Today’s Steam Deck Beta Client update from Valve introduces a battery charge limit control to help owners preserve the longevity of their Steam Deck’s battery. Those with the update installed can navigate to the Settings on their Steam Deck to find a new Battery Charge Limit control in the Power section. With these settings enabled, you can limit a full charge on the unit to only charge until 80% battery. Here’s what the official release notes say:

General

• Added Battery Charge Limit control to Settings->Power
  • This option allows you to set a maximum charge limit for your Steam Deck.
  • Limiting the charge limit to 80% can be beneficial for long term battery health. This can be useful if your Steam Deck is constantly being charged (i.e. docked), or very rarely has its battery depleted.

• Moved display dim and suspend timeout settings to Settings->Power.
• Moved ‘Show Battery Percentage’ setting to Settings->Power.
• Fixed pasting from on-screen keyboard.

Steam Input

• Speculative Fix for rare DualSense Edge gyroscope related bug.

Source: Steam Release Notes

This should help with potential battery problems

This feature is especially recommended for anyone who doesn't take their Steam Deck off charge very often or doesn't experience full battery depletion, and should help prevent battery issues caused by being on charge most of the time. Of course, this will mean your battery life on a single charge will decrease by about 20%, but the overall lifespan of the battery can be improved by doing so.

That said, these settings can be turned off if you need that extra bit of battery to get through the day. You can also try a combination of both: keeping the limited charge mode on most days but switching to full charge when you need it, which could get you the best of both worlds. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Valve has introduced battery life improvements for the Steam Deck, as a previous Beta Client update allowed users to limit in-game FPS in exchange for an additional 6% battery life.

Apart from that, the update also moves some extra options to the Settings Power area and includes a few bug fixes.

About the Author

Hassam Nasir

Hassam boasts over seven years of professional experience as a dedicated PC hardware reviewer and writer.