8 tips to extend your laptop’s battery life

In this article, we’ll show you 8 practical tips that extend the life of your laptop battery.

Whether it’s your work laptop or your personal one, the tips below will help you extend your battery’s lifespan. At the end, you’ll also find out how to limit charging to 80% on newer laptops and how to check your battery’s health.

Ready? Let’s get started.

1. Turn on “battery saver” mode

Click the battery icon on the taskbar and turn on the battery saver feature. It also limits hardware resources, but unless you’re doing something that needs a lot of processing power, you shouldn’t notice any difference.

In Windows 11, the feature is called “Energy saver” (“Battery saver” in older versions), and you can also find it under Settings > System > Power & battery. On a Mac, choose “Low Power Mode” in System Settings > Battery.

If the laptop starts running sluggishly, you can always switch back to best performance mode.

2. Disconnect peripherals you’re not using

Another useful and easy tip is to disconnect peripherals you’re not using. Don’t keep your webcam or external hard drives plugged in when you don’t need them.

3. Don’t let your laptop run down completely

To extend your battery’s life, never let your laptop run down completely. It’s best to plug it in when it drops below 20% and unplug it when it reaches 80%.

According to data published by Battery University, a battery that is always charged to 100% can handle 300–500 charge-discharge cycles. If it were charged only to about 80%, it would last 600–1,000 cycles, and to about 65%, 1,200–2,000 cycles.

Also, don’t keep your laptop plugged in all the time. If it sits plugged in on your desk all day, turn on the 80% charge limit; you’ll see how below.

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4. Don’t use your laptop when it’s very hot or very cold

Extreme temperatures make the laptop “compute” more, which drains the battery at a fast pace.

Heat also affects the battery itself: above 30 °C (86 °F), lithium-ion batteries lose capacity faster, and the loss is permanent. Don’t leave your laptop in the car in summer. In the cold, the battery temporarily gives you less runtime, which comes back once the laptop warms up.

Also make sure the surface the laptop sits on lets its built-in ventilation and cooling system work properly.

5. Upgrade your RAM

At first glance it seems unrelated, but it isn’t. When RAM is running at 100% capacity, the operating system moves some of the data to the hard drive. If you add more memory, hard drive activity drops as a result, which extends battery life.

On many new laptops, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard and can’t be upgraded. When you buy a laptop for the office, choose enough memory from the start: for Windows 11 and today’s office applications, 16 GB is a safe choice.

6. Turn down the brightness

Another useful tip is to turn down the screen brightness. Since the display is one of the biggest battery drains, lower brightness naturally helps extend your laptop battery’s life.

Also set the screen to turn off after a short period of inactivity. On laptops with an OLED screen, a dark theme also reduces power use.

7. Turn off Bluetooth

If you’re not using the Bluetooth adapter, turn it off. It wastes resources by constantly checking for new devices it can connect to.

8. Replace the mechanical hard drive with an SSD

SSDs use flash technology, which uses fewer resources than ordinary mechanical drives. An SSD will also make your workstation run faster.

New laptops already come with an SSD. The tip still applies to older laptops with a mechanical hard drive, where replacing the drive costs much less than a new laptop.

How do you limit battery charging to 80% on newer laptops?

On most newer laptops, you set the charge limit in the manufacturer’s app or in the BIOS: the laptop stops charging at 80% (or at the threshold you choose), even if it stays plugged in all day. A few examples:

• Lenovo: the Lenovo Vantage app, in the battery settings (“Battery Charge Threshold” on ThinkPad, “Conservation Mode” on IdeaPad);
• Dell: the Dell Power Manager app or the BIOS, with the “Primarily AC Use” setting, for laptops that are mostly plugged in;
• HP: the BIOS of business laptops, under “Battery Health Manager”;
• ASUS: the MyASUS app, under “Battery Health Charging”;
• Mac: “Optimized Battery Charging”, in System Settings > Battery, which delays charging past 80% when the Mac expects to stay plugged in for a long time.

The exact names vary from one model to another. On company laptops, the setting can be applied centrally, along with your other IT maintenance policies.

How do you check your laptop battery’s health?

In Windows, battery health shows up in the battery report: open Command Prompt and run the command powercfg /batteryreport. Windows creates the battery-report.html file in the current folder, with the battery’s original capacity (“Design capacity”), its current capacity (“Full charge capacity”) and, on many models, the number of cycles (“Cycle count”).

On a Mac, it appears in System Settings > Battery, under “Battery Health”.

If the battery has dropped below about 80% of its original capacity and the laptop no longer lasts a full working day, it’s time to replace it. A swollen battery (the case warps or the touchpad lifts) must be replaced immediately, because it can catch fire. Batteries and drives are replaced through our computer repair service.

RezolvIT is an IT outsourcing company that provides personalized support to businesses. With a very good understanding of business needs, the company proactively proposes and implements high-performance technical solutions, both for work done at the office and to make remote work easier.