5 Tips to Take Good Care of Your Laptop's Battery

Charging your laptop on the go is a challenging task. You might know how you can enhance the battery life of your laptop, but did you know how you can actually extend the lifespan of your laptop's battery.

In fact, many users keep their laptop plugged into the charger all the time even after the device is fully charged. Some people do not believe in this and they use it on battery power.

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If you are confused on how exactly your laptop should be used, you will find this content very helpful. Check out how you can improve the lifespan of your laptop's battery from here.

Know the Battery of Your Laptop

Laptop batteries are of two types - Li-Ion and Li-Po. Though both are different technologies, they function almost in the same way with electrons moving to create power. This flow keeps the battery healthy. These are true for any modern laptop battery.

You should not overcharge the battery by plugging it all the time. Once it is charged fully, it will cease charging and it will not take in power only when the charge drops to below a specific level. Discharging the battery fully will damage it. If the battery is discharged for a long period, it might not recover.

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So, your laptop need not be plugged in all the time. Keep charging it on and off whenever it is needed.

Lithium batteries are vulnerable to these

The lithium batteries in laptops are highly unstable. These batteries lose their capacity from the time they are produced. The factors that affect their lifespan are charging and discharging cycles, voltage levels, and high temperature of over 30 degree Celsius.

It is claimed that low voltage levels and very high temperatures will affect the battery's lifespan when in isolation. Obviously, it is the worse when they join.

Charging levels have to be noted

The Li-Ion batteries charge to 4.20 V/ cell that results in 100 percent of the capacity. At this voltage level, the battery's lifespan will involve 300 to 500 discharge cycles.

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For every 0.10 V/ cell reduction, the number of discharge cycles will double until 3.92 V/ cell that is optimum with discharge cycles of 2400 to 4000. But, at this time, the battery is just 58 percent charged and the runtime will be little more than half of a battery that is fully charged.

Heating issue

Elevated temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius will shorten the battery's life irrespective of the other factors. It is a bad idea to leave your laptop in the car on a summer afternoon. When high voltage and temperature combine, the effects will be worse.

Apart from the environmental reasons for the temperature rise, even the intense tasks such as video editing or gaming will increase the heat levels considerably. This is the same as using the laptop on a pillow with poor ventilation.

Should you remove the battery from the laptop?

If heat is dangerous, should you remove the laptop's battery when it is not in use? The answer to this question varies from one manufacturer to the other. For instance, Acer suggests removing the battery, but Apple doesn't.

The power management setup in the laptop will handle all this. Some might reduce the power when there is no battery and some do the same when the better level is low. This will result in subpar performance.

If you remove the battery, make sure it is charged between 40 to 70 percent and maintained at room temperature.

Verdict

You cannot find a great answer to this topic as the manufacturers are coming up with misleading solutions. Leaving your laptop plugged in will result in damage, but if you use it on AC power, you will find that the battery capacity has been reduced significantly after a year.

If you use it on battery power, you will quickly get through the discharge cycles of the battery. The best solution to this is a compromise between the two - using it on battery sometimes and keeping it plugged on the rest. Make sure, your laptop does not get too hot.