A laptop battery is usually what defines how efficient and powerful a laptop is. Unfortunately, most laptops do not last for long when plugged out of the mains. However, you can get the most out of your battery by simply adjusting some settings on your laptop. The following tips will help you to keep your laptop battery running for longer periods and increase on their lifespan as well.
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1. Dim the screen.
The screen is what drains the battery the most on majority of laptops. By simply reducing the brightness of your laptop, you’ll be able to give your battery more than 30 extra minutes. On some laptops, you can use the keys near the keyboard to adjust the brightness of the screen while on others, simply hold the windows key and press X. The mobility center will be opened from where you can adjust the screen brightness.
2. Change the power settings on your laptop.
By default, your laptop will be set to “windows balanced setting” mode instead of power saver mode. To save more power and increase your battery life, switch to power saver mode. To do this, search for power options in the control panel and click on power saver mode if it’s not the one you’re currently using. This will increase your battery life especially if your laptop is not plugged in.
3. Disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
If you’re not using any of these, then disable them especially when you are using the laptop battery. Only turn them on when you need to use them. These radios normally consume a lot of power thus weakening your battery. The majority of laptops have a switch which you can use to disable Wi-Fi while for Bluetooth, you’ll most likely get a utility in the start menu for turning Bluetooth on and off. If not, you can turn off Bluetooth from the device manager in the control panel.
4. Don’t leave your laptop on permanent charge
Do not leave your laptop in the mains every time you use it. When fully charged, always take it out of the mains and use the laptop battery instead. This will help to prevent the degradation of your battery. Always charge your battery fully before pulling it out of the mains.
5. Remove unnecessary peripherals
Peripherals like DVDs and USB accessories like USB web cams and portable hard discs can also wear down your laptop battery. In case you’re not using these, unplug them or eject them from the laptop. This will add a couple of minutes to your laptop battery.
6. Upgrade to an SSD
Most laptops still use mechanical hard discs which require some extra watts to spin their platters. These also wear down the battery slowly. A solid state drive or SSD on the other hand has no moving parts and therefore uses less power. Though your battery life will not be improved significantly, atleast it will add some extra power to your laptop battery as well as make it faster.
7. Close any unused programs
Last but not least, always close all programs you’re not using as these consume lots of power as well, weakening your battery slowly. The less the number of programs the laptop processes, the less the battery power it will chew up.
There are a host of other ways through which you can increase the life of your laptop battery but a combination of most of the methods above should be sufficient to give your battery a longer life.
