How to care for your laptop’s battery and extend its life

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Posted By Kakanyero Robson Jimmy | Skytech256 

Taking proper care of your laptop’s battery is important for ensuring your mobile machine can run as long as possible. Although battery technology has evolved in the background, outdating “best practices” from a few years ago, there are still a number of ways you can extend (or reduce) your laptop battery’s health. We’ve rounded up the top tips for how to care for your laptop’s battery, from how long you should leave it plugged in to how low you should let the battery drain.

Unlike many desktop computers, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to laptops. Every machine is a little different, so finding out as much as you can about your laptop and its battery is important. Our tips apply to lithium-ion batteries, which are, by far, the most widely used batteries in modern laptops.

Save cycles, save your battery

All laptop batteries are built to handle a certain number of charge cycles, usually somewhere around 500 full cycles — and sometimes even more. Essentially, a charge cycle equals one full discharge down to 0% and then a recharge back up to 100%. A discharge down to 50% and then back to 100% would equal half a cycle. Over time, each charge cycle decreases a battery’s capacity from its design specifications, meaning that the fewer times you drain it, the longer the battery lasts — all other things being equal.

So, where do you start? You can begin by visiting the power settings corner of your laptop and learning how your battery works and what battery settings to enable. Also, pay attention to hibernation modes. Ideally, you want your laptop to enter into hibernation before the battery is totally drained — as well as during downtime when you won’t be using the laptop for a while.

To save even more power, take a tour of your apps and quit any that are running in the background and steadily eating into your battery life. On Windows 10, for example, we suggest you search for and enable the Battery Saver. This mode will automatically turn on when your laptop reaches around 20% battery life (more down below on why this is particularly important). This will automatically block background apps, keep your features like Calendar from syncing or pushing notifications, lower screen brightness, and other various changes that will conserve your battery so you can get to an outlet ASAP.

For MacBooks, look into enabling Power Nap so you can put your Mac to sleep without worrying about it skipping important tasks, allowing you to save more battery life. Enabling automatic graphics switching can also help Macs save energy by switching to a lower graphics mode when engaged in simple tasks (like text-based work where graphics aren’t as important).

There are plenty of manual changes you can make here, too. You can safely shut down things like cloud storage and messaging applications that may be running in the background. You can also manually reduce the amount of power you’re using by shutting off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you’re not using them, turning off optional features such as keyboard backlighting, and generally reducing the number of components burning power. Both Microsoft and Apple have guides explaining the process further.

Keeping your battery in zone

laptopcharging

In ancient, less enlightened times, there was a problem called “battery memory” that caused nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries to “forget” their full charge capacity and start charging at lower and lower levels. This problem doesn’t exist any longer thanks to modern lithium-ion batteries, but it has led to a lot of poor advice and arguments about battery care based on outdated information. It’s time to clear the air.

Contrary to some recommendations, you don’t need to routinely discharge a lithium-ion battery completely and then recharge it to somehow reboot or calibrate it — this is a destructive practice that’s very hard on your battery. Whether or not it’s a smart idea to perform a complete discharge a couple of times a year remains an unanswered question. Generally, the consensus seems to be that letting your battery discharge (without bottoming it out — aim for around 20%) and then charging it when possible is the best practice.

Next, there was a time when users were advised to refrain from keeping their devices plugged in, based on the idea that letting a battery charge to 100% could wear the battery out more quickly. Today, however, modern devices are designed to stop charging at 100%, so keeping them plugged in doesn’t impact the battery’s lifespan, according to Battery University.

As with many battery-related questions, the issue of keeping your laptop plugged in when it’s reached full capacity is hotly debated, so there’s nothing wrong with turning your machine off and unplugging it if you feel more comfortable doing that. But generally speaking, the best thing you can do for your lithium-ion battery is to avoid letting it discharge below 20%. Plug it in and charge it when you can, and then rinse and repeat. The good news is that with modern batteries and systems, there’s really not much else you need to do — outside of anticipating that your battery will eventually start losing its overall capacity.

Finally, if you’re going to store your laptop for an extended time without using it, then discharge or charge it to 50% before putting it away.

It’s getting hot in here, so hide your batteries

When a laptop battery gets too hot, the electrochemical reactions inside speed up — but that doesn’t mean that the battery grows more efficient. Instead, the battery is now producing lots of energy that it cannot use and cannot safely route to any hardware. This creates even more heat, compounding the problem. Not only can this eventually damage the inside of the battery permanently, but it also wears the battery out with a bunch of chemical reactions that aren’t necessary but burn through a battery’s lifespan anyway.

Today’s lithium-ion batteries are durable, but they can only take so much heat. For example, if you are charging your battery and it starts to get overly warm, perhaps because the CPU or graphics processor is working hard or the environment is overly hot, then shut the device down and pop the battery out if possible. Give it a break so that it can cool down, or you can move it to someplace with a lower temperature. Many modern laptops have sealed batteries, in which case shutting the machine down and letting it cool is highly recommended if maximizing the battery’s lifespan is your concern.

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