If you have a Steam Deck with an LCD screen and its battery is starting to fail, repairing it has become surprisingly expensive. The official replacement battery for the original model has gone up in price again at iFixit and now costs $179.99 for the battery alone, or $184.99 for the complete repair kit. To put this into perspective, the battery originally launched at $79.99. Just a few weeks ago, it returned after a period of limited stock at $129.99, and this new $50 increase means its price has now jumped by 125% compared to the original price. Steam Deck
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.