Proper settings of your laptop and good care practices of the battery will go a long way in extending your battery life-not just daily, to last more hours through the day, but also overall in health and capacity over time. Improper settings and usage can result in faster drainage of your laptop’s battery than expected, even when it is not in active use.
On average, 300 charge cycles are quite enough for the battery capacity to degrade down to 80% of its capacity. That means the more often you recharge your laptop, the more its battery health is likely to degrade. That’s why you should try to maximize the charge and avoid extra, unnecessary charge cycles that will help preserve the capacity of your battery.
It’s not all about convenience, taking care of battery is a matter of performance and long-term use, reducing the need for costly replacements even help extend the average lifespan of laptop. I’ll share with you some tips and practices that may considerably help in extending your daily battery life and the overall lifespan of the battery. From fast adjustments in Windows 11 power settings to general battery maintenance tips, here is how one can keep their laptop powered up and ready for anything.
Table of Content
- Check and Understanding Your Laptop’s Battery Health
- Choose the Right Power Mode
- Battery Saver
- Energy Recommendation in Windows 11
- Closing Background Apps from the Taskbar
- Enable Efficiency Mode for Background Apps
- Lower Laptop’s Display Refresh Rate and Brightness
- Disable Unused Peripherals: Bluetooth and External Devices
- Turn Off Keyboard Backlighting
- Prevent Laptop Overheating
- Avoid Opening Too Many Browser Windows
- Proper Charging Practices to Extend Battery Lifespan
1. Check and Understanding Your Laptop's Battery Health
First, you will learn how to check the present status of your laptop’s battery. The health of your battery reflects how well taken care of your battery is and shows if your practices of maintaining it are good or not. Checking the battery status is another great way in which you can determine if it could be time to replace it.
How to Check Current Battery Capacity and Health in Windows 11
Using PowerShell (Most Accurate Method)
- Open Windows PowerShell as an administrator. To do this, type “Windows PowerShell” in the search bar, right-click, and select “Run as Administrator.”
- Run the following command:
powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery-report.html". You can specify your own file path after/outputto determine where the report will be saved. Once the command runs, a battery report will be generated and saved to your specified location.
- To view the report, open File Explorer and enter the file path in the address bar or navigate directly to the saved file. Alternatively, you can open a browser and enter the file’s URL path to view the detailed HTML report. This report will provide comprehensive information on your battery’s usage, capacity, and overall health.
Interpreting current battery capacity and cycle count
After opening the battery report, locate the “Installed Batteries” section to find details such as the Design Capacity, Full Charge Capacity, and Cycle Count.
Then, scroll down to the “Battery Capacity History” section to view the date range, indicated by the first and last rows, which shows the total duration of your battery’s usage.
For example, according to my laptop’s battery health report:
- Design Capacity: 80,000 mWh
- Full Charge Capacity (current): 67,520 mWh
- Cycle Count: 308
- Battery Use Duration: ~2.8 years / 34 months (2021-12-27 to 2024-11-02)
Here’s what these terms mean:
- Design Capacity: The original maximum capacity when the battery was new.
- Full Charge Capacity: The current maximum charge the battery can hold.
- Cycle Count: A full cycle is counted when a total of 100% of the battery is charged. For example, a 60% charge followed by a 40% charge counts as one cycle.
Let analyze the health of my laptop battery:
- Current Capacity Percentage: 84.4% (67,520 mWh / 80,000 mWh × 100)
- Total Capacity Loss: 15.6%
- Average Monthly Cycles: ~ 9 cycles per month (308 cycles ÷ 34 months)
- Average Monthly Capacity Loss: ~ 0.46% (15.6% ÷ 34 months)
I am a power user, using this gaming laptop almost daily for development and heavy application work. Even after nearly three years, the battery still retains about 84.4% of the original capacity. This is primarily due to good practices, such as having it plugged in at the desk during the more intense tasks, to avoid extra charge cycles when not necessary.
Your battery is considered healthy if its capacity stays above 80%. Consider to replace it when the capacity falls below 50%.
Below are tips and practices to help you maximize your laptop’s battery life and lifespan.
2. Choose the Right Power Mode
- Go to Settings > System > Power & Battery.
- Scroll down to Power Mode and select the mode: Best Power Efficiency, Balanced, or Best Performance.
I’d suggest Balanced Mode for daily usage most of the time. This setting provides the balance of efficiency and performance for daily work, targeting typical use cases such as multitasking with multiple open browser tabs or working in Office applications. Otherwise, should one be traveling and want to save on battery life, it easily toggles into Best Power Efficiency mode.
On the other hand, Best Performance unleashes your laptop’s full potential by keeping the CPU running at higher speeds and devoting more system resources to foreground tasks. That is great for things like gaming, video editing, design, development work, or 3D modeling-pretty much anything resource-intensive that needs a high level of processing. It’s best used while the laptop is plugged in; otherwise will result in very quick battery drain.
3. Battery Saver
- Go to Settings > System > Power & Battery.
- Under Battery Saver, you’ll see options to toggle it on immediately (when not plugged in) or set it to activate automatically when your battery reaches a certain percentage.
Battery Saver mode is designed to help your laptop consume less power when you’re unable to charge. It works by limiting background processes, reducing notifications, and turning down screen brightness, among others, allowing you a longer time on a single charge.
You can turn on when you’re only doing low-demand tasks like writing documents and browsing the web. Also setting it to automatically turn on at 30-40% can ensure you always get an extra hour or more from your battery.
4. Energy Recommendation in Windows 11
- Go to Settings > System > Power & Battery.
