6 Tips in Caring for Your Laptop Battery
Charging a laptop.
Knowing how to extend your laptop battery life is one thing, but taking care of it is another story. You need to know what is harmful for batteries, and what is not. Laptops, nowadays, are using lithium-ion (Li-Ion), and these lithium-ion batteries age so they will last for two to three years.
Follow this guide to get the best of your laptop batteries:
- When you’re charging, remove the battery. Normally, your battery will stop receiving charges once it hits 100%. So, extending laptop charging won’t affect your laptop. The danger is when your device is suffering from excessive heating. If this happens, it is best to remove your battery. The heat is your battery’s enemy especially if your battery is lithium-ion. Overheating may be happening because you have too many applications open all at the same, are playing heavy games, or doing anything that tires your hard disks.
- Make sure your battery has around 40-50 % charge left if you plan not to use your device for a long time. Do check it from time to time because a depleted battery will stay dead if it’s not recharged. A battery can die by just being dormant and not doing anything.
- Keep your battery (or batteries) in a dry cool place. You can even store them in a fridge to let it stay cool. Just make sure the battery is isolated by using a resealable zipper storage bags.
- No to extreme temperatures, and yes to just the right temperature. Your battery might have stayed cool, but you left your laptop at the trunk of your car afterwards. All at costs do not leave your laptop in any place where it can get really hot. Just as stated on the first tip, batteries despise the heat and subjecting it to too much heat will definitely kill your battery.
- You don’t need to fully discharge a lithium-ion battery. Avoid waiting for your laptop to shutdown, or reach 0% battery status because this wears the battery. Use your laptop battery without bottoming it out and as much as possible, avoid letting it discharge below 20%.
- This is a continuation to the previous tip. When recharging your battery. you don’t have to reach 100% status. It is advisable to charge it around 80-85%. Not charging the battery to 100% will help by lessening the battery degradation.
Not all laptops are the same.
Laptops serve different purposes; there’s a laptop built for games, everyday computing, entertainment, business, and so on. Do not expect that these batteries have the same specifications. For older laptops, you can probably replace the battery when it gets damaged. For newer laptops, the batteries are usually built-in. Warranties may be null and void if you decide to open the laptop yourself, and replace the battery. Please contact the respective manufacturers for further assistance.
It is recommended to do partial discharges and frequent charges. Just constantly repeat the last two tips. In case you’re curious, it works for tablets with lithium-ion batteries too. Whenever you decide to buy additional batteries, just remember to buy a battery that has the same capacity as your original battery. Better check the mAh rating of your batteries.