As comfortable as the freedom that its use allows us is, the use of a laptop also has a great condition in terms of longevity: its battery. If our battery begins to last very little, we will have little of the laptop and we will end up having to connect it to the electrical network, not only to charge it.
There are many ways to increase the life of a laptop battery cell, as well as to make it last much longer than expected.
Set up your power plan on the laptop
The energy saving plan is the one that tries to reduce the speed of the CPU and decrease the brightness of the screen to the maximum to try to achieve the greatest possible savings in battery consumption. You can activate Windows battery saving mode as long as you have a laptop.
In such a case, each plan uses different battery saving settings . In Windows 10 we can access the battery saving mode or the screen brightness options just by clicking on the battery icon that is displayed on the taskbar, yes, when we are using the laptop's battery.
To use battery saver, select the Start button, then select Settings > System > Battery. By default, battery saver kicks in when the battery level drops below 20%, but it can be adjusted in battery settings. It is precisely this change that can make your battery last longer.
This threshold is also configurable and, therefore, we can establish that the battery saving mode turns on automatically at the percentage that we want in order to extend its autonomy. Instead of staying with the default value, we can adjust the parameter so that the battery saver kicks in much earlier, for example when it drops to 80% after a while of use.
Tips to increase the life of your battery
Of course, without good usage patterns so that the battery also lasts as long as possible in the long term, we would only be delaying the inevitable. For example, in the case of lithium-ion batteries, it is not necessary to charge them to 100%. There are even studies that show that they work better at half load. The ideal is to keep the load between 40% and 60% of the total.
Regarding the most common question of all, that is, if we should disconnect the laptop when it has reached 100%, the recommendations of manufacturers such as Lenovo advise that it is best to disconnect it if we need the laptop fully charged. Not unplugging can overheat them, and heat is not a good friend to batteries.
The best way to charge a laptop is to do it when the laptop is turned off, with a moderate temperature, that is, not too cold or too hot and, above all, do not wait for the battery to run out completely. Under no circumstances should the laptop be charged in temperatures below freezing or in extreme heat.
Lithium-ion batteries should also be calibrated every two to three months or so. This process is necessary, even if we have complied with the above recommendations. With this we will ensure that the information about the battery is correct and the meter does not have errors. We will follow the manufacturer's instructions to do it on our equipment, although as a general rule we must:
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Charge the laptop to 100% and keep it for two hours.
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Unplug the charger and use it until the battery is depleted.
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Leave it off for about five hours.
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Reload it to 100%.