Are you taking proper care of the battery in your laptop? While chips are getting more efficient and battery life is increasing, avoiding a few mistakes can help extend your laptop battery health in the long term.
Charging It Constantly
The idea that keeping your laptop plugged in all the time is “bad” stems from the myth of overcharging, but laptops and other gadgets that use such batteries switch to a trickle charge as they near capacity. Your laptop isn’t going to explode or “overcharge” if you keep it plugged in all of the time.
With that in mind, the lithium-ion battery inside your laptop will last longer if it does not hold a high voltage level for prolonged periods. If we’re talking about battery health, the life of your battery can be prolonged by not keeping it at 100% constantly. This means using your battery by unplugging it during the day, rather than keeping it plugged in.
It might help to think of your laptop as a giant smartphone. The battery tech in your phone is identical to your laptop, but the idea of leaving your phone plugged into the wall constantly is absurd to most people. Just like your smartphone, your laptop battery will degrade over time, regardless of what you do to it.
You can try to prolong it by sticking to good practices most of the time, but for most people, it’s impossible to be a model citizen when it comes to good battery practices. Your battery capacity will likely have degraded to around 70% of its original capacity in around three years, at which point you can decide to replace it for a modest fee if you’re not planning on upgrading.
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Allowing It to Get Too Hot or Too Cold
Nothing kills batteries like…
