If you already have a laptop or planning to purchase a new one then you must think about its battery life right now. Most batteries are likely to damage or lose performance quickly because of some bad practices throughout their service lives.
As you know, the battery is a crucial hardware component of a laptop beside the CPU, GPU, or RAM. It’s almost impossible to run a laptop, smartphone, or other portable devices. Hence you should take care of them from the very beginning. In this article, we’ll share some ways telling how to keep laptop battery healthy, robust, and effective.
Practicing them will keep you away from replacing a battery so early. Thus, you can also save time and money as well. Let’s have a look at the discussion–
How To Keep Laptop Battery Healthy?
You can keep a laptop battery life healthy by avoiding drainage battery completely, overheating, and leaving the plugged-in charger constantly. It’s also possible to save battery power by adjusting the power setting, including auto brightness adjustment. Plus, you should disable WiFi and Bluetooth connections to expand battery backup. Of course, when they’re not in use.
However, knowing the reasons that affect the battery performance will help you to prevent damage dramatically. Therefore, we’ve listed some tricks and tips to make your laptop battery last longer.
Top 10 Tips To Keep Laptop Battery Healthy And Last Longer:
1. Active Battery Saver Mode
This is an important feature you can use to extend your battery life, especially in Windows operating systems. You can easily define how it will perform depending on the different scenarios. However, can easily activate and configure a battery saver mode from your laptop. The easiest way to check the current status is to click the battery level indicator.
You’ll find four power modes there, including the “Best Performance”, “Better Performance(recommended)”, “Better Battery”, and “Battery Saver”. By choosing the last one you can have a battery life as it stops many applications and operations on battery mode. You can also select and observe the rest of the power options. On the contrary, it’s also possible to save battery energy in Apple laptops.
2. Remove External Peripherals
Our experts also found disconnecting unused peripherals can improve your battery power. As you know, people tend to use additional devices like an external hard drive, webcam, speaker, and any USB-powered hardware components. You can also save battery charge by stopping data transfer for a long time. They can drain your laptop battery at a minimum rate, though it sometimes doesn’t make any difference.
3. Recharge Battery Before Battery Dies
Many people plug in the charger after reaching the battery 0%. Trust me! It’s a bad practice that can damage a laptop battery quickly if you continue this habit. In that case, you should connect to the charging adapter when it shows near about 20% of the remaining. It helps to improve your battery to last longer and the maximum capacity of charging.
We know, that sometimes it’s impossible to maintain this practice because of casualties. For example, you might not able to charge the place you’re going– so you’ve to charge no matter how much charge it remains. But, you shouldn’t do it regularly at home.
4. Deal Overheating Issues
You should always keep an eye on the laptops and battery temperature. When the laptop gets got that means it processes tons of data that drains the battery faster. It’s also possible to get hot on your laptop because of the graphics card it runs. As a result, these issues may affect your overall battery lifespan.
In that case, you should clean the cooling fan, keep the room cool, and use a cooling pad. The built-in fans alone can’t deal with the high temperate sometimes. So, the best solution is to get a cooling pad, especially when playing games, and editing photos & videos.
5. Get a Larger Memory Space(RAM)
Installing a larger memory(RAM) will help you to extend battery life since it can process and complete all the tasks. In general, if your RAM can’t withstand the load the applications you’re running put a bad impact on the battery. So, having enough temporary space can help you easily read and write data without draining a battery.
Here, the big devil is browsers or multiple tabs running besides other applications. We also suggest closing the unused tabs to reduce pressure from RAM and battery.
6. Don’t Keep Always Plugged-in
Many experts also state that keeping the plugged-in charger all the time can damage your battery. Besides, it tends to have lesser recharge cycles in overall battery life expectancy. They suggest you plug in the power cord when it’s between 80 to 20 percent. And this method is also recommended by thousands of technical experts.
However, some laptops have a battery management system to handle this issue with a charging adapter. In that case, the battery will automatically turn off the recharge process until it’s below 80% to 50% of the backup level.
7. Turn Down The Screen Brightness
We see the same thing with our mobile phones too that most people keep brightness at a minimal level. Does it really work? Our answer will definitely be yes. Lower display brightness helps your battery from drainage.
Well, you might go out in the sunlight, in that sense auto-brightness adjustments can help you more. But, it’s really meaningless and a waste of charge, power, and battery. Thus, it impacts your battery lifespan.
8. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Each and every simple breach is important when it’s about the battery backup and lifetime. You can also keep the battery health good by turning off Wifi and Bluetooth, especially when not in use. They might suck the battery while searching for new connectivity and devices. The amount of the charge is slight, though.
9. Try SSD Storage System
Hard disks drain your battery very badly, as they’re made of legacy circuits and discs. Therefore, it needs plenty of power to operate them from turn on to turn off. On the other hand, an SSD(solid-state drive) runs flash memory with no such power-consuming mechanisms.
So, the battery can distribute this much power to the other components of the laptop. Besides, an SSD allows a faster boot-up, file read, and transfer. Hence, you’ve nothing to worry about battery backup.
