Early Steam Deck previews are out – and battery life is causing concern

techradar.com:

For anyone eagerly awaiting Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck handheld console, which launches on February 25, the range of early previews that just popped up will likely make the wait even more agonizing – while also maybe causing a bit of concern as well.

Several YouTube channels got a chance to look at the Steam Deck ahead of its release, and so far the majority of the coverage appears to be very positive, with Valve apparently making a gaming device that brings some of the best PC games ever made to a handheld machine.

However, there have been reports that while Valve has been promising around two to eight hours of battery life, depending on use, it seems the battery can dip faster than Valve’s claims.

GamersNexus found that when playing Devil May Cry 5 with an uncapped framerate and Vsync disabled, the Steam Deck lasted just 87 minutes.

ThePhawx YouTube channel also found that playing Control with similar settings also depleted the battery life in just 85 minutes.

Both YouTube channels also stated that they never were able to get eight hours of battery life, as Valve had promised. This news could come as a blow, then, for anyone who had been hoping to play the Steam Deck on long journeys, for example.

So, should we be concerned about the battery life of the Steam Deck? While those numbers don’t sound great, as the Steam Deck is essentially a PC, there’s plenty of options that could help prolong battery life when playing games.

For a start, both YouTube channels found that by enabling V-Sync and capping the framerate at 60fps, battery life gets a boost by around 30 minutes. As the Steam Deck’s screen is 60Hz, there’s no point in having games try to run at higher frame rates.

You should also be able to tweak graphical settings to