Should I fully charge my laptop before using it?

Should I fully charge my laptop before using it
Should I fully charge my laptop before using it

Now When you purchase a new laptop, there are some general instructions listed that should be followed while charging the laptop battery. After purchasing the laptop, you have to look, how long does laptop’s battery lasts? Does charging the laptop for a long time harm its battery? Should I fully charge my laptop before using it?

These questions arise when you are using your laptop or when it is fully charged. Generally, when the computer is shut off and the wire is plugged in; it continues to charge the laptop.

This is basically not a problem to start using the laptop when it is not fully charged. You can use the laptop as it is plugged in and let the battery charged while using it. Thus, an AC adaptor or battery will supply plenty of currents while operating the laptop and charging the battery. But it’s better to 100% charge the battery before using it if you have time to charge.

Basically different myths revolve around charging the laptop battery when it is fully charged. Further, the author has discussed many ways to extend the battery condition, charge it, and how to use it.

Should I fully charge my laptop before using it?

When you purchase a laptop there are some general instructions and guidelines followed by it of how to take care of the battery and for how much time it’s better to charge the battery.

First time charging my laptop before using it:

When you buy a new laptop or a new battery for your laptop, it is guided that the battery should be charged for not less than 24 hours.

Charging the laptop battery for 24-hour makes sure that the laptop battery has a good life expectancy.

If you discharged the batteries fully, after charging them, it makes them strained and may weaken the battery. This causes, the battery to lose its life expectancy, and the battery gets damaged.

Lithium-ion batteries:

The lithium-ion battery is the most commonly used battery in laptops and other devices nowadays. This is the high energy density lithium-ion battery which is the main advantage of this technology.

One of the advantages is that they have a much lower self-discharge rate than the other rechargeable cells such as Ni-Cad and NiMH.

Thus, protection is required from being overcharged and discharged too far from the lithium-ion cells or batteries.

Therefore, lithium-ion batteries are strained and maybe weakened when they are fully discharged, which makes the battery life expectancy shorter.

How long does a Laptop battery last?

When someone purchases the laptop, they worry about the overcharging of the laptop battery, which could harm it.

But now charging the laptop battery for a long time is not a problem. Manufactures have made a solution to solve this problem.

Nowadays, modern laptops stop charging the laptop when it is fully charged and switched over to AC power while when the laptop is plugged into its outlet.

So as you are excited to use your new laptop, it’s convenient to use while it is plugged into its outlet.

How to improve the laptop battery by extending its life?

Nowadays, most modern laptops do not have removable batteries, to remove ad charge them fully.

Several tips and techniques are used to improve the life of the laptop battery.

Dim the screen light:

Previously, older laptops have power-sapping fluorescent backlights. But modern laptops have LED backlights.

Dimming the screen light or brightness may add 30 minutes and more life to your laptop battery.

Basically, all laptops have keyboard shortcuts to access the toolbar and correct the brightness.

You have to hold the Fn key and press one of the function keys in the top row, or one of the cursor keys. Thus, one with the symbol of the sun is used to control the screen brightness.

If your laptop does not have this thing, then you have to open windows 10 hold the Windows key, and press the “A” button, a catalog appears at the side of the screen.

Now, there will be a sun symbol on that to control the screen brightness you want to choose from 0% to 100%.

Change the settings to control power:

Every laptop has the power setting option which acts as the power saver in a laptop. In the control panel search for the power setting option, and look at which power plan has been selected.

Every window uses different power and performance sets while it is running on the mains or on the battery power.

On the control panel, there is the power saver option, which saves the energy of the computer by reducing the performance where possible.

You can also set the screen to sleep after a few minutes like 5-10 minutes if nothing is happening on the screen to save the laptop battery.

Either you can click on the battery icon, at the bottom right corner of the screen to find out how much battery power is remaining.

There is a battery setting below it which shows the different power saving items to adjust the setting and save the laptop battery power.

Disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth:

If you are not working on the laptop, then disable the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. As these, both radios use power and make the battery power low.

For Windows 10, it is easy to turn them off by clicking on the windows key and “A” key and disabling the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth icons, respectively.

Do not leave a laptop on charging when it is already charged:

Some people leave the laptop on permanent charging, as the manufacturers use lithium-ion batteries which have overcharging protection, but it is not good for long-term use.

Even some manufacturers provide the utility which limits the battery from fully charging.

You can also specify the amount of battery charge, by setting the amount of battery charge low, by which battery degradation can be prevented.

Disconnect or remove unnecessary accessories from the laptop:

Like, if you have inserted any disc in the DVD drive which can be the reason for reducing battery life.

Newer laptops do not have a DVD drive, so the USB accessories can be the reason for decreasing the battery of the laptop. So, it is important to unplug the portable hard disks or USB webcams when they are not needed.

Close apps that use a lot of power:

There are multiple apps and processes that run on your system that chews a lot of battery life. There are some chances that you are not probably using the processes that are running on your pc.

You can even search from the windows toolbar from a list of apps that are currently using most of the power.

Keep eye on your battery health:

All the batteries lose charging power over time and they must need to be replaced to work the laptop properly.

You can find detailed information about how many charging cycles your battery has undergone by opening the information system.

You can open the app and navigate the power tab. Now you can check the cycle count value on your laptop.

Seek the battery backup:

The easiest way to ensure your battery power is to bring along an external battery pack.

These external power sources plug in the laptop in the same way as the charger does. These can be used in other devices such as phones or tablets and can make battery use for a long time.

Is it good to use a laptop while it is fully charged?

Almost all the laptops consist of lithium technology (some are lithium-ion but mostly are lithium polymer) which can be dangerous and explode when overcharged.

Thus, laptop batteries have an electrical circuit that protects them from being overcharged and may explode also. Once the batteries are full they cut off from the electrical circuit and the computer monitors their charging condition.

Let’s look at the lithium-ion battery. Li-ion battery is measured with two metrics (charge cycle and depth of charging).

You can only have a restricted number of charge cycles before the battery really stops while holding the charge. It depends on how many charging cycles you have, and how deep the charge will be?

If you have only 800- 2000 microcycles, then you only have only 300-600 deep charge cycles. By this thing, you can burn through the micro charge cycles faster than the deep cycles.

If you use the battery completely all the time then the number of charge cycles versus the depth of charge will not work in your favor. Thus, the optimum charging point is 25-50% of its total capacity.

Basically, laptops and phones usually have the li-ion which has the proper electrical circuit for charging, and that decreases the current when the battery hits a certain voltage and keeps on decreasing the current.

As the laptop battery is fully charged it decreases the amount of current just to maintain the charge state of the battery.

Thus, keeping it at a fully charged state might upset the battery lithium ions but it rises the valuable cycle of the battery which leads to failure because of this stress.

So, it is important not to rise the battery temperature, keep it at normal temperature to work it properly.

Is it ok to charge the laptop while it is in use?

Yes, it can be expected. Most of the laptops undergo the underclocked processor, dim the light of the screen and even cut off the battery usage to give your battery a long life.

Thus, to get the good performance of the laptops, you have to go in and change manually all the power settings related to power consumption.

So, you have to plug in to get the full performance of the battery. Make sure the laptop battery maintains its normal temperature to work effectively.

Does the laptop get damaged while it is in use during charging?

This depends upon what type of laptop you are using. Instead, some older laptops might get lower the battery life a little bit.

But now most of the laptops do not. If your laptop is getting hot, then immediately unplug the switch.

If you are really concerned about your battery condition and status, then remove the battery from a laptop when you are at home and put it back again when to use it. This may help you a lot from getting into any trouble and saves the battery life.

What are the best charging tips for the laptop battery to extend its life?

Not all laptops come with removable batteries to cool down. They are attached to their laptops and hard to remove.

