Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Limited Laptop Charging

Most battery chemistries don’t appreciate being charged to 100%. That’s why we only charge our Tesla to 80% on most nights. It’s a very expensive battery so we want to take care of it.

I was thinking about this recently when we got a new laptop. The laptops in our house spend a huge percentage of their life plugged in and that’s not great for long term battery health. It turns out that there are apps which will help you optimize for battery life if your laptop is plugged in most of the time. The settings aren’t in Windows though. I don’t know why Windows can’t handle it, but it seems like you need to find an app from your manufacturer. On Lenovo it’s called Lenovo Vantage and Dell calls theirs Dell Power Manager. Those cover our laptops but I’d guess that your brand has a similar app too. Both of those apps have a setting for either a specific charge limit (e.g. 80%) or just a “this laptop is usually plugged in” setting.

It’s hard to tell how it will play out over time, but if it squeezes some more long-term life out of the batteries without much downside, it seems like an easy choice to me.

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