Laptop Battery Life & How to Increase it
Laptops with long battery life in 2013 & FREE tips to increase your battery life
About laptop Battery Life
Laptop battery life is simply defined as the amount of time it takes for a laptop battery to go through a single full charge when it is fully charged and unplugged from the power plug. The average battery life can last between one and six hours. This is dependent on the battery's capacity, how old the battery is and what the laptop is being used for. One thing that is certain is that a laptop's battery life will never remain the same; it tends to degenerate with usage.
Top Things That Affect laptop battery capacity
The following are some of the things that make your battery consume a lot of power:
Laptop battery life is simply defined as the amount of time it takes for a laptop battery to go through a single full charge when it is fully charged and unplugged from the power plug. The average battery life can last between one and six hours. This is dependent on the battery's capacity, how old the battery is and what the laptop is being used for. One thing that is certain is that a laptop's battery life will never remain the same; it tends to degenerate with usage.
Top Things That Affect laptop battery capacity
The following are some of the things that make your battery consume a lot of power:
1. Screen back light
Screen back light really consumes a lot of power especially when it is set to be very bright.
2. Wireless devices
Wireless devices such as built-in mobile cards, Bluetooth dongles, and Wi-Fi adapters tend to take up a lot of charge.
3. Hard drive and CPU
Power consumption shoots up when the CPU is running at full speed. The hard drive also takes up a lot of charge.
4. Externals
All external devices such as PC card, firewire or USB takes up a significant part in raising demand for power.
5. Applications
Applications (programs) that you use to play games, watch videos, etc contributes to the high consumption of battery power.
Top Free tips to Increase Battery Life
Now you know the top things that affect your laptop battery life. If you want to increase the battery life would need to start cutting down access usage of each following factors.
Reduce the screen brightness
This is one of a major reason for reducing your battery life. We recommend for you to adjust the screen brightness by going to the windows mobility center. You also can do that in your keyboard using shortcut keys. (Press Fn key with a brightness adjustment key on your keyboard)
Choose a good power plan
In windows you can change your power plan by clicking on the battery icon on your task bar. Select the “power server” mode to extend your battery life.
Manage wireless
All modern laptops are coming with Bluetooth and wifi but rarely do we use the Bluetooth function. We recommend turning off the Bluetooth or wifi whenever possible.
Wifi eats 15% of your battery life.
Wifi eats 15% of your battery life.
Close unnecessary programs
If you have opened too many applications at the same time your laptop will consume more power because the hardware components such as CPU, ram and hard drive will require power to process your opened applications. Therefore keep your CPU level down.
Kill hidden (background) tasks
Especially in Windows 7 and 8 laptops have many applications/tasks running in background that you can’t see. We recommend you to go to your task manager and close if there any unnecessary applications that run-in silent mode.
Exercises your battery
Charge until 100% and let the battery run your laptop until it drain to 20% or 15% then you can plug your charger to charge your battery.
Important note
Never drain your laptop completely; it can harm your battery performance.
Important note
Never drain your laptop completely; it can harm your battery performance.
Un-plug unnecessary external devices
If you have any USB powered (e.g. portable hard drive, USB flash drive) external device attached to your laptop it can dramatically reduce your battery life.
Tips for extending your battery’s durability
- If you have a new battery, do not use it straight away or don’t charge it overnight. You need to charge 3-4 hour without using your laptop. After replacing your battery plug your charger and leave it for 3-4 hours.
- Never use the laptop with the charger plugged-in for more than 5 hours. This can overcharge your battery and reduce the battery durability. We always recommend unplugging the charger as soon as the battery is full.
- Recommend not to hibernate or sending to the sleeping mode for a very long time
Laptops with Long Battery Life (2013 - UAE)
Even though the battery life tends to degenerate depending on a few factors such as how old the battery is and how it is being used, there are laptops that come with a long life battery. The following is a compilation of top five laptops for battery life. They have undergone the laptop battery test and have been identified as lasting more than seven hours or more. The battery test included running various applications with the battery fully charged and unplugged from the power source.
Data from www.anandtech.com
This image is belongs to www.laptopmag.com
- Lenovo ThinkPad X230 comes with a 6 cell battery that lasts 7 hours. It also comes with a 9 cell battery, which lasts 12 hours, sold separately.
- Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1. It has a sealed in battery that lasts 7 hours 45 minutes.
- Dell Latitude E6430. It has a 9 cell battery that lasts 10 hours 37 minutes.
- Sony VAIO SE. You can comfortably watch movies on this laptop for 10 hours and 35 minutes without charging the battery.
- Apple MacBook Air. It has a battery life of 8 hours 10 minutes.
