Three Tips for Increased Laptop Battery Life

Portability is the biggest selling point of any laptop. And it’s something that relies largely on a device’s built-in battery. Some of today’s top laptops promise up to 18 hours of power between charges. More broadly speaking, though, most premium laptops average out at around half this length of time or roughly nine hours. Still, that should be enough for most people’s working days.

But when traveling, for example, or when working or studying for extended periods, eking out every last minute can be vital. With that in mind, we’ve put together three tips to increase the battery life of any laptop, including both new and older models.

Significantly increasing any laptop’s battery life can be as simple as following a trio of straightforward tips. Moreover, following these tips can also help prolong the physical lifespan of a laptop’s battery.

As such, well-cared-for batteries should continue to achieve their maximum stated times between charges for the foreseeable future. They should then last for several years before they begin to fail.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to increase a laptop’s battery life is to turn down the display’s brightness. It may seem obvious, but it’s a factor that’s all too often overlooked. By all means, turn up the brightness to 100 percent when connected to an outlet. However, when running on battery power alone, reduce the brightness to 50 percent or less.

On most models, you should be able to set two different default brightness levels for when a laptop is connected to either an outlet or running on battery. Tweaking these brightness settings can greatly impact battery life, so it’s worth adjusting them carefully and accordingly.

Keyboard backlighting is a fantastic feature at night or in other low-light conditions. During the day, though, it’s unnecessary. Despite this, backlit keys invariably remain illuminated unless the user manually turns the lighting off.

Moreover, when running on battery power, leaving a keyboard lit is just as draining as fully ramping up a laptop’s display brightness. With that, consider turning off keyboard backlighting until it’s needed to prolong a laptop’s battery life between charges.

Most laptops come with one or more preset options tied to turning off the display or sending the device to sleep after a certain period of inactivity. By default, these are unlikely to suit all users, so customizing them is an important consideration.

Try to set a laptop’s power and sleep settings to be as economical as possible without allowing them to become a hindrance. For example, automatically having a display turn itself off after five minutes is great for saving power and increasing battery life. Yet, for many people, this will lead to a display going off far too frequently to be convenient.

On the other hand, only allowing a display to switch itself off after 30 or 60 minutes of inactivity is likely to cause an unnecessary drain on a laptop’s battery. So instead, aim for around 10 or 15 minutes for maximum efficiency. Then, apply the same logic to entering sleep mode to maximize laptop battery life further.

According to Laptop Mag, among today’s longest-lasting laptop batteries can be found in Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, and Samsung devices. In order of battery life, these include:

Under testing, Dell’s Latitude 9510 reportedly lasted for more than 18 hours while continuously browsing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of screen brightness. Meanwhile, the LG Gram 14 2-in-1 managed exactly 14 hours under similar conditions before its battery ran out of power.

An extended laptop warranty or protection plan from Upsie is an easy and convenient way to extend the working life of your laptop. Thankfully, coverage needn’t be overly expensive. In fact, with Upsie, comprehensive coverage costs up to 70 percent less than warranties from competitors.

Benefits include protection against manufacturer defects, mechanical failures, accidental damage, and much more. In addition, Upsie customers can make unlimited claims up to the purchase price of the device, ensuring that customers always get the most out of their warranties.

Upsie also offers warranties for smartphones, smartwatches, and games consoles.