How to maintain a laptop battery?
Whether it's summer or winter, your laptop battery is always exposed to harsh conditions. Today I will try to give you some tips on how to take care of your battery so that it lasts as long as possible. It's time to get started: AMSO entertains and teaches
How long does the battery last? How to maintain the battery?
And similar questions. We guarantee one hour, but often the battery lasts longer, or our customers decide to buy a new one. How to make sure that the battery is not damaged or that its performance decreases more slowly? I will try to tell you about it now
At home, we often use a laptop or a netbook. Of course, I realize that we move it from time to time, but many people treat the device like a computer and connect it to a charger. However, this is not good because the best thing for the battery is to keep it between 50 and 90 %.
What can you do to extend the battery life?
Of course, it is often even impossible, but with lithium-ion cells it is recommended to keep the battery at the maximum level of ¾. For my mobile device, I have a rule of thumb that I charge the battery from 25% and turn it off at 80-90%. However, I generally recommend the 50-90% method as it is simply best for the battery.
Why is it worth doing this? Because every battery has a certain number of charge cycles. A cycle is nothing more than fully discharging a battery and then topping it up. So if we see that a battery has a life of 70%, it means that it has already gone through about 700-800 cycles. It is therefore better to recharge the battery than to do this in cycles. This significantly extends the life of the battery. This principle also dispels the myth that batteries need to be "formatted". This should not be done as current batteries simply do not like it. Leave the formatting for the hard disk only. Of course, this is just advice, and I don't always use it myself because I don't always have the opportunity. However, it is worth doing this whenever possible.
I can understand that it can be inconvenient or simply annoying to unplug the charger from time to time. I understand that and I know that pain, because sometimes I forget to do it myself and lead the battery to its death. This is because a battery that is 100% charged cuts off the power supply for a while, discharges by a few percent and is then recharged by the mains adapter. These microcycles, as I call them, are no longer individual, but can be counted in hundreds or even thousands. This naturally leads to damage to the battery and its capacity.
How should I handle my laptop's battery?
With business series, such as those sold by AMSO, the batteries are usually removed in a simple manner. Therefore, you should disconnect the battery and work with the laptop connected to the charger. The devices will be fine and we will always have a working battery.
I realize, of course, that the above two paragraphs can be considered "myths" as the internet has been filled with information about battery life control programs for some time now. This is true, but do you really have them? That is the question here. This guide is not meant to make you wonder whether or not your laptop has specialized software. Rather, it's based on a clean, simple system that's best for everyone. Unfortunately, many overlays uploaded by manufacturers often slow laptops down terribly, so it's much better to go with a "clean" system that any computer scientist will know and advise you to use.
Are you probably wondering how modern batteries like high temperatures? Surely they don't like to sunbathe, like me. High temperatures accelerate the destruction of the cells. For this reason, batteries prefer cool and dry places (0-25 degrees are the preferred conditions). So if you take a battery out or have a spare battery, you should keep it in such a place. It is also worth remembering that the battery stored in this way should be charged at 50%, as fully discharged batteries lose their properties. So if we leave devices at work over the weekend, it is also worth leaving them with a charge level of 50%.
Temperature is another important factor that affects battery life. We should therefore avoid letting our portable devices overheat for long periods of time. Because then not only the battery suffers, but also its components. If your laptop reaches high temperatures, you should consider using a cooling pad. It provides cool air inside the laptop. However, if you don't like them, remember that mobile devices heat up much more when you place them on a fabric surface like a bed or carpet, because then the cold air is not let in. If we want to know how hot individual elements are (batteries also have their own temperature sensors), it's worth considering a program like HWMonitor. Another program worth mentioning is BatteryCare, which tells us how long the battery will last. These are simple applications that are very lightweight and do not overload the system. On Dell Latitude and Precision laptops, we don't need these programs because we can check the battery life percentage in the BIOS after pressing F12 and selecting the "Diagnostic" option.
Is there anything else I can recommend to extend battery life and keep it running longer? I think there are four other things.
- The first is the brightness of the screen. The brighter the screen is, the more power it consumes. So if you don't need maximum brightness, dim the screen and the battery will certainly last longer without you having to charge it.
- Secondly, it is worth entering the "System configuration" and clicking on the "Startup" tab. There you will find programs that turn on immediately when the system starts up and therefore consume energy. Maybe some of them, like in my case "Steam" or "iTunes", are not constantly needed by you and only consume energy. Check it and remove the ones you only use once in a while.
- Thirdly, remember that all peripherals consume power. So unplug everything you can to avoid running out of power, such as unnecessary drives.
- And fourthly: battery saving mode. You can set this in the power options. For example, if you do not work on your laptop for 5 minutes (you can set this time yourself), the device switches to economy mode, i.e. it slows down the processes and even switches the screen to sleep mode. This drains the battery more slowly.
That's all. There's a bit of it, but these simple habits should help you keep your battery in good shape.