Important tips to increase laptop battery life.
Whether you bought a new laptop or have yours for a while, it’s important to keep your battery in good condition and last longer.
Older laptops pale in comparison to modern ones with technological advances that increase battery life, performance, and efficiency in modern laptops. However, you will need to hook up your powerful laptop to keep it running all day.
Find out how you can extend your laptop’s battery life.
How to Increase Laptop Battery LifeÂ
A few software and hardware tweaks can extend your laptop’s battery life so you don’t have to rush to the outlet too often.
- Adjust the brightness of the screen as the screen uses a lot of battery power to keep the display bright and clear.
- Turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi until you need them. They drain your battery when searching for nearby wireless networks and connections, even when you’re connected.
- Turn on airplane mode if your task does not require Internet access. This avoids draining your battery by turning off wireless radios, background apps, and other programs while you’re doing one task.
- Unplug or turn off peripherals such as USB drives, webcams, or mice that might drain your laptop as the motherboard needs to power them. For example, you can use a laptop trackpad instead of a USB mouse.
- Mute your laptop speakers if you don’t need sound as it can also drain your laptop battery every time Windows boots or when you receive email and other notifications
Quick Tips
- If your laptop had a floppy drive, make sure it is empty before switching to battery power. Spinning the disks in your laptop drains the vital extra minutes you require from your laptop battery while you work.
- Connect your notebook to an electrical outlet before the battery runs out to avoid straining the battery and reducing its charging capacity. Likewise, if your laptop doesn’t have a smart charging mode that prioritizes battery health, you don’t need to keep it plugged in all the time, as this can reduce the number of charge cycles.
- Use your laptop in areas with ambient temperatures, as excessive exposure to extreme temperatures will put more strain on your computer and ultimately damage or shorten battery life.
- If you have an old Mac laptop, make sure the battery is calibrated to make it easier to predict the remaining charge or when it will be used up.
Ensure your laptop computer has sufficient RAM
With enough RAM, your laptop can perform various tasks and retrieve data faster than when it is stored on the hard drive. This will keep your hard drive from last that long and will increase your laptop’s battery life.
Alternatively, replace the hard drive with a solid-state drive (SSD). An SSD works with flash memory and uses less power than a hard drive. Plus, you’ll get faster access to files and your computer will run faster, which in turn will save your laptop battery power.
Close Power Hogging Apps
Check to see if apps that use up battery power are running in the background, especially those you are not actively using.
You can check for such applications in the task manager. Right-click on the taskbar, select Task Manager, and in the Startup tab, find the utility that uses the most power.
If you are using a Mac laptop, search for Users and Groups, select the Login Items tab, and view the applications that are currently running in the background when the laptop starts.
Keep Windows up to date
Windows updates can be annoying, but they are a good way to improve the energy-consuming programs on your laptop. An operating system patch or bug fix can help your laptop use less battery power and extend battery life.
Get a laptop power bank
Another way to extend the battery life of your laptop is to have a spare battery handy or purchase a laptop power supply.
A laptop power bank is a compact battery that is portable enough to fit in a backpack or laptop bag and can extend your charging time. In addition, the backup battery connects to your laptop in the same way as a charger and comes with an adapter that can be used with a variety of laptop models.
Good models include the Anker PowerCore + 26800, the Omni 20+ wireless battery, and the MAXOAK 185W / 50,000mAh battery.
Adjust Power Settings
Adjusting the power settings on your laptop ensures that you optimize battery life when you’re not plugged in.
- To do this, enter “Power Options” in the search box and select “Power and Sleep Options.”
- Check your power settings and select options that will save you more power.
You can also use battery saver mode on the Windows 10 battery performance slider. Both categories provide longer battery life by suspending most background applications, preventing Windows updates from downloading, and dimming the brightness.
There is no battery performance slider on Mac laptops, but you can tweak the settings in the power saving preferences.
Adjust graphics and display settings
If your laptop has a powerful graphics card, adjust the graphics settings so that only games and photo or video editing applications can use it, and assign the rest to the integrated chip.
For Mac notebooks, select the Automatically switch graphics check box in the power saving settings. This way your Mac will determine which application is using which graphics accelerator to conserve battery power.
Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life
For most mobile laptop users who spend hours offline with their laptops, battery life and performance are a major concern.
While modern laptops can last many hours on a single charge, the runtime may not always be enough for your needs. With these tips, you can maximize your laptop’s battery life and make it last longer.
We’d love to hear what tricks you use to extend your laptop’s battery life. Share with us in the comments.
Important tips to increase laptop battery life
Important tips to increase laptop battery life.