Summary
You can maintain the health of the battery in your laptop for a longer period of time by adhering to a few basic tips. It doesn’t matter whether you use your batteries often or if you leave them alone for an extended period of time; they will all ultimately deplete, but if you know the appropriate methods and techniques, you may make yours last longer than it otherwise would. Even if battery technology has progressed to the point that you no longer have to be concerned about keeping it plugged in overnight, you still need to take a few precautions to guarantee that your battery enjoys the highest possible level of health for the longest possible period of time.
We have compiled a list of our most important recommendations for maintaining the health of your laptop battery.
When it comes to laptops, there is no universally applicable solution, in contrast to the majority of desktop computers. Considering that every machine is a little bit different, it is essential that you learn as much as you can about your laptop and the battery that it uses. Specifically, our recommendations are applicable to lithium-ion batteries, which are by far the most common kind of battery used in contemporary laptops.
Use your battery sparingly and conserve cycles
There is a certain amount of charge cycles that each and every laptop battery is designed to withstand, which is often somewhere around 500 complete cycles and, in some cases, even more. In its most basic form, a charge cycle is comprised of one complete discharge down to zero percent and then a recharge back up to one hundred percent. Half a cycle would be comparable to a discharge that was reduced to fifty percent and then returned to one hundred percent. Over the course of time, each charge cycle reduces the capacity of a battery in comparison to its design requirements. This means that the larger the number of times you drain the battery, the longer it will live, provided that all other factors remain the same.
As a result, where do you begin? You may start by going to the power settings section of your laptop and studying how your battery operates as well as the battery options you should activate. Additionally, pay attention to the modes of hibernation. In an ideal scenario, you would want your laptop to go into hibernation before the battery is completely depleted. Additionally, you should do this during periods of downtime when you won’t be using the laptop for a considerable amount of time.
If you want to conserve even more power, you should go through all of your applications and close those that are operating in the background, significantly reducing the amount of time your battery can last. In Windows 11, for instance, we recommend that you look for the Battery Saver and decide whether or not to activate it. It is possible for this mode to switch on automatically when the battery life of your laptop reaches twenty percent (more on why this is especially essential will be provided below). By doing so, you will be able to automatically prevent background applications from running, prevent your features such as Calendar from syncing or pushing alerts, reduce the brightness of the screen, and allow a variety of other modifications that will help you preserve your power so that you can promptly reach an outlet.
If you have a MacBook, you should investigate the possibility of activating Power Nap on macOS versions that came before Ventura. This will let you put your Mac to sleep without having to worry about it missing out on crucial tasks, which will help you preserve more battery life. Alterations have been made to the power settings in macOS Ventura and subsequent versions; for instance, the “Power Nap” option is no longer available; nonetheless, the fundamental choices have not been discontinued. When your Mac is engaged in basic activities, such as text-based work where visuals aren’t as vital, enabling automatic graphics switching may also help it conserve power by switching to a graphics mode that is more energy-efficient (and slower). This is the case if your Mac has more than one graphics system.
Additionally, there are a great deal of manual adjustments that may be made here. You have the ability to securely terminate apps and services, such as cloud storage and messaging programs, that may be operating in the background. In addition, you may manually limit the amount of power that you are using by turning off optional features such as keyboard backlighting, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you are not using them, and overall minimizing the number of components that are sucking up the battery. Both Apple and Microsoft have provided guidelines with in-depth explanations of the technique.
Always make sure that it has a tiny bit of charge.
It is not necessary to frequently drain a lithium-ion battery to its full capacity and then recharge it in order to restart or calibrate it. This is a destructive activity that is extremely hard on your battery, and contrary to some advice, it is not necessary to do so. The topic of whether or not it is a good idea to carry out a full discharge a couple of times a year is still one that has not been addressed. The general agreement appears to be that the best practice is to let your battery discharge (without completely draining it; aim for around 20%) and then charge it whenever it is convenient to do so.
Next, there was a period when consumers were encouraged to avoid from having their gadgets plugged in. This was based on the concept that allowing a battery to charge to its full capacity might cause the battery to deplete more rapidly. However, according to Battery University, current gadgets are intended to switch off charging when they reach their maximum capacity, which means that having them plugged in does not have an effect on the longevity of the battery.
There is no problem with shutting off your computer and disconnecting it if you feel more comfortable doing so. This is because, as is the case with many other concerns concerning batteries, the subject of whether or not you should continue to leave your laptop plugged in after it has reached its maximum capacity is a popular topic of discussion. On the other hand, in general, the greatest thing you can do for your lithium-ion battery is to do all in your power to prevent it from discharging below 20%. At the first opportunity, plug it in and charge it, and then rinse and repeat the process. The good news is that with current batteries and systems, there is really not much more you need to do than expect that your battery will eventually start losing its overall capacity. This is the only thing you need to do.
In conclusion, if you are going to put your laptop away for a lengthy period of time without using it, you should discharge or charge it to fifty percent before putting it away.
Stay away from temperatures that are really high
Even though the electrochemical processes that take place within a laptop battery speed up when it becomes too hot, this does not indicate that the battery becomes more efficient as a result of the changes. The battery, on the other hand, is now creating a significant amount of energy that it is unable to use and cannot safely send to any devices. Even more heat is produced as a result, which makes the situation even worse. Not only does this have the potential to cause irreparable harm to the battery’s inside over time, but it also causes the battery to degrade via a series of chemical processes that aren’t required yet nevertheless consume a battery’s lifetime anyway.