10. Turn Off/Hibernate Your Laptop
We have a bad habit of leaving our laptop open, I mean in sleep mode, often. Don’t do that ever and never! If you won’t work on your laptop for a long period, turn it off or keep it in Hibernate mode. Otherwise, it’s still running some applications and hardware that consume battery cycles.
Read also: Why Is My Laptop Battery Draining So Fast?
How to Care for Your Laptop’s Battery and Extend Its Life
Should You Leave Your Laptop Plugged In All The Time?
No, you shouldn’t leave your laptop plugged in all the time because you may damage the lifetime of the battery. Besides, it can also impact the BMS(battery management system) as well. If the process of charging and consuming go together it may lead to minimizing overall life expectancy.
However, leaving your laptop AC-powered constantly has no danger nowadays, even if you keep it charging 24/7. This information comes out from different research that when the charge reaches 100 percent, the battery system stops the process. So, there is no chance of overcharging the most modern batteries.
Should The Laptop Battery Be Completely Drained Before Recharging?
No, not at all. You should start recharging when the battery level comes down to around 20%. It’s bad practice and harmful if your notebook is using a lithium-ion battery. Experts said their opinion about NiCs and NiMH batteries draining completely before a recharge. It’s a simple job to find out what battery is running inside your laptop.
Battery Charging Tips For A New Laptop
It’s important to know a few things after unboxing a new laptop, especially about how you can keep the battery healthy for years. So, we studied and researched the facts you should carry out when charging the laptop for the first time.
- Charge the battery for at least 24 hours to ensure its prolong life
- Unplug the charger and operate unless the battery level is near about 20 percent
- Keep unplugged always after recharging the battery at least for the first month
- Activate and configure the batter power plan and brightness adjustment settings
- Don’t let it drain completely. It’s okay to do, sometimes but you shouldn’t do it regularly
Does Your Laptop Battery Need to be Replace – How to check?
You can check if the laptop battery needs replacement or service. All you have to see is the battery capacity history function, especially in the windows 8 and 10 versions. There you’ll observe between the service it would provide in new conditions and currently.
Besides, you can also see a comparison between the actual capacity and design capacity after a certain period of time. Thus, you can also see the current performance level of the battery. If you see the battery capacity decreasing remarkably, it means you should take preparation to replace the old one.
In general, a laptop needs to replace a battery after 2 years, or 350 to 400 recharge cycles, come out in another case study.
FAQs on How To Keep Laptop Battery Last Longer
What Is Battery Health?
The battery health refers to an overall estimation of battery life where you can see how long it’ll last with a single charge. Besides, you can also compare the backup time between new conditions and current performance. Technical experts also call it “Battery Capacity History” as this section shows the capacity of your battery and changes over time. It’s also possible to determine how much backup it’d provide as a battery health report.
How Can Battery Efficiency Be Improved?
You can improve battery efficiency in many ways but there are two simplest options out there. You can preserve battery life by adjusting the display brightness, power plan, and battery saver mode. Plus, disconnecting WiFi and Bluetooth option can also help you drain the battery.
Where Should I Keep My Laptop Battery At?
You should keep the battery at a low temperature, in that case, 32 degrees Fahrenheit would be the best storage humidity. However, when it’s about operating temp, you should have a cooling pad under a laptop.
How Do I Stop My Battery From Draining So Fast?
You listed tons of reasons and solutions to stop draining the battery quickly. There are several factors that consume your battery power like push notification alerts, location services, and app running background. Besides, a hungry battery configuration and manual brightness settings are also responsible for draining the battery so fast.
How Many Times Should I Charge My Laptop In A Day?
There is no such daily charging limit on your laptop in a day because you’ll never know how much power it’ll consume. Don’t worry! Now, most modern laptops can handle multiple recharge without damaging the battery. Besides, you can also plug in the charging adapter while working for a long time. However, you can have 500 or above cycles in battery life.
Does Fast Charging Reduce Battery Life?
Generally, fast charging technology doesn’t reduce battery life directly. But, it generates more heat inside it and tends to damage gradually. Many experts stated this condition as a normal heat generation from a faster-charging adapter and battery. However, they have a relatively shorter lifespan than a standard one.
How Long Does A Laptop Battery Last?
A laptop battery lasts around 2 to 4 years within regular usage. Alternatively, it’s possible to have a 400/500/1000 charge cycle depending on the battery quality and capacity. The lifespan of a battery also depends on how you’ll use and maintain the laptop battery to the end.
How To Charge A Laptop Battery For Long Life?
There is no such standard battery percentage level. but according to the experts, keeping the charging level 40% to 80% is the best practice to avoid battery discharge completely. We found many real users suggest plugging in an adapter when it’s down to 25 to 20 percent charge.
Last Word
So, that’s all about how to keep laptop battery healthy for years. We also discuss the battery issues, diagnosis, and possible solutions depending on the battery technology, quality, and type. However, it’s quite impossible for you to maintain battery health up to 100 percent. Hence, following the best battery health practices can help you a lot and provide maximum lifespan.
Hi there! My name is Mohiuddin Alamgir and I’m the man behind of “Laptopvine”. I love learning about all sorts of technology, especially laptops. I find it fascinating how laptops have evolved over the years and how they’ve become essential tools for both work and play. I strive to provide information that is both accurate and helpful to those looking for a new laptop.