Tech
5 common mistakes that are quietly killing your laptop’s battery
The battery inside your laptop is slowly degrading, and there’s no way to prevent it from happening. The catch is that some bad habits can expedite the process. If you’re practicing one of the following habits, there’s a good chance your laptop’s battery is degrading faster than it should.
1
Using sleep instead of hibernation on Windows laptops
I’m not using sleep even on my Windows desktop, let alone my Windows handhelds. If you own a Windows laptop, you should avoid using sleep too.
Windows Modern Standby—also known as InstantGo and Windows S0 sleep state—has been busted ever since Microsoft introduced it on Windows 8 in 2012. 13 years later, and sleep on battery-powered Windows devices still isn’t working correctly.
One common issue with Modern Standby is that it can wake your laptop at random while it’s sitting idle, draining its battery. Worse still, sometimes the machine will turn on, but its fans won’t activate, which can cause the device to heat up to unsafe levels. It will stay hot until you turn it off, or until the battery gets fully drained and the laptop shuts down by itself.
Both of these sleep-related issues accelerate battery degradation because Li-ion batteries don’t like two things: extreme heat and being fully drained.
If you own a Windows laptop, I recommend switching to hibernation even if you haven’t encountered sleep-related problems, because chances are they will happen sooner or later.
2
Using bus-powered USB hubs
USB hubs are an indispensable tool for many laptop—and phone—owners, especially those with laptops that have only USB-C ports. But bus-powered USB hubs, those that draw power directly from your notebook when connected to it, can hurt your laptop’s battery and accelerate its degradation.
It’s because they start using power as soon as you connect them, which can only get worse as you plug certain power-hungry devices into the hub, such as battery-powered external monitors, or if you charge your phone or tablet via the hub.
While this won’t noticeably affect your battery if you disconnect the hub when you’re not using it, keeping the hub plugged into your laptop—with all its connected devices—24/7 can slowly degrade the battery.
3
Waiting for the battery to fall below 20% before charging it
Li-ion batteries, found in most modern laptops, don’t like being fully drained. If you always wait for the battery level to fall to 20% or below before recharging, you will shorten its lifespan.
Lithium-ion batteries last longer if you keep them charged between roughly 30% and 80% of their maximum capacity. Letting them discharge too much, say to 10%, before recharging will lead to a faster drop in capacity, according to Battery University (take a look at Table 2 and Figure 6 of the linked article).
Similarly, always charging the battery to 100% isn’t ideal either, because charging the battery to full capacity, and thus to full voltage, also leads to a faster drop in capacity over time (Table 4). For the best balance of battery life and longevity, charge the battery to around 75%, then plug it back in when it drops to about 25% (Figure 6 of the linked article).
The good news is that most Windows laptops come with manufacturer-provided system control apps (myASUS, MyDell, HP app, and so on), which allow owners to limit the charge percentage. You can also restrict the charge percentage in BIOS. On macOS, you can use the built-in optimized charging feature or an app such as AlDente if you want to manually limit the maximum charge level.
4
Constantly using your laptop on battery
Another habit that harms your laptop’s battery in the long term is never using it while plugged in. Constantly discharging and charging the battery degrades its maximum capacity much faster compared to using it plugged in when possible, while reserving battery operation and those precious discharge cycles for situations where you aren’t near an outlet.
Modern laptops have excellent charge and power controllers, so your battery won’t overcharge when plugged in; the laptop will switch to wall power as soon as the battery is fully charged. Better still, if you limit the maximum battery charge to 80% or lower, you can use the laptop while it’s plugged in, with the battery never reaching 100%.
My recommendation is to actually limit the charge to 60% when plugged in, if possible. Doing so will keep the battery at a lower charge voltage when not used, compared to keeping it at 80% or fully charged, further slowing its degradation. The higher the charge voltage—and thus the charge level—while the battery is not in use, the faster its maximum capacity drops.
You should calibrate the battery occasionally, though, to prevent the operating system from displaying an inaccurate battery percentage. To do so, charge it to 100%, use it on battery until the laptop shuts down on its own, and then charge the battery to 100% again.
5
Always using your laptop at maximum screen brightness
Constantly using your notebook at the absolute maximum screen brightness on battery power uses more power, drains the battery faster, forces you to charge it more often, and ultimately degrades the battery faster.
You can crank up the brightness when plugged in. Doing so won’t affect the battery, but it will shorten the lifespan of the backlight components if you own a laptop with an LCD, or the screen itself if you use an OLED laptop.
Unless you can easily and cheaply replace your laptop’s battery, I recommend avoiding the habits listed above, as they will degrade it faster. To improve your laptop’s battery life, follow these recommendations if you own a Windows laptop; if you own a MacBook, we’ve got you covered as well. We also have a guide on keeping your MacBook’s battery nice and healthy.