Lithium-ion batteries today are very long-lasting, but they can only withstand a certain amount of heat. If, for instance, you are charging your battery and it begins to get excessively warm, possibly because the central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processor is working hard or because the atmosphere is too hot, then you should turn off the device and remove the battery if it is feasible to do so during the charging process. You may either give it a break so that it can cool off, or you could relocate it to a location where the temperature is somewhat lower. In the event that you are concerned about optimizing the battery’s longevity, it is strongly advised that you turn off the computer and allow it to cool down completely. This is because the majority of current laptops have sealed batteries.
Also, make sure that the laptop is not sitting on your lap. When you block vents on multiple devices, you are not only making the issue worse, but you are also making it worse if pain is not a sufficient incentive. Ensure that the vents that are responsible for bringing in cold air and those that are responsible for releasing hot air are both able to perform their functions properly.
In conclusion, and probably most crucially, you should ensure that your laptop is not placed in any location where it may potentially grow overheated. The same goes for your vehicle on a hot summer day, in front of a window that is exposed to direct sunlight, or in close proximity to a space heater. Even though you may not be aware of it right away, unusual situations like these have the potential to do a significant amount of harm to a battery in a very short amount of time.
Do you have concerns about overheating? Some of these suggestions might be taken from our advice on how to maintain a cool environment for your gaming laptop. It is possible to maintain a cool battery if you are able to maintain a cool gaming laptop.
When it comes to cold temperatures, there is often no issue up to a certain degree. It is advised that you store a battery in a cool area; nevertheless, you should not keep your laptop in temperatures that are below freezing. An excessive amount of cold might potentially cause the battery to die a permanent death or shorten its lifetime.
It is possible to run a variety of applications that will monitor the temperature of your laptop if you want to keep a closer eye on the temperature. For example, if you reside in an area that is characterized by a very hot environment,. CoreTemp and RealTemp for Windows are both included in this package, and both of them are available for free download.
Always make sure it is connected, but not all the time
Plugging in the majority of current laptops is not a risky thing to do. Plugging in is the optimal mode of operation for the majority of high-powered gaming laptops. A battery’s discharge cycle is the most critical factor in determining its overall health. Your battery will deteriorate over time, regardless of how careful you are, since it will be discharged and recharged over the course of time. It is possible to limit the number of discharge cycles that your battery experiences by running an intense program, such as a game, while your laptop is plugged in. This will allow you to use the application without draining the battery.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t keep your laptop in this condition all the time, especially when you anticipate that the battery will be depleted very rapidly. It has been said that if you do not intend to use your battery for a period of time, it is preferable to keep it at a capacity of forty percent to fifty percent rather than at one hundred percent capacity. Degradation occurs more quickly on batteries that are fully charged and left unattended, particularly when temperatures are high.
Therefore, if you are not using an application that requires a lot of processing power and you are not moving about, it is a good idea to keep your laptop plugged in for the length of that period. If you are conducting day-to-day chores that do not take as much power as rapidly, such as surfing the internet, you may depend only on the battery to power your device.
Download software to get information on the health of the battery
There are times when it might be difficult to determine at a glance how your battery is doing. There are native battery management options and alarms that are included with devices such as iPhones. These settings and alerts give at least some information. However, these diagnostics are more difficult to discover on laptops unless you do the installation yourself. You may want to take into consideration the following suggestions for battery-monitoring applications:.
Designed for use on Windows-based computers, BatteryCare is an exceptionally lightweight application that offers warnings, measurements of the temperature of the CPU and storage, tracking of the discharge cycle, and a great deal of other useful information in a single location.
This software, which was developed for macOS, displays the charge of the battery in an intuitive interface. It also provides information on the health and cycles of the battery, as well as alarms, temperature readings of the battery, and the current total capacity.
There are still several choices open to you, even if you do not want to download any specialized applications. For instance, you may launch PowerShell on your Windows PC and use the command “powercfg /batteryreport,” which will provide you with the file path to this report that is considered to be relatively confidential. After you have copied or dragged it into a browser window, you will be presented with a website that contains comprehensive information about your battery, such as the most recent use, cycle counts, usage history, and more. Not only does it lack the streamlined user interface of a monitoring application, but it also does not need any further downloads in order to be obtained.
Activate modes on your computer that are mindful of the battery
Under its power settings, Windows 10 operating systems provide a mode that saves battery life. When your power is low, you may prolong the life of your battery by using the battery-saving mode. This will allow you to use the battery for a longer period of time until you can reach a charger. Through the use of the battery-saving mode on your computer, you will be able to protect your battery from the damaging effects that are associated with allowing it to reach a charge level of 0%. MacOS offers capabilities that are comparable.
Adaptive brightness modes are another wonderful feature that should be enabled. By adjusting the brightness of your screen in response to the surrounding light, these modes may help you preserve battery life when you are in an area with a lot of incoming light. You also have the option of using the dark mode on your laptop, which not only helps you conserve energy but may also be gentler on your eyes. It is possible to extend the life of your laptop’s battery by selecting any option that helps you conserve energy.
Bring your operating system up-to-date
It is essential that you regularly update the software on your computer in order to get maximum functionality. When a manufacturer releases a new update, it not only contains fixes and improvements but also has the potential to help programs run more efficiently, which will result in the conservation of battery power. If the same operating system is updated to a later patch, it may use a considerably lower amount of battery power, which will result in your battery having a longer lifetime without any other changes being made. As a result, you should examine your operating system and ensure that your device, as well as its battery, are receiving regular upgrades.
Now that you are an expert at maintaining the health of your laptop, why don’t you have a look at our current coverage of the most recent batteries for smartphones? In terms of the amount of battery life that they are helping us save, you won’t believe it.