Thus, their internal cooling fans might break down after a few years if they are extensively used.

Here are some charging tips for the batteries to charge to maximize their life expectancy:

  1. You have to make sure that your laptop battery is between 40% to 80%. Do not discharge the battery completely after charging it.
  2. Make sure that laptop fans are working properly and do not let the laptop get heated up.
  3. A laptop battery cannot overcharge and harm itself due to excessive charging. So it’s better to bypass the charging energy.
  4. When you charge the batteries to full 100% then there will be undefined discharge cycles.
  5. People who charge up to 80% get nearly quadruple that number of recharging cycles.
  6. Perform the battery backup, disable unused devices and ports, select battery saving mode which will put the battery into a lower power state, and do not drain the battery much.
  7. Do not drain the battery much as the lithium-ion and lithium polymer batteries are designed to withstand many charging cycles.
  8. Allowing the battery to completely discharge will take the battery’s original intended life span.

These are some of the tips which we discussed to provide attention and care to the laptop batteries to extend their life.

How to protect the laptop battery to extend its life expectancy?

Most questions arise that laptop batteries get damaged due to overcharging when you are using them.

All electronic equipment needs to be protected carefully to extend its life and value. It can be done if you know how possibly you can maintain its power and condition carefully.

Save the battery

All the laptop batteries are built to maintain a certain number of charge cycles, usually around 500 charge cycles. Sometimes they are needed more. With time each charge cycle decreases battery life from its designed specifications.

If you even want to save the battery mode, then look at the apps that consume a lot of power by running on your laptop.

Cloud storage, videos, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth uses battery power extensively. So shut off these running apps if they are not in use.

You can even lower the background light to save the battery and make the battery use for a longer time.

Keep the battery in zone

In older laptops, there was nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries were used which have the full charge capacity and start charging at lower to lower levels.

Now this problem has been finished because of the li-ion batteries, there is no need to discharge the lithium-ion batteries.

Thus, modern laptops are designed in such a way to stop charging at 100%, and thus keeping them plugged does not decrease their life span.

When the battery gets hot

Now-a- days, lithium polymer batteries are durable but they exert a lot of heat.

For example, if the battery is charging and it gets too hot then there is no need to panic just unplug the switch and shut down the laptop. Or you can move it to another place where its temperature can get low.

As the modern laptop batteries are completely sealed and hard to remove. So when they get hot or exhausted it becomes necessary to cool down the battery.

With the increased temperature of the battery, it could damage the battery and make its life shorter.

Most people work by placing the laptop on their lap, if you feel your laptop is getting hot, then immediately cool down the battery.

As it might get hot when you place it under sunlight, in-car during hot summer days, or near the space heater.

To cool down the temperature place it in the cool place. Also do not place the battery at freezing temperature, as it might be able to kill the battery lifespan.

Software and battery

Some companies have designed software that is of high Mb which uses more power and causes damage to the battery.

Some companies have designed those programs to improve power by utilizing software updates.

This operating system later uses the lower battery power, to give the battery a better and good lifespan.

Virus protection

When you open an unsecured website or insert any cable or flash into your laptop. If it is damaged or not properly secure then there might be a chance of a virus attack on your laptop.

The virus can cause damage a lot to your battery and even to your system software. To scan any problem, click on the manage settings to adjust the more options.

Cloud delivered protection along with automatic submission sample turned on which provides increased and faster protection with access to the latest protection data in the cloud.

This will also protect the laptop battery from getting damaged.

Conclusion

In this topic, we have discussed how to fully charge the laptop before using it. We have discussed the main points of how the battery life could be safe from getting damaged by overcharging.

As there are several tips and methods are also listed above that could help you to increase the battery life expectancy.

We also look to fully charge the laptop battery is good or bad.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

How to check if laptop is new or refurbished

How to check if laptop is new or refurbished

Can I make a phone call using my laptop

Can I Make A Phone Call Using My Laptop?