Suggestions to avoid harm battery of a laptop

[Manuel Jordan]

Hello Community

To avoid harm the battery of a laptop - it for MacBook Pro and Asus - I need your experience and suggestions according the two following cases

(1) What is done since few months ago: every night, instead to shutdown each laptop, it is put in sleep mode. In the next day early morning I know that from the 100% - it goes to 80% - Therefore is waited to charge them and use them. - Is this approach safe for the batteries?. If not what is suggested?

(2) Some technics say that is bad be working with a laptop using in the the battery and the power supply at the same time. I am assuming the laptop is enough smart to know that if both are used (battery and power supply) the battery should be not used - what they suggest is, unplug the power supply and use all the battery until is almost empty and put again the power supply - years ago I did do this by simple test and I did do realize this approach generates more heat in the power supply. - again what is suggested? - I always use both connected

Please, answer each point.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Eximo]

These days, just let the system handle it. It has an onboard charging circuit that knows how to take care of the battery.

It is bad to do full discharge and recharge cycles as that produces the most wear, but that can be unavoidable depending on your uses.

There are people that say leaving a laptop plugged in is bad, they are wrong. When you are using the laptop, it is fine to have it plugged in. A slow charge is better than rapid charging for battery health.

When you are storing the laptop for long periods, then it is not so good. However, leaving the battery discharged for a long time it also bad. So ideally it would be truly shut down, and be plugged in at intervals to top up the battery.

 

[Manuel Jordan]

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate your information

A slow charge is better than rapid charging for battery health

What do you mean with "slow charge" and "rapid charging"?

When you are storing the laptop for long periods

Do you mean shutdown the laptop for many days?

 

[punkncat]

A laptop will automatically change power states based on whether being plugged in, or not. Any time you are doing "heavy lifting" you will get better performance out of a plugged in device. Otherwise, much as above, the device is going to take care of its power management in most cases.

Things you can do would be like not letting the system get to critical battery levels, not often short charging the device, watching system heat (to the battery) where possible, and so forth. In a very general sense, look up the type of battery your device has and then search online for reputable sites with tips on caring for that specific battery type.

 

[Manuel Jordan]

Thanks for the valuable feedback

not often short charging the device

pls could you expand a little more the idea about that? Some range to avoid? for example 90% to 100% - 70% to 100%

Thanks

 

[punkncat]

pls could you expand a little more the idea about that? Some range to avoid? for example 90% to 100% - 70% to 100%

Thanks

It is typically bad for a battery to plugged in to charge/power and then quickly unplugged from power. Same concept with your phone and other devices. I don't honestly know where the consensus is on the actual percentages anymore, which is why I suggested doing a search on the specific battery type you are dealing with.

 

[Eximo]

Batteries are typically provisioned already to maximize battery life.

0% is not really 0%, more like 20%. 100% is maybe 95%, but could be less.

Just depends on if they are playing it safe for longevity or want to boast the most run time. You will never really know unless you monitor the battery directly.

Charge cycles and temperature are the killers of batteries. Fast charging, means higher temperatures, but that often isn't in your control. The power supply and rate of consumption by the laptop when running, and the charging circuitry will determine maximum charge rate. You don't often get to pick.

.1C is probably ideal, but that means 10 hour charge for any battery. Since this is rarely acceptable, you more often see like .3-.5C. Again depends on the battery size, charger size, and power consumed when on. For example:

99.9 Wh
65W AC adapter
Average power consumption laptop, 15W.

Roughly 6.5 hours battery life
Charge time from dead approximately 2 hours with laptop running.
Charge time from dead without laptop running, approximately 1.5 hours.

Now if that is a 130W AC adapter, and the laptop has a GPU and runs at like 100W when gaming. Then you are lucky to see one hour of gameplay on battery, but a 3+ hour charge time while gaming. If the laptop consumes more power than the AC adapter provides, then the battery will actually discharge while gaming despite being plugged in.