posted in Technology
Repairing the Steam Deck LCD Gets Much More Expensive as Official Battery Reaches $180
www.eteknix.com/repairing-the-steam-deck-lcd-gets-much-more-expensive-as-official-battery-reaches-180/
Just checked on aliexpress : a 3rd party battery with hundreds of positive reviews is 29€.
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.
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.
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.