Hmmm… price gouging now, are we? Just a month ago I was finally able to get one when they had been out of stock for quite some time.
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Just checked on aliexpress : a 3rd party battery with hundreds of positive reviews is 29€.
I did the same like 3 months ago. Was Gunna ordered one to have on deck… I mean as spare. Ha. But saw they had some on aliexpress pretty readily available. So I didn’t order any cause my battery seems fine.
Yeah, that’s the confusing bit. We’re told that the selected third party batteries are good quality, but I’m weary that they’re all just being made in the same factory.
And by that I don’t mean that I think the AliExpress battery is necessarily bad. I’m saying I think it’s the same, but ifixit has found a way to gouge by suggesting that their third party battery is different.
It’s probably made in the same factory, but there is more QA in the chain (normally/I hope) and then the batteries have multiple middlemen taking a cut with IFixit adding their profit margin on top of every middlemen costs.
AliExpress is a pile of garbage but you can find decent things there if you know where to look. I’ve gotten quite some decent items from there.
Anyone and any shop can sell there ranging from good ones to scammers.
Yeah, this feels like extreme price gouging. I generally like what iFixit does, their toolkits are great and I’ve bought Steam Deck parts in the past (a replacement fan when mine got noisy). However, if they’re going to participate in price gouging I’m done with them. There’s no reason a Steam Deck sized battery should ever be even close to $180, and given how numerous third party options are, there’s zero reason to pay that price for an “official” one. It’s a battery, it’s as generic of a component as it gets. Sure, it has a charge controller, but so do the third party ones. It’s a custom shape, but that’s probably just two standard sized cells taped together. If the shape were a real problem the third party ones wouldn’t be any cheaper.
Often the charge controller isn’t even part of the battery. A BMS is but that is only a safety precaution against overcurrent or over/undercharge.
The charging itself, from the usb cable to the battery is usually done elsewhere.
A lot of the time the third party parts are made in the same factory on the same lines. Often their contracts are for X amount of product and Y quality. Only when you get to massive companies and products like Apple and the iPhone do you actually get third party factories producing copied parts.
Most are just the same factories producing extra product by running the lines for extra hours, at a faster speed, etc. and taking both the extra product and the product that barely failed the quality control for some reason but can be sold as B stock on the grey market. A lot of “counterfeit” products are legitimate in every way, just not authorized by the manufacturer.
Totally agree, and I’m also sad because iFixit otherwise has seemed to be pretty trustworthy. I’m definitely curious to see if some enthusiast out there has the new iFixit third party option to compare with the AliExpress one. I bet the label would be enough to determine if they’re the identical product.
How many batteries are failing? My LCD battery is still working great. I never leave it plugged in, managing battery health helps a lot.
i leave mine plugged in all the time but from what I can see it has smart charging.
Don’t worry about leaving it plugged in, just set the max charge to something like 60%.
Yeah, I love that this sort of thing is an option now. I do 80% on my ebike and 90% on my phone. Hopefully that will prolong the life of two of most frequently used gadgets.
Wasn’t a thing originally, they added it later. But it’s habit, I never leave lithium battery devices plugged in. I have a laptop from 2011 that still holds over 90 percent storage.
Ugh,
Yay.
Hopefully it is a popular enough product that 3rd party manufacturers will step in… But who am I kidding… I’ll just keep it plugged in and use the steam machine as much as possible
Having read the article, 3rd party batteries are the same price as the original battery used to be. A shame the oled batteries aren’t compatible with the LCD units.
It appears the price went up because it’s popular
A popular device now old enough that the original batteries are starting to fail from age and use. It happens all the time, nothing about the Steam Deck is special for this, it happens with everything.
At what point do we stop glazing tech companies and draw the line in the sand and say this crap won’t be tolerated anymore?
Unfortunately I think the glazing is led by influencers who aren’t affected by the price increases. And they figure — likely, correctly — that if they don’t give the company good coverage, they’ll be scooped, and forgotten. But, that’s where you start. With the fanboys. The loudest supporters.
The alternative is, these things just keep going up until the line is drawn and enough people hold it. And sure, it’s fine if you bought at the lower price… until you need a new one.
Draw the line in the sand how? What’s the alternative? slap 20 AAs on the back
The myriad of reasonably priced unofficial batteries on eBay and AliExpress.
Given that they wanted to drop the replacement completely at first, they are probably more than fine with that
2 to 4 18650 cells would work
Batteries can be made from sodium now, why are we still here?
Sodium batteries work great at large scale (think huge. Like industrial power grids), but really not at miniaturisation.
Lithium batteries work at miniature scale, but suck at large scale.
Sodium batteries have considerably less energy density than lithium, at least at the moment. They’re best for stationary use such as solar and grid backup, not for portable devices. Not really even a good fit for EVs yet.
