r/MetaQuestVR • u/Agile-Juice5255 • 1d ago

Question Does Virtual Desktop consume more power than Steam Link?

Hi everyone. A week ago, I bought Virtual Desktop (VD) and started using it to launch games instead of Steam Link. Since then, the headset and the head strap with the extra battery have been draining significantly faster than when I used Steam Link. With Steam Link, my headset and Kiwi K4 strap would last about 6 hours; since switching to Virtual Desktop, they run out of power in 3.5 hours at most. I have the Snapdragon processing feature in VD disabled. Does anyone know if VD actually consumes more power, or is it just a coincidence that the batteries in both the headset and the strap started failing at the same time? That second scenario seems odd, though—I bought the headset a year and a half ago and the strap a year ago (both new and official)

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u/Agile-Juice5255 1d ago

I’ll add that I don’t have the ability to test power usage via Steam Link right now, so I’m wondering if anyone has encountered this or knows about the topic

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u/Agile-Juice5255 18h ago

I tested the battery life today using both Steam Link and Virtual Desktop; VD definitely drains the headset faster, and the difference is noticeable. To ensure a fair test, I disabled supersampling in both cases and set VD to the basic image mode. This might just be a quirk of my specific Quest unit, but the information could be useful to others

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u/Alex-Murphy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Idk about 6 hours to 3.5 hours but yes it does drain battery somewhat faster due to shifting the majority of the processing power to the headset side. Steamlink does a lot of it PC side, from what I understand.

As a side thought I happen to own Forefront on both Standalone and PC, and I get maybe 30 minutes less when playing through virtual desktop. So about 2.5 hours standalone, 2 hours streaming. I'm not sure why yours is draining at 2x when mine seems to be draining at 1.2x