How to Extend Handheld Battery Life During Loadshedding

Stage 4 loadshedding hits, the lights die, but you’re sorted. You grab your handheld, ready to dive into another world… until the dreaded low battery warning flashes. Eish. Don't let Eskom dictate your gaming sessions. Knowing how to extend handheld battery life is no longer just a convenience; it's a crucial survival skill for any South African gamer. With a few smart tweaks, you can squeeze out that extra hour of gameplay.

Master Your Screen & Display Settings

The biggest power vampire on any handheld console is its beautiful, bright screen. It's the first place you should look to save battery during loadshedding.

Your screen's brightness level is directly linked to how fast your battery drains. While a vibrant display is great, you often don't need it at 100% when you're playing in a dark room. Dropping the brightness to 50-60% can have a massive impact and significantly extend your handheld's battery life. Also, consider lowering the refresh rate. Do you really need 120Hz for that indie puzzle game? Switching to 60Hz can almost double your playtime in some scenarios. These simple adjustments work on all the latest handheld gaming consoles and are your first line of defence.

Tweak Your Power & Performance Profiles 🔧

Modern handheld PCs are powerful machines, but you don't always need all that power. Learning to manage your device's performance profile is key to making your handheld last longer.

Most devices come with pre-set power modes, often called "Quiet," "Balanced," and "Performance." For loadshedding, the "Quiet" or a custom low-TDP (Thermal Design Power) profile is your best friend. Lowering the TDP tells the processor to use less electricity, which generates less heat and, most importantly, saves a ton of battery. The Armoury Crate software on an ASUS ROG Ally, for instance, makes this incredibly easy to adjust on the fly. You might sacrifice a few frames, but you'll gain precious minutes… or even hours.

Cut The Connection & Go Offline

Every signal your device sends or receives uses power. Those little Wi-Fi and Bluetooth icons represent a slow, constant drain on your battery.

If you're playing an offline, single-player game, there's no reason to stay connected. Simply switch on Airplane Mode. This instantly disables Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, cutting off a surprising amount of background activity and helping to extend your handheld's battery life. It’s one of the simplest yet most effective tricks in the book. This is especially useful for powerful devices like the MSI Claw, ensuring all its power is focused purely on your game.

Optimise Your In-Game Settings ✨

Finally, don't forget the most direct way to control power consumption: the game's own graphics settings. Pushing pixels is hard work for your handheld's hardware.

Before you launch a new game, dive into its settings menu. Here are a few quick changes that deliver the best battery-saving results:

• Resolution: Drop it. On a compact screen, the visual difference between 1080p and 720p is minimal, but the performance and battery gain is huge.
• Shadows: Lowering shadow quality from "Ultra" to "Medium" is often barely noticeable during gameplay but eases the load on the GPU.
• Anti-Aliasing: This smooths out jagged edges but is very power-intensive. Turn it down or off.

Making these tweaks on a device with a gorgeous large screen, like the Lenovo Legion Go, allows you to find that perfect balance between visual quality and battery endurance.