While reviews of gaming performance on Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck have yet to be released, the hardware has been unleashed into the wild for reviewers to examine.
Reaction seems to be mostly positive to the portable PC console, but one common criticism that has come up is battery life. Early on Valve estimated users could get somewhere between 2-8 hours of battery life depending on how demanding a particular game is on the hardware.
Early tests run by multiple YouTubers and professional computer hardware reviewers indicate it can go lower than that. Gamers Nexus played “Devil May Cry 5” with an uncapped framerate, Vsync disabled and brightness set to 50%, and that reportedly drained the battery from a full charge in just 87 minutes. The Phawx got the same result with the same settings whilst playing “Control”.
The Steam Deck screen runs at 60Hz and therefore uncapped frame rates aren’t much use – having vsync enabled and frames limited to 60fps should improve battery life. Testers found less demanding PC games could run for several hours with “Dead Cells” clocking in at six hours.
The battery reportedly charges to 80% in 100 minutes with the remaining 20% taking 80 minutes to recharge. Other tests found the micro SD card load times often matching the internal SSD – a very good sign, while the screen and speakers have been praised.
Source: PC Gamer, Tech Radar
