This can be useful if your Steam Deck is constantly being charged (i.e. docked), or very rarely has its battery depleted.
I was under the impression the steam deck used pass through charging? I mean it’s still useful and I’ll definitely set it to 80% for docked, but it should also be useful (or even more so) for those who do charge it a lot instead of those who rarely charge?
Batteries really do not like to be at 100% charge. So if you use your SteamDeck mostly docked, it will be always at 100% charge and this prevents this. It’s a nice, useful feature.
Well yes, but what batteries like even less than being at 100 is being charged to 100 constantly. So why is docked the use case they decided to feature?
Because you can now just set the charging level to 80%, plugin your Deck into your dock and it will stop charging at 80% and then just use passthrough power.
But why is this more important than non docked usage?
If your deck is docked, it will always be at 100% charge
I think you’re missing what I am asking. If the deck is not docked it will get charged from x to 100 more often then when it’s docked, which hurts the battery just as much if not more than staying at 100. The cycles from 80 to 100 are exponentially more harmful than 30 to 80. So why is the case for docked so much more important that it is the only one being mentioning in the changelog? Now people who don’t use it dock will assume it’s not important for their use case when they would in fact profit from enabling it.
I think it is because it is also harmful to be at 100%, not only to charge there. So a docked deck will be longer in a harmful state than a mobile one. In the case of a mobile deck there is a clear use case for charging to 100%: Longer battery life.
But you are also correct: If you’re not using the full battery charge during everyday operations, you should also enable that and also buy one of those 4-5m USB-C charging cables
Li-ion just really does not like being at 90-100% charge regardless if it’s being actively charged or pass through is used.
I know all these things very well. My question was why the changelog said this would only benefit the docked use case when it benefits all use cases. Noone answered my question and instead told me things about batteries I already know. You did not answer my question either.
I’m not really sure what your question was in that case, I thought you were wondering if this is also useful for people who charge a lot, and the answer is yes because it’s always better to stop at 80% vs 100%.
My question was why the changelog says this is only useful for docked usage even though it’s useful for everyone.
Yeah I’m not sure on that one, just a misunderstanding by whomever wrote the changelog maybe
Nice, I’ve been doing through power tools, glad they’re adding it in without that
