Over the past few years, the entire PC handheld scene has seen a tremendous change. There used to be a time when PC handhelds were very niche, but today they are not so niche. And it’s all been possible thanks to the Steam Deck and other PC handhelds like the Asus Rog Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go. The Steam Deck in particular has become quite a popular choice for many. Valve has been doing an incredible job of supporting the Deck with regular OS updates and equally amazing after-sales support. However, there are some things that users would love for Valve to improve upon. One of them is the battery. Some users are even asking around if it’s possible to upgrade the Deck’s battery. And this guide here will help you know the answer to that question.
Battery life is a big problem not only with the Steam Deck but with almost all PC handhelds. Running AAA titles like Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Armored Core: Fires of Rubicon, and such on a handheld is no small task. Running these big titles on handhelds comes at a cost. And that cost is battery life. It’s simply impossible right now for players to play these games for longer than 2 hours or so because of just how resource-intensive they are. This is why, there are so many users asking whether they can upgrade the Steam Deck’s battery. So, without much further ado, let’s go ahead and find out if that’s possible or not.
Steam Deck Battery upgrade: Is it possible?
Officially, you can’t. While you can certainly replace the Deck’s battery, upgrading it is a whole other thing. However, this hasn’t stopped some users from doing some DIY projects. u/Icy_Expression_7224 did a dual battery upgrade for the Steam Deck a few months ago and posted about it on the r/SteamDeck subreddit.
As the name suggests, this project added a second battery to the Steam Deck. The result? Well, u/Icy_Expression_7224 did post an update regarding this project and the results were both negative and positive.
“After many many times of trying to get the steam deck to read the Dual battery for the size it truly is I’ve not been successful…”, stated u/Icy_Expression_7224 in the Reddit post.
However, as we said before, the project wasn’t all a waste. “it does last longer but it will sit at 3% for the remaining 30-45mins when testing (Cyber Punk 2077)”, continued u/Icy_Expression_7224 in the same post, later on promising to release a video about the whole process. An important thing that the user highlighted was that this isn’t really recommended for everyone out there. However, if you are comfortable with stuff like soldering and potentially destroying the Deck then, you can click on this link, which will show you the steps for this entire process. Once again, we would like to remind you that there’s always a chance that you could end up damaging your Steam Deck with all this. You won’t be able to send it for a replacement since it is hardware damage. So, think carefully and thoroughly if you want to try this out.
u/Icy_Expression_7224 isn’t the only one who has tried to do this. Linus Tech Tips also did a battery upgrade of sorts in their The ULTIMATE Steam Deck video. As you might have guessed by the name, the video was focused on modding the entire Steam Deck, including the battery. Their battery upgrade, though, was much different compared to what u/Icy_Expression_7224 did. In fact, this was much more “secure”. Instead of adding another battery or something like that, the guys got a power bank and slapped it on the backside of the Deck. Something that a lot of Steam Deck battery-focused products do these days.
One thing that you might have noticed is that, in both of these examples, none of them tried to find an aftermarket battery and replace it for the OEM one. Which is good, because it’s better to stick with the latter. So far, we haven’t come across anyone who has replaced the Deck’s internal battery with a different one. Screen, RAM, controls, and such, that you can try to replace with a different one, but doing the same with the internal battery can be both dangerous and hard.
In conclusion, it’s better to stick with the current battery until Valve officially releases a battery specifically for the Deck or when someone else is able to successfully mod it. If you really want a better battery life, then go with the Steam Deck OLED. It’s got the same battery and processor, but thanks to a different manufacturing process, the battery life and performance are much better than the LCD version.
There are also some things that you can do to prolong your battery life. Try to play at a low TDP, if possible. What’s more, playing games at medium or low graphics settings can also help a lot. Disabling resource-intensive settings such as post-processing, texture filtering, and the like is also something you can do to make your play sessions last longer. There’s also the Battery Saver Mode. Enable it and that should help a bit with the battery life. Brightness is also another thing you can take a look at. Instead of keeping your brightness to the max, keep it low whenever possible. You can even enable Adaptive Brightness on your Steam Deck. Doing so will allow the Steam Deck to automatically lower the device’s brightness when it senses low light. Then there are other things like turning off Bluetooth, enabling Airplane Mode, and such.
And the best of all: buy a power bank. There are a ton of these available online for the Steam Deck. Get a good one, and it should be enough to allow you to enjoy games for much longer. There are even mountable power banks available, which are quite handy and good. All of these should help you enjoy games on the Steam Deck for longer.
Well, we hope you now have all the information you need. You can also take a quick look here if you want to know how to install CryoUtilities on your Steam Deck. And for more interesting content like this, keep following DigiStatement. Also read: Dwarf Fortress Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go & Asus Rog Ally Support Details
