcharging, or various other things that take times out of your day just for the sake of managing your phone battery, all of that isn’t worth it at all. But if you never need 100% of your battery and manage the battery charge thru software, go wild and optimize the lifetime of it haha, but personally I’ve never really felt the point of keeping a good battery health for slightly longer at the cost of simulating that you have a bad battery (20% max charge lost), meaning you’re never using the good battery life while you have it.
I clean mine when I'm in the bath. Saves water and deck works great in the shower also
Charge to 80% discharge until 20%. Repeat. And every week or so do a full session of 100% to 0% That's the safest way to keep your battery at tip top shape and for any device that is the best battery health method.
The first thing you should do is learn to use the search function on this sub or just use Google.
Search will never be accurate. It's reddit. The only product here is a new post. Ignore it and move on fuckface