Steam Deck LCD Battery Price Jumps to $179.99 After Supply Concerns

For PC handheld owners, battery life is the most important factor in enjoying their game without recharging. As handhelds age, replacement batteries become important because the battery is one component that wears out over time. You can extend a device's useful life through hardware repair, but only if parts are available.

Valve has decided to add replacement parts and step-by-step repair guides for the Steam Deck after joining forces with iFixit to provide the hardware. Users no longer need to search across multiple sites for parts and instructions that work together to repair devices; they can instead go to iFixit for both.

Steam Deck Battery Replacement Becomes an Issue

The battery is one of the components most likely to need replacement. Batteries have several charge cycles. You fully charge the battery, use it up for games, and then charge it back up. Each time you charge the battery, you complete one charge cycle. Batteries will tolerate only a certain number of charge cycles.

It's hard to see why Valve would want to sunset the Steam Deck LCD battery supply now, since the LCD is approaching five years old. That is also when owners will start needing replacement batteries. The replacement LCD costs $179.99, which is a pretty substantial number compared to the original Steam Deck LCD pricing.

Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED differ in internal design. The chipsets use about the same amount of power, but their internal components differ, so the batteries differ. The Steam Deck LCD battery is now $179.99, and the Steam Deck OLED battery costs $80.

That raises the question: why is the LCD battery more expensive than the OLED battery? There are no inside tips, except that pricing may vary with scale. Valve has offered some Steam Deck LCDs, and these are still for sale. This lets Valve estimate future OLED sales and the number of batteries it will need over the next few years.

This means that Valve will require more OLED batteries than LCD batteries.

The same principle also applies to other hardware parts. Sony has, for instance, bought up RAM to meet its needs through the end of 2027. If the company has the relationships and purchasing power to make these deals, large purchases can be more advantageous in terms of price.

Currently, the Steam Deck LCD is unavailable, and only the Steam Deck OLED variants are available. The 512GB OLED model will be $789, while the 1TB OLED model is just under $1,000. Hopefully, Valve can find more LCD batteries for the Steam Deck.