This is probably old news to most people but I’m posting here in case it helps anyone else! Turns out there’s a power management setting you can disable that really improved the wireless reliability for me.
You first have to enable Developer Mode in Settings > System. Then you should see a new menu right at the bottom of the settings list called Developer. Under Miscellaneous you should see the option Enable Wifi Power Management.
Turning this off completely solved the problems I was having with Wifi being either really slow or dropping out completely to the point where it was almost unusable.
So I’ve done a small amount of testing this morning and had the same drop in battery over the same amount of time with it on vs with it off. I’d say you’re probably right that it’s only a few percent!
That’s awesome and it makes it sense. I didn’t imagine it to be very much but I also understand how Valve would want to take advantage of every energy saving feature by default.