How to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

Having your laptop always run out of battery life is never fun, especially if you need to use it for working away from home or want to play your favorite games on the go. Most laptop batteries work well for the first 2-3 years and then begin to get progressively worse over time. However, there are several things that you can do to help your laptop battery last for longer not only each time that you use it, but also when it comes to its general lifespan. Some of the best things that you can do to prolong the battery life in your laptop include:

Adjust the Display

Making some simple and minor display setting changes can help you keep your laptop charged up for much longer. Consider turning the brightness down as much as you can without causing yourself to get eye strain – especially if you’re using your laptop for power-heavy applications like playing the latest games on a gaming laptop. If you’re having a hard time enjoying your favorite games on your laptop, then it might be time to upgrade it to a new gaming laptop or gaming desktop PC from Lenovo with more power and better specs, especially if you’re getting more serious with PC gaming.

Turn It Off When You Are Done

Thanks to standby mode, you might not remember to actually turn your laptop off when you are done with it – simply closing the case and forgetting that it’s actually still running. However, this leaves the battery working throughout the night to power the laptop when you don’t need it, which can ultimately damage the battery life. Experts suggest that the best way to get the longest lifespan out of your laptop battery is to turn your laptop off at the end of each day. This will close down apps and other information that has built up while you’ve been using the laptop throughout the day, giving it a fresh start when you next come to turn it on and avoiding using the battery more than you need to.

Unplug the Charger

Keeping your laptop plugged into the charger all the time might mean that you no longer have to worry about it running out of juice, but this can cause a lot of damage to the battery. Experts say that your battery should never be fully charged, and it should never completely run out either to keep your battery in the best condition. Ideally, you should plug it in to charge until it reaches about 80% and then take it out until it gets low again.

Avoid Letting Your Laptop Overheat

The temperature can have a huge impact on the health and lifespan of your laptop battery, and you don’t want your laptop to get either too hot or too cold. Laptops are convenient and portable by nature so it’s not hard to rest it on top of your quilt to get stuff done from your bed or on your lap with a throw underneath it when you’re working from the sofa. However, this can cause the battery to heat up more than it should, even if your laptop itself doesn’t feel very hot to touch. When using your laptop, try to keep it on a hard, flat surface that allows for airflow underneath. This will help to keep the battery at the right temperature, ensuring that it stays charged for as long as possible.

Keep Your Operating System Updated

You should always check to make sure that your laptop is working on the latest version of Windows, macOS or Chrome OS operating system depending on which one you use. Ideally you should turn on automatic updates to reduce your change of missing each one. Don’t ignore any notifications regarding OS updates that you get on your laptop, since these are often in place to fix bugs and other issues that might have been causing your battery life to drain more than it should. Along with this, they also fix security issues so updating will reduce your risk of being targeted by hackers.

Shut Down Programs and Apps You’re Not Using

If you’re not using an app, don’t just minimize it on your home screen – make sure that you completely close it down. Even if your app is only running in the background, it can use up a lot of battery. This is especially true for apps that are quite intense and use a lot of power such as photo and video editing software or games. They will drain your battery much faster by using a lot of energy up, even if you’re not actually using the app at the time.

Switch Off Things You Don’t Need

Although it might seem like it won’t make that much of a difference, turning off features like Bluetooth when you don’t need them on at the time can make a huge difference to your laptop battery life. Consider switching off the Wi-Fi if you don’t need to be connected to the internet to get things done and switch off the keyboard backlight if you have one and don’t need it to type. If you use any external hardware like a second monitor, wireless mouse, USB thumb drives or external hard drives, unplug them when you are not using them as they will only use up unnecessary power.

Adjust Auto Update Settings

While automatic updates are good to make sure that you are always using the latest versions of the OS and any apps that you have downloaded on your device, it’s best to adjust the settings so that they are only automatically updated when you are plugged into a power source. Otherwise, your laptop could be doing lots of updates for different apps that are going to drain your laptop battery a lot.

Battery life for laptops is getting better. However, how you use your laptop can have an impact on how long you can expect your battery to last both day-to-day and in the long run.