Learn How to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

Summary: A healthy laptop battery is critical to remote access work. Learn how to make your laptop battery last longer and how to extend laptop battery life between charges.

You’re waiting at the gate for your flight. You left plenty of time to get through security and plan on using the extra time to catch up on some work. You boot up your laptop, and your machine dies less than 30 minutes later. You are sure you left it plugged in overnight so it would be fully charged for your trip. So, what’s happening?

Average Laptop Battery Life

The battery life of a laptop is essential to its portability. Without a functional battery, you will only be able to use your laptop within a few feet of an AC outlet that you can plug it into. The average lifespan of a laptop battery is about two to three years, depending on care and use. Also, laptop battery capacity is significantly reduced as the battery health deteriorates. Over time, the maximum charge for your laptop battery is no longer 100%, and eventually, it won’t hold any charge.

How to Extend Laptop Battery Life: Practical Tips

Laptop batteries have been substantially improved over the decades, and capacity and battery life have improved with those changes. But, as batteries have evolved, so have the IT maintenance protocols required to care for them. Although every device is different concerning battery life, most laptops use lithium-ion batteries. The programs you use, as well as how hard and how often you use them, will impact your battery life. Many of these tips apply to other portable devices and are part of good mobile device management. It is imperative that you follow some best practices in caring for and extending the life of your laptop battery:

• Don’t Let Your Battery Drain to 0% Charged – Most batteries will last at least 500 charge cycles. A charge cycle is when a battery is completely drained and recharged to 100%. Following the math, a recharge from 50% to 100% equals half of a charge cycle. As the battery ages, each charge cycle reduces its lifespan.
• Check Your Laptop’s Power Settings – Setting your laptop to hibernate (or sleep) mode when not in use is a great way to prolong battery health. Leaving your computer fully awake for hours and hours when it’s not in use will contribute to losing battery life.
• Look For Applications Running in the Background – Apps running in the background consume battery life. If the apps do not relate to anything you are working on, you will save battery power and life by closing them. Settings for all laptops have automated battery-saving features that shut down unused programs, lower the screen brightness and turn down the power to save your battery when not in use. You probably have cloud storage running in the background. During periods of little or no use, turning off features such as cloud storage and Bluetooth and WiFi connections is wise. Remember, just because you’re not actively using an app on your machine doesn’t mean it’s not running.
• Forget Old-School Battery Best Practices – The old wives’ tale about needing to drain your laptop battery regularly is obsolete. That practice is actually destructive to lithium-ion batteries. The current recommended approach is to allow the battery to drain to about 20% and then recharge it to full capacity.
• You Can Keep Them Plugged In – With old laptop batteries, we were instructed not to leave them plugged in when they don’t need charging. This practice is no longer required as most modern laptops and other devices stop charging when their batteries reach 100%. Plug it in whenever you can. If you do not plan to use your laptop for a prolonged period, we suggest you either leave it charged at around 50% or discharge it completely.
• Keep Batteries Away from Temperature Extremes – When batteries get too hot, the chemicals inside the battery may react and create excess energy that cannot be funneled to operating the laptop. Prolonged use of a battery that’s already too hot can cause damage to the battery, circuits and components to which they are attached. Overworking can significantly reduce battery life. When overheating occurs, a best practice is to shut down your machine and, if possible, remove the battery and let everything cool off.
• It’s Called a Laptop But… – It sounds counterintuitive, but you should not keep your laptop on your lap or other soft surfaces such as bedding. In addition to making your lap sweaty, you might be blocking air vents and making your device even hotter.
• Keep Your Laptop Away From Direct Sunlight – Besides inviting theft, leaving your laptop inside a hot car or, worse, on the dashboard in direct sunlight is never a good idea. In general, you should not leave your laptop in unusually hot or cold environments. Batteries are composed of chemicals and, therefore, react to extreme temperatures.
• Keep Your Operating System Updated – Although many updates focus on security patches and fixes, updates can also contain code that helps all your programs run more efficiently, thereby consuming less power and prolonging battery life.

Although the capacity and lifespan of laptop batteries have improved, like any electronic component, they require care to keep them from failing prematurely. If you are uncertain whether your battery should be replaced or need further instruction on battery care, we recommend engaging a professional IT consulting service to assist you in making informed and cost-saving decisions about purchasing small business technology products. GEEK-AID professional IT technicians can help train your employees about how to make laptop batteries last longer and other ways to extend the life of tech devices.