I’ve been considering getting a mini PC for my living room, basically only to watch online videos without ads or watch locally stored videos.
Since I have a Steam deck available that I already often dock to my screen for gaming, could I use it instead of buying a new computer?
My main concern is the impact this would have on the battery if it’s plugged in for long periods of time, does it bypass the battery when it’s plugged in and the battery is full ? Will other components be impacted?
You can use it like that, yeah, it’s basically like a “laptop” in that sense, just a fair bit smaller.
Normally I’d recommend getting devices for a specific purpose, like a mini tower custom build for a mini PC with powerful yet efficient and affordable specs - or maybe an older used tower. Though, if cost to performance ratio isn’t as important to you as portability and ease of setup, then a Steam Deck would likely be a good choice.
Wait a few days for CES and see what other vendors will ship with SteamOS. Asus and Lenovo usually allow to limit battery charging. Steam Deck doesn’t.
The Deck can bypass the battery when plugged in. And in fact, does so by default if the battery gets above 90%; it would stop charging the battery and just draw power directly from the USB cable.
With the Decky Loader plugin Powertools you can customize this threshold. I use my Deck as my only PC for work, and have the threshold set to 70%.
For video watching, I can’t imagine having any issues! If you have the OLED model (I think), you can even get Wake on WLAN to work if you plan to store it out of view (although that does feel a bit unfortunate for the poor guy, it has such a nice screen…)
So it does charge above 90% when docked, but does not actually use the battery above that? Because I definitely see the battery charging when I have my SteamDeck OLED docked, would be nice to change that though, I guess I need to look into those plugins.
IIRC the stock behavior is to switch to AC at every charge level, but after 90% charging very slowly to 100 and then doing until it falls below 90 again which it would take a long time to do while still powered.
I worded that initial description pretty poorly, given the default behavior is that it always uses AC power if it’s connected to AC.
Thankfully, with that Powertools plugin you will get to see exactly what the Deck is doing in terms of power and disable even that slow charge above 90% (which I have done), or even force the battery to charge at full rates above 90, should you need to prepare for a trip or something… Give it a try.
I installed it and was not quite sure what option means what, then found this tidbit on the git pages of the plugin:
The PowerTools has an important limitation over the Steam Deck firmware version, though: it only works while the screen is on.
https://git.ngni.us/NG-SD-Plugins/PowerTools/wiki/FAQ
So unless I misunderstand this I am not sure this is useful when docked since the screen is off, unless in Desktop mode where I am also not sure if this plugin would actually be active?
I’ve been using mine as a Mini PC for almost a year since getting it. It works great. The only issues with it I’ve personally had come with regular issues with Linux itself. The battery is still in great health. I’ve only recently had any sort of problem with it and even then I believe it’s just a reasonable hardware failure more than something caused by using it this way.
Over two years with mine, battery aging isn’t noticeable. I’m pretty sure when plugged in and fully charged, the Deck runs off of external power. I don’t know if it shunts around the battery or not, but it certainly isn’t cycling the battery.
I mostly use my deck in a few fixed locations, so it’s mostly plugged in.
I use it as a “laptop” a lot, using a case with a stand and Logitech’s mini Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I like it.
