So, is it best to keep a laptop plugged in all the time, or to let it get down to 50% or so from time to time?
My main use of the battery is keeping me from having to reboot every time I change rooms, and the very occasional outside use.
It’s sorta crazy that this isn’t a thing already, but ideal would be a “storage mode” that intentionally keeps the battery at ~50%, even when plugged in.
I have a slightly nutty friend who installed some automation system on his phone to monitor the battery percentage, and send a signal to an external smart plug to enable/disable the charger. That way, he could keep the battery right in the healthy middle portion of the curve.
Aside from that, if you can remember to do so, ideal would be to only plug the laptop in when it gets down to maybe 30%, then unplug when it’s at 80%.
Many laptops these days have an option to charge the laptop for optimum battery life (exactly what it’s called in the settings varies). If you set it to this option then you can just leave it plugged in all the time. You don’t have to try to manage the battery life yourself.
Some people need the maximum available battery life when the laptop is unplugged and wouldn’t want to use this option, but in your case since you are only using the laptop on battery for very short periods this option makes a lot of sense.
If you are going on a trip or something and want to use the laptop while you are on the plane or whatever, just go into the settings the day before and set it to charge to 100 percent, and let the laptop charge overnight so that it is fully charged before you leave.
Some laptops even have an option for the min and max charge levels. If you set the min to 40 percent and the max to 70 percent, then the laptop won’t start charging until the battery drops to 40 percent and will stop charging when it reaches 70 percent. If your laptop has these types of options then you can customize it to your particular usage (for example 35 and 45 for the min and max if you want to keep the charge pretty close to 40 percent).
There’s sort of a terminology trap here.
“Battery life” might refer to how much use one can get from the current charge until the device shuts down for lack of juice, while “battery longevity” might refer to how many charge/discharge cycles or months and years of good service remain.
Or maybe it’s vice versa. So simply clicking the button labelled “battery life” doesn’t really tell you which variable you’re selecting to be optimized / maximized.
A solvable problem of course if there’s fine print help available. Which seems to be the way modern devices are migrating away from.
Fun fact: what I referred to as my “oldest” laptop above is a Dell Inspiron 1501, which I bought new in 2006. Yes, folks, this venerable machine whose original battery I just recharged is 17 freaking years old! Which just goes to show that batteries can last if you take care of them.
I’m sure that machine never had any kind of sophisticated battery management capability and one thing I did was never kept it plugged in when not in use (for modern machines, though, the exact opposite might be true). I let it charge to 79% and put it away again.
The newer laptop is only about four years old. It powered up on battery but immediately began complaining that it was down to 7% so that one’s getting a charge, too.
Someday all this worry about batteries is going to seem quaint, after someone invents the ultimately resilient idiot-proof battery!
Good to know, but I checked mine when I got home, and it doesn’t have such fancy features. The only options under power management is how long to wait to turn off the screen or to go to sleep.
But, it was a $300 laptop, what do you want?