How To Save Battery On Steam Deck: Four Basic Tips

If you feel like your Steam Deck starts running on fumes even after a short play session, then you're in the right place. There are so many reasons why your Deck runs out of juice way faster than you'd like. And most of these reasons often fly under people's noses.

(Photo : Dabe Alan/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
A Steam Deck handheld gaming console, taken on August 26, 2021.

So without further ado, here's how to save battery on the Steam Deck.

Limit Your Frame Rate

Look, we all know that high frame rates are amazing. But as powerful as Valve's new handheld is, it can only do so much in this department. For now, leave the silky-smooth frame rates to your full-size gaming PC.

Good thing is that limiting the frame rate on the Deck is possible by using the universal built-in limiter, writes RockPaperShotgun. You can turn on the limiter by going to the Performance menu and limiting the frame rate down to 30 FPS from 60 FPS. You can see that there's an option to go as low as 15 FPS there, but that's for the worst case scenario.

By limiting your frame rate, your Steam Deck won't have to work as hard running the games you play. And if it doesn't work hard, it doesn't consume a lot of battery. Just be sure that you're not going to play anything competitive with a 30 FPS cap, because turning it on can make your input latency spike, writes HotHardware.

Play Your Games On Medium Or Low Settings

Games are made to look beautiful. We get it. But consider the Steam Deck's screen, and things are a bit different. Even if you could turn a game's graphics settings up, you won't notice much on that tiny 7-inch screen. Plus, doing so will greatly drain your battery. And you don't want that.

According to GameSpot, try to turn down settings like anti-aliasing and shadow quality first. Then if you don't notice any major visual downgrades, turn down a bit more. Experiment until you've found a good balance between graphical fidelity and battery life.

(Photo : Steam )
Photo taken from Cyberpunk 2077 Steam page

Set The GPU Clock Speed Manually

This is another neat trick with regards to how to save battery on Steam Deck. That's because by manually setting your Valve handheld's GPU clock speed, you're also limiting its overall power draw. It won't boost to higher clocks when it "needs" to anymore, because easy-to-run games won't have way too much power than they need to actually run.

Be careful, however, since setting a low clock speed could lower your frame rate below 30 FPS. Games might still be playable at such a frame rate, but you'll notice the "chug" far more and it won't be a good experience overall. But do it right, and this will do absolute wonders to your Steam Deck's battery life if combined with the frame rate limiter.

Turn Down Screen Brightness

This is perhaps one setting that many Steam Deck used will be unaware of. In our article detailing the tips and tricks on how to get the most out of the Deck, we revealed a setting called Adaptive Brightness which is one of the best battery-saving tricks for Valve's handheld.

Turn Adaptive Brightnesss off by going to Settings > Display, then clicking the toggle to disable it. Afterwards, turn down your screen brightness to a level that suits you. You'll be surprised at how many hours you can gain just by performing this trick.