Improve Laptop Battery Life – 5 Best Tips to Improve Laptop Battery Life
Getting more hours of screen on time on your laptop is just what you need in these WFH times. Here’s everything you can do to improve laptop battery life and keep the work flowing smoothly.
Whether you sit down in the living room to watch a movie on your laptop or turn it on to send out a quick email, seeing the low battery sign is always a downer. Our lives revolve around technology, with computers being a large chunk of it, mostly due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Every non-essential business and major educational institutions have switched to the online mode to keep the gears spinning.
Getting the most amount of juice out of your laptop battery is essential since you don’t want to spend most of your time tethered to the charging cable. Over the years, laptops have not only become far more powerful, but also energy efficient, when the settings are kept right. Here’s a list of some quick and easy tips that you can exercise to extend the battery life of your laptop.
Adjust the Laptop Screen Brightness
While you might think that most of the battery is being sucked away by the processor, it is the display that requires the most amount of power. Pushing all those pixels on the display screen takes a toll on the battery life of the laptop. While you cannot just stop using the screen, you can, however, lower the brightness to increase the longevity of the battery.
If the screen brightness of your laptop screen is turned all the way up, adjusting it somewhere in between can bring back hours’ worth of screen on time. Head over to Settings – System – Display and use the slider to turn down the brightness. Additionally, you can keep the background display black to reduce battery consumption, which you can do by going to Settings – Personalization – Background and set things from there
Change the Power & Sleep Plan
Managing when your laptop computer turns off when being idle, and what happens when you close the lid of the laptop are also crucial battery-saving settings. Head over to Settings – System – Power & sleep and set the parameters for how long you want the system to stay on before going to Sleep, and when you want the Screen to turn off. The least amount you can set it to is 1 minute of duration.
In Windows 10, you are also given Additional power settings, which allow you to set the system to run for Best battery or Best performance. All you need to do is press the battery icon in the taskbar, use the slider and move it to the left to increase the battery life of your device. Doing so will automatically reduce the screen brightness and other background processes instantly.
Analyze Apps Battery Usage
When it comes to the processing power that consumes the battery, not all apps tend to be wise and honest with it. Even if you have specific apps closed, they could still be running background processes that are eating away at the available laptop battery life. Navigate on your Windows 10 laptop to Settings – System – Battery and then click on Battery usage by app to find those finer details.
You will be able to view an entire list of apps that are consuming the battery of your laptop, sorted in descending order. For further details, click on the app icon to find out the Foreground and Background usage percentage. If it isn’t an essential app, you can always choose to uninstall it from the system by navigating to Settings – Apps & features.
Disable Networking Features
Modern laptops are capable of connecting to the internet wirelessly over Wi-Fi along with the ability to pair with Bluetooth headphones, speakers, and several other accessories. However, the networking firepower comes at the cost of battery life, so if you are not actively using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the best thing to do is disable them.
Start off by heading over to Settings – Network & Internet and open the Airplane mode tab from the sidebar. Press the toggle button next to Wi-Fi to disable it, and perform the same action for the Bluetooth tab also.
Disconnect Unnecessary Peripherals
When using a laptop without the power cable hooked to it, you need to be wary about any other device that might be drawing power from it. Whether it is a USB cable that is pulling its charge from the laptop or the wireless mouse you’ve left connected even when you aren’t actively using it, all of it leads to faster laptop battery consumption.
Make sure that when not in use, you disconnect all non-essential peripherals from the device, such as a web camera, mouse, disk drive, or an external HDD.
Final Words
A final tip that might help you over the years would be to avoid keeping your laptop hooked up to a charger at all times. Although most modern lithium-ion batteries come with a safety mechanism for overcharging, it can falter, which is why you should avoid them. We hope that you will be able to enjoy more screen on time from your laptop going forward, and do reach out to us in the comments if you have any questions.
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