One of the big selling points of the Steam Deck is the ability to play your games anywhere. While it is easy to pick and go with it, there are a few things you should do and bring along with you if you want to maximize the value of your Steam Deck while traveling and keep it safe.
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Bring These Crucial Steam Deck Travel Accessories
Technically, you can pick up your Steam Deck as-is, anywhere you go. Theoretically, everything will be fine. You’ll be able to play it, and as long as you can find any USB-C charger, battery life won’t be an issue. But there are several accessories you can and should get for your Steam Deck if you plan on traveling with it a lot, both for your convenience and your handheld’s safety.
Screen Protector
Playing a game with a huge scratch down the middle of your screen is frustrating. Replacing the screen of your Steam Deck isn’t easy or cheap, either. You’re much better off buying a sturdy screen protector for your handheld no matter how careful you are with it. Life is unpredictable. People trip. A screen protector isn’t strictly necessary for every device, but it never hurts to have one.
Travel Case
Hopefully, your Steam Deck came with one of these when you bought it. It’s a snug, cushioned fit that keeps the console safe from damage. It’s always better to keep your Deck in its travel case during transport, even if you’re putting it inside another bag. You have no idea what might scratch it while jostling around in a non-specialized case.
Skin and Thumbstick Covers
The screen isn’t the only part of a Steam Deck that can get scratched. The thumbsticks and outer shell can get damaged too. Getting a skin and thumbstick covers can not only prevent this damage but add a customized flair to your deck as well.
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Headphones
Most games just don’t feel right to play without audio. When traveling, you may be in a situation where you don’t want to bother other people, or other noises are bothering you. Don’t leave a good gaming headset at home.
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Battery Packs
In general, the Steam Deck has pretty good battery life. But if you are on a long trip or playing battery-intensive games, it just might not be enough. Having a fully-charged battery pack on hand can ensure you are entertained even on the longest trips.
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A Dock
Much like the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck can use a dock you can use that allows it to connect directly to TVs and other screens. It’s not much use while traveling, but a great thing to have on hand when you reach your hotel.
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Micro SD Cards
Video games are getting bigger all the time. The Steam Deck can only hold so much, and when you’re away from high-speed internet, you can’t just delete and download games on a whim. Consider some high-quality SD cards, which you can download games onto and insert into your Steam Deck to have access to them.
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Make Sure Your Games Are Ready Before You Leave
Nothing would be more irritating than settling into your seat on an airplane, whipping out your Steam Deck, and getting excited to play a specific game—only to find out you can’t. There can be many reasons for this. For starters, you should probably make sure you’ve actually downloaded the games you want to the Deck before you leave your house. Sometimes you forget what you have downloaded, or confuse it with what you have on your PC already.
You’ll also want to make sure there are no pending updates for any of your games before you go on your trip. If one escapes your notice, you probably won’t be able to play that game until you get back to a solid internet connection for an update. Even if the game itself doesn’t need an update, you’ll want to keep an eye on any mods you use as well. They get updated too, and may be incompatible with your game during a trip if you don’t stay on top of those updates.
Finally, make sure you remember to activate “offline mode” before you load up any of your games while traveling. This is a bit different from airplane mode, which just disconnects you from the internet and prevents your Deck from searching for connections. Offline mode specifically allows you to play a lot of games that may require an internet connection at some point.
This doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play purely online games like MMOs with offline mode, but for other titles that may connect to the internet at some point for any reason, offline mode can prevent this from causing a problem. For example, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a single-player game, but it has some mechanics that require it to connect to the internet. If it tries to do this while you are not connected to the internet, the game may crash.
Lots of games have this problem, but offline mode on the Steam Deck helps get around the problem, allowing you to play these games without these issues, though there’s no guarantee it’ll always solve the problem. You’ll want to turn on your Steam Deck while it’s still connected to the internet first, as this will allow your library of games to be validated. For some of your games, you may need to let them run for a few minutes while connected to the internet.
After doing that, you’ll need to go to your settings. It’s easy to reach if you tap the “…” button on the bottom right side of your Steam Deck. This will open a quick options menu. From there, use your D-pad or thumbstick to highlight a button that looks like a white cog at the top right of the screen and click on it. Go down to your “Internet” tab in settings and click on “Enter Offline Mode” which is the very first option there.
If you’re lucky, this will allow you to play all of your games without any internet-related issues with launching your games. Once you activate it, make sure you put your Steam Deck is sleep mode only, rather than turning it off completely. If you turn it off completely, you’ll have to validate your game library again, which can’t be done offline.
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Extend Your Battery Life as Much as Possible
Your trip might take a long time. You might not have access to a charger to keep your Steam Deck going during certain legs of the journey. Ideally, you’ll have a battery pack that will allow you to tack some extra hours onto your playtime. But if you don’t have one, there are a few things you can do to extend the battery life of your Steam Deck during a gaming session.
- Turn on Airplane Mode: If you’re already in offline mode, you won’t need to worry about this. Ultimately, your Steam Deck spends battery power searching for an internet connection as long as internet connectivity is enabled, even if there is no network to join. Preventing that will save battery life.
- Lower Brightness, Vibration, and Haptics: Obviously, it takes more power to generate brighter light. Lower your screen brightness as much as you can tolerate. If you have a game that uses a lot of vibration or haptics, turn those features off as well, as they also drain battery life.
- Don’t Use Sleep/Suspend Mode: While these modes are important for keeping some games playable while in offline mode, if it turns out you don’t need that, then turning off your Deck completely instead of suspending your game will save battery. Keeping a device in sleep mode still requires power.
- Lower Your Graphics Settings: It takes a lot of power for a Steam Deck to output higher-level graphics. The more you’re willing to lower the graphics settings of the game you’re playing, the longer you’ll be able to play it before your Steam Deck needs a recharge.
- Play Less Demanding Games: Some games are just more demanding than others. The better the graphics and the more objects there are to generate, the more strain there will be on your battery. Some games are just less draining than others, and some games are too much for the Steam Deck anyway. Don’t worry, some examples of good choices are coming up!
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Prioritize Games With Low Battery Drain
If you have enough battery packs to keep your Steam Deck running for twelve hours even while playing a graphically demanding game on fairly high settings, great! If you don’t, well, you may want to consider filling up your travel library with games that won’t be so tough on your Steam Deck’s battery. Games that are less demanding aren’t worse by any means: there are plenty of amazing titles out there that don’t require a lot of power to run!
For example, games with simple graphics like Rimworld, Stardew Valley, or Terraria aren’t very demanding at all and run for a pretty long time. They are fantastic games with a ton of content and replayability, making them ideal for long trips. Some other great games along these lines include titles like Vampire Survivors, Wargroove, Hollow Knight, and Pentiment.
Old games are also great for battery life. For example, there are tons of classic Star Wars games available on Steam that, despite their age, are still absolutely great plays, and they don’t require much juice at all. Finally, consider using Emudeck and turning your handheld into an all-in-one emulator: needless to say, it doesn’t take very much battery to play old GameBoy, PlayStation, and GameCube games on a modern piece of hardware!
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Assuming you keep all of these Steam Deck tips in mind, it will probably serve you very well on almost any trip. If you’re looking for an excellent handheld console that can keep you entertained on flights, train rides, or car trips, the Steam Deck can do a fantastic job as long as you know how to maximize its strengths and cover its very few weaknesses.
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