But my Steam Deck would continue to drain during gameplay even while plugged into certain other chargers. That’s true even if you continue to play the system. Now, if you use the official charger and a handful of others (like a recent Qualcomm Quick Charge 5.0 brick), you can get a full battery in about 1.5 hours. But most common smartphone and even laptop chargers fail to provide enough power to satisfy the Steam Deck’s needs. Since I carry it with me throughout my house, I often try to get a quick bit of juice off of a nearby USB-C charger.

What is a problem, though, is charging the device. And that’s with the brightness and volume turned up.īut battery life is not nearly the concern that many make it out to be.

It’s funny to watch the energy meter built into the system regularly pin way past 25 Watts during gameplay - especially when you can play something like the GameCube emulator that sips just 6 Watts. Elden Ring, specifically, is very power hungry. My issues with using the Steam Deck so far are minor and rarely impede my enjoyment. Small annoyances that are worth dealing with So while you can alt-tab away to other applications, it’s most important that it centers the active game over everything else. Valve can get away with this because while the Steam Deck is a computer, it is a handheld gaming device first. And that might not sound all that important, but it absolutely helped me maintain my momentum with such a massive and challenging game.

What this translates to in real-world use is that it only ever took me a matter of seconds to get back into Elden Ring whenever I put it down. And all the while, this suspend feature barely uses any battery. When you’re ready to continue, the system picks up from right where you left off. Those little things include a clever suspend mode that enables you to stop playing on a whim.

Will the steam deck be good