How do you extend your laptop battery’s lifespan?

To extend your laptop battery’s lifespan, keep it between 40% and 80% as often as possible, avoid full discharges and heat, and if the laptop is plugged in most of the time, turn on the 80% charge limit. Below you’ll find some practical tips and the explanation behind them.

Most laptop batteries are lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries. Both technologies are designed to withstand a finite number of charge-discharge cycles. They don’t allow overcharging, which means that when they reach 100%, charging stops. More precisely, once the battery is fully charged, the laptop runs directly from the charger.

Why does the charge level matter?

Because the battery wears out fastest at the extremes: fully discharged or kept at 100% for a long time, especially in the heat.

Since these types of batteries have a finite number of charge-discharge cycles, we should always be careful not to let them drain completely. Draining the battery completely over and over damages it.

Data published by Battery University shows how much this matters: a lithium-ion battery charged to full capacity (4.20 V per cell) on every cycle lasts 300–500 cycles, while one charged only to about 80% of capacity (4.06 V per cell) lasts 600–1,000 cycles. Partial discharges help too: according to the same source, a battery fully discharged every time lasts about 300 cycles, while one discharged by only 40% of its capacity lasts about 1,000 cycles.

Ideally, you’d always keep the charge level between 40% and 80%. That way, the charge-discharge cycle is never complete, and the battery degrades much more slowly.

Overheating also quickly damages a laptop battery. Battery University considers any battery temperature above 30 °C high, and the worst case is a fully charged battery kept hot. Don’t leave your laptop charged to 100% in the sun, in the car or on the bed, where it can’t cool down.

What do you do if your laptop is always plugged in?

Turn on the charge limit, if your laptop has one: the battery stops charging at or near 80%, and the laptop runs from the charger.

• Many manufacturers offer this option in their own app (for example Lenovo Vantage or MyASUS) or in the BIOS.
• On a MacBook, Optimized Battery Charging is on by default: macOS learns when you usually unplug your laptop and holds the battery at 80% until shortly before then.

In the past, with laptops that had removable batteries, the advice was to take the battery out if you used the laptop heavily and didn’t need to move it often. Almost all of today’s laptops have the battery built into the case, where it can’t easily be disconnected, so the solution is the charge limit described above.

Don’t forget to monitor your laptop’s temperature and make sure the cooling system is working properly. Otherwise, your laptop will need hardware maintenance and a dust cleaning.

How can you see how worn your battery is?

On Windows, open Command Prompt and run the powercfg /batteryreport command. Windows creates a report (battery-report.html) in which you can compare the battery’s original capacity (Design Capacity) with its current one (Full Charge Capacity). On a Mac, the battery’s condition is shown in System Settings > Battery.

If the battery has swollen (the case is warping or the touchpad is lifting), stop using the laptop and take it in for repair: a swollen battery can catch fire.

These tips apply both to business laptops and to laptops designed for personal use. You’ll find more tips in the articles 8 tips to extend your laptop battery’s lifespan and 5 ways to extend your laptop’s lifespan.

RezolvIT is an IT outsourcing company that offers personalized support to companies. With a very good understanding of business needs, the company proactively proposes and implements high-performance technical solutions, both for work done at the company’s offices and to make remote work easier. With IT maintenance, we look after your company’s computers, and with computer repair, we fix them when needed.