COVID 19: Increase laptop battery lifespan

Here is the a tip for you to increase laptop battery lifespan while you are at home. Everyone is working from home these days. It is the safest method to protect you and your family members. But, with increased usage of electronic devices, they are more prone to failures.

Understanding the battery

Most laptop batteries are lithium ion batteries. They are limited to a number of charge cycles during their lifetime. As you progressively charge your devices, the longevity lowers. This is an inevitable issue. Soon, you will have to replace the batteries. A charge cycle is counted differently across all devices. The average charge cycle of the latest common laptops is between 10% to 90%. That means if you use your laptop from 100% to 20% and charge with your power adaptor back to 100%, it has completed 1 full cycle. So why does this matter to you? Every battery and laptop is made different. Their charge cycle depends on the laptop needs and capacity of the battery.

How to increase longevity of your battery

If you have a removable battery laptop, you are in luck.

Do a complete shutdown
Remove the battery from the rear.
Plug in your power adaptor
Power on your laptop

So here is the disadvantage of doing so. During a power loss, your laptop will completely shutdown without saving your work. The risk is with the importance of your files. If you are working online and most of your projects and documents can be found online, it is a good idea to remove the battery and continue working without the battery attached.

However, as some projects and work cannot be done online, you may consider only using the battery and power adaptor combination during your office hours. Once the day has ended and no longer have important documents open, you may remove the battery and continue using the laptop. This significantly reduces the charge cycle as there are no battery happening at all.

Internal battery, unable to remove?

Most modern laptops have internal batteries built in. This means you would have to remove a lot of screws to get to the battery itself. We would never recommend doing so. It involves high risk of damaging components and result in extremely high repair costs. So how to increase the longevity or lifespan?

Option 1: Reduce charge time.

Only plug in your adaptor during your work hours. Once your work is complete, remove the adaptor and continue till the battery finishes before plugging in to use.

This helps with the risk of bloating. Batteries bloat due to overcharging. This means you have left the power adaptor running long hours of power and continuously charge the battery even though you do not require it.

Option 2:

Enable low performance mode. Most Windows and Mac OS has the ability for you to change your power consumption mode to low performance mode. This may drastically change your power consumption when you are not charging. When idle or browsing web, you may consider to enable low performance mode so as to not draw power to constantly feed the battery. Only use high performance mode if you require the speed for your computer to work.

Option 3:

Replace the battery as son as possible. If you have underlying issues to begin with, it is recommended to not leave untouched. A few examples are weak batteries, unable to charge, unable to use the battery. These are common issues that would be best to have a replacement as soon as possible. Some batteries do not have protection against power surge. During a power outage, it may cause a power trip if you are plugged in with your power adaptor.

For a quote, do SMS or Whatsapp us at Budget PC Upgrade & Repairs.

Let us know your Windows laptop model number or Macbook model and we’ll give you a quote!

Alternatively, you may send it down to our shop for a free diagnostic test to find out the reason why your laptop is faulty.