Introduction

When buying a wall charger or portable charger, the Steam Deck works best with PD 3.0 compliant chargers. This implies that it supports charging at 3A at 15V. However, there are some chargers that will charge at this rate but will not mention that it is PD 3.0. There are also some chargers that say they charge at a higher wattage, but do not support 3A at 15V. In Game mode, you can see the discharge rate and the charging rate, but this fluctuates with CPU usage, screen brightness, and how charged the battery is. A simpler way to check a charger is to use the command line in Desktop mode.

Measuring Charging speed

To measure how fast your Deck can charge with a charger, use the sensors command on the command line.

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sensors
amdgpu-pci-0400
Adapter: PCI adapter
vddgfx:      655.00 mV 
vddnb:       690.00 mV 
edge:         +60.0°C  
slowPPT:       5.05 W  (cap =  15.00 W)
fastPPT:       5.05 W  (cap =  15.00 W)

BAT1-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
in0:           7.59 V  
curr1:         1.11 A  

jupiter-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
PD Contract Voltage:  15.00 V  
System Fan:          2272 RPM
Battery Temp:         +37.0°C  
PD Contract Current:   2.47 A

In this output, you can see the charger is running at 15.00 V but only has 2.47 A of current. This charger is fast, but not as fast as it could be.

Common Charger Issues

If your charging speed is lower than expected, here are some reasons for why it might be slower.

• You are using a USB-C hub, and the hub uses up some charge but does not request additional charge to make up for it: https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/w4l5vi/psa_many_highend_hubsdocks_are_not_able_to_charge/
• Your charger is not PD 3.0 compliant. Some chargers advertise high wattage, but only support high wattages on different voltages.
• Loose connection or overheatting. Sometimes your charger will run at 3.0 A but your deck will occasionally report that you are using a slow charger. This could because of a low quality charger or something not being plugged in all the way.
• Bad outlet or power strip.