- Click Energy recommendations section, you’ll see view a list of recommended settings designed to help you reduce power consumption.
These energy-saving recommendations are designed for immediate improvements in battery life, so try them out to see what works best for you.
5. Closing Background Apps from the Taskbar
Many of us overlook background applications, which often sync data, check for updates, or send notifications—all of which consume battery power. Reducing the number of active background processes can significantly extend battery life while freeing up system resources and lowering power consumption.
On the taskbar, you’ll notice a small upward arrow symbol that opens the hidden icons menu when clicked. This menu displays all currently active background apps.
To optimize your battery usage, identify any apps you don’t need running. Simply right-click on their icons and select options like “Quit,” “Exit,” or “Close” to fully shut down the application.
6. Enable Efficiency Mode for Background Apps
Open Task Manager: Right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open it directly.
Identify a Low-Priority App: In the Processes tab, look through the list of running apps and background processes. Identify an app you don’t need to run at full power, such as cloud storage apps (e.g., OneDrive, Dropbox, TeraBox) or messaging apps.
- Enable Efficiency Mode: Right-click on the app you want to manage. Select Efficiency Mode from the dropdown menu. Task Manager may ask for confirmation, depending on the app. Confirm if prompted. A green leaf icon will appear next to the app, indicating that Efficiency Mode is active.
Efficiency Mode in Task Manager that allows you to limit the CPU and resource usage of specific apps running in the background. Once turned on, Windows prioritizes other tasks over the selected application and reduces its power and CPU requirements. Since this reduces the workload on the CPU for lesser important applications, your laptop ends up using less power, hence your battery life lasts longer.
*Note: Not all apps support Efficiency Mode, as Windows limits this feature to certain types of background processes. Also, Efficiency Mode is best suited for apps you don’t actively interact with, as it may reduce their responsiveness slightly.
7. Lower Laptop's Display Refresh Rate and Brightness
The screen brightness directly affects your laptop’s energy consumption. Higher brightness depletes the battery much faster, whereas just lowering the brightness helps in saving power. Check to see what refresh rates range options your laptop comes with, such as perhaps 60 Hz, 120Hz, or higher. Higher refresh rate gives smooth display but requires higher power, hence can drain your battery faster.
Steps to lower it:
- Go to Settings > System > Display.
- Click on Advanced Display settings.
- Under Refresh Rate, select a lower value from the dropdown menu.
8. Disable Unused Peripherals: Bluetooth and External Devices
When using Bluetooth for wireless headphones, speakers, mice, and keyboards, avoid using it as much or turn it off when not in use. Continual use of Bluetooth will excessively drain your laptop’s battery.
Similarly, do not connect your laptop on a battery with external devices such as monitors, printers, or even speakers unless your laptop is plugged in. All these peripherals consume more power and may further reduce the battery life. Keep them disconnected if not in use.
For a quick way to manage connections, you can enable Airplane Mode, which turns off all wireless functions like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks. If you still need internet access, you can selectively turn Wi-Fi back on while the rest remain off, thus minimizing power usage and therefore providing you with extended battery life.
9. Turn Off Keyboard Backlighting
Keyboard backlighting can be useful for low-light conditions, however it consumes a lot of power energy. Turn it off when you don’t need it.
10. Prevent Laptop Overheating
Overheating is one of the major reasons for shortened battery life and deteriorated performance. This extreme heat can burn internal components, reduce battery efficiency, and ultimately shorten the general life expectancy of a device. To avoid overheating effectively:
You need ensure proper airflow: Place your laptop on a flat, hard surface instead of a bed, blanket, or couch, as these soft surfaces can block airflow vents and trap heat. For better cooling, consider using a laptop stand or cooling pad to improve air circulation around your device.
You should keep dust and dirt away regularly: Regular cleaning is a highly essential process that prevents dust and dirt from building up in the cooling vents and fans, which blocks the path of air flow and causes overheating. Periodically clean the dust from your laptop vents with compressed air; this way, the inner parts will remain free of dust, and your cooling system will work efficiently.
11. Avoid Opening Too Many Browser Windows
When multitasking, it’s easy to fall into the habit of opening multiple browser windows and dozens of tabs. This can quickly drain your laptop’s battery since each window and tab consumes valuable system resources like memory and CPU power, resulting in higher energy consumption. This issue becomes especially critical when your laptop is running on battery.
To conserve power, try consolidating your tasks into a single browser window with multiple tabs. Close any tabs you no longer need, especially those playing videos or running web games, as they can be particularly resource-heavy. When you’re finished using the browser, be sure to close it completely to prevent unnecessary battery drain.
12. Proper Charging Practices to Extend Battery Lifespan
Also try to avoid fully depleting your battery or allowing it to shut down completely on uncharged too often. This can eventually wear down the cells with the constant stress put on them. Recharge your laptop instead when you reach around 20 percent of the battery level.
Most modern laptops come with built-in battery management systems to prevent overcharging. So keeping your laptop plugged in, especially during high-demand tasks, can optimize performance and prevent battery overloading, which may lead to overheating.
Although reducing the charge cycles can be helpful by keeping your laptop plugged in, it is still better to fully discharge and recharge your battery roughly three times a month for the sake of maintaining proper calibration and getting real charge level readings.
If you won’t be using your laptop for an extended period like several days, unplug it and keep the battery level around 50% to preserve battery health.
By following these simple yet effective tips, you can ensure your laptop runs efficiently without quickly draining your battery, giving you more hours of use. Not only will this boost your battery life, but it will also prolong its lifespan, helping to reduce the need for costly repairs or replacements in the future.
