Steam Deck: Update extends battery life by up to 6 percent under certain conditions

Valves Steam Deck is primarily designed for mobile use. In the meantime there is also onewith which you can connect the Steam deck to a monitor.

A new beta update for the Steam Deck now promises to improve the term in mobile operation.

That happened:Valve has one on February 14thNew updatepublished for the Steam Deck. The most important innovation improves the runtime of the Steam Deck.

Valve calls the following conditions to benefit from it:

  • The image restriction must be activated.
  • In the best case, the game should be a game with low requirements.

As an example, Valve mentions the in-house Half-Life 2, which saves up to 6 percent battery when playing when the refresh rate is reduced.

Set the refresh rate on the Steam Deck

You can set the image restriction on the Steam Deck as follows:

  1. Press the menu button.
  2. Select the point of power (the flash symbol).
  3. Changes the value under image restriction accordingly.

Depending on the model, LCD or OLED, different refresh rates can be adjusted. With the original Steam deck, there are values ​​between 10 and 60 fps, while the Steam Deck Oled supports up to 90 fps here.

So far only in the beta

The improvement is currently being tested in the beta version. Each Steam Deck user can join the beta at any time and leave it again.

But be careful:Beta software can contain errors that can lead to problems.

  1. Press your Steam key.
  2. Activates the item settings.
  3. Navigated to system.
  4. Navigated to "participation"
  5. Open the drop-down menu next to "Channel: System updates" and now select Beta or preview.

The main difference between beta and preview is the following: If you choose beta, there are only steam updates. When choosing a preview, there are also updates for Steamos. Data is updated when changing the channel. As a rule, it is also necessary to restart the Steam Deck.

So far it is not known when all users can benefit from the improvement.

Now you are asked. Do you have a gaming handheld and do you use the opportunity to limit the refresh rate? Please write us a comment.