Laptop charging discharging

There’s a lot of talk these days about mobile phone batteries and charging, but laptop batteries are in a class all their own and deserve attention. Your laptop battery is one of its most important components – although we tend only to think of things like monitor size, or RAM and CPU power when we speak of laptops. Laptop batteries require special attention and care, and the lack of this is the reason why many laptop owners have to replace their batteries sooner than they’d like. We’ve provided some laptop battery charging tips and tricks for those of you who want to get the most out of your battery life.

Should I Leave My Laptop Plugged in All the Time?

This is a question that comes up a lot with laptop owners. And the answer is a quite simple “No.” For optimum battery use, and to get the most life out of your laptop battery, keeping it charged between 40% and 80% has been seen as optimum. However, the newer-generation lithium batteries do better in full charge cycles, so not letting it get below 40% is a good rule of thumb there. And, you don’t want to leave it charging all the time for another main reason – doing so can overheat the battery in some models, which is the number one thing you want to avoid. That said, in many laptop models, once the battery is 100% charged, it will cut off the power supply to the battery, so keeping it charging is redundant after that point, and won’t harm the battery in most cases.

Should I Completely Drain My Battery Before Re-Charging It?

This is another common question when it comes to laptop battery charging. The answer is (as you can guess from the above question) No as well. Most late-generation laptop batteries are either lithium-ion or lithium polymer, and as such, they are designed to be able to withstand many charge cycles. As stated above, keeping your laptop plugged in all the time won’t necessarily harm your battery, although laptop batteries do have a finite number of charge-discharge cycles, so allowing your battery to completely discharge will take away from its originally-intended lifespan.

What Are the Best Battery-Charging Tips for Laptops?

Not all laptops come with removable batteries for cool-down. And, internal cooling fans can breakdown after a few years. Here are some standard battery charging tips courtesy FossBytes for laptop owners that should help maximize your laptop battery life:

• Avoid discharging your laptop completely after charging it. The best thing you can do is try to keep the battery level between 40 percent to 80 percent.
• Make sure that your laptop doesn’t get too hot and your cooling fan is working properly.
• Your laptop battery can’t “overcharge” and harm itself due to excessive charging. It’s smart enough to bypass the charging energy.
• Batteries charged to a full 100% have only 300-500 discharge cycles. Those charged only up to 80% get nearly quadruple that number of recharging cycles.

PC Mag offers some salient laptop battery charging tips as well, including performing battery backup, disabling unused devices and ports, and selecting battery saver or eco mode, which will put your laptop into lower power states and not drain the battery as much.

Need Further Questions Answered?

If you need further laptop battery charging questions answered, Alvarez Technology Group, Inc. is a proven leader in providing IT consulting and services in SALINAS. Contact one of our expert IT staff at (831) 753-7677 or send us an email at today, and we will help you with any of your IT issues or needs.