How to Enhance Battery Life on Your Laptop
Tags: Gardgets, Tips, Tech, Life, Technology

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How to Enhance Battery Life on Your Laptop

Make it through the day easily

Our working lives become more mobile every day. Many of us have already switched to a laptop as their main means of computing. Regardless of what the manufacturers like to tell us, the battery of our machines sometimes just won’t last through the day. Yes, sure, a bigger battery lasts longer than a small one and rapid-charge technology has made it easier than ever to quickly get a few hours worth of juice just with an hour of charging.

Still. Sometimes you’re dependent on making it through the day without a wall socket in sight. How you work, what you do and what software you use has a direct and ofentimes huge impact on the actual runtime of your laptop’s battery. So runtime can vary greatly between different people on the same type of machine, depending on their habits and usecase.

Here are seven pro tips to greatly enhance your laptop’s battery life.

№1 Screen

As a surprise to absolutely no one, screen brightness directly affects the power-draw of your screen. So, when possible, don’t run your screen at full brightness, when you’re away from a wall socket. Also resolution and size do play a role. When you’re buying a new computer, think about if you really need that ultra sharp 4K screen on a tiny 13 or 14 inch laptop screen. Probably not.

Go with full HD instead. It won’t make a discernable difference at a normal viewing distance but will greatly benefit the runtime of your laptop on battery.

Certain manufacturers offer “low power” screens. Just like Lenovo in their Thinkpad T series. If battery life is crucial to you, choose that kind of screen.

Also check your energy management settings on your computer. Shutting off your screen when you’re inactive can save a lot of battery. Windows 10 and Mac users will find self-explanatory settings in the corresponding system control areas (namely called “Energy” or “Power Management”).

№2 Browser

Believe it or not, but the kind of browser you use has a huge impact on your laptop’s battery life. Google Chrome is well known to be a power- and ressource-hog. The more tabs you have open, the more is going on, the quicker the battery will drain. There are more efficient alternatives.

On a Mac it clearly is Safari, the default browser by Apple and on a Windows 10 machine the latest chromium version of Edge (yes, that is still around) is really power efficient and fast. Many people also see a huge improvement when using Opera. In this case a little experimentation is required, to find the perfect balance between the features you need and the battery life you want.

Not as battery efficient, but quick as all hell and seemingly secure is the latest Firefox browser by Mozilla.

As of writing this article Google Chrome really is the worst candidate to pick if battery life is important to you.

№3 Graphics card

If your mobile computer sports a dedicated graphics card, make sure it’s only using it to accelerate certain programs or just shut it off altogether. An integrated graphics chip like Intels HD 620 or especially the new Ryzen 4000 series Radeon Vega graphics chips are more than capable of driving your operating systems user interface. No need for a dedidcated graphics card doing the “featherweight” lifting, burning precious battery life doing so.

№4 Background programs

It’s a good habit to de-clutter your open windows and programs from time to time. Especially when you’re running on battery. Having many programs open and stuff running in the background is a real drain on your battery life. Try to work as efficiently as possible, close programs when you’re done using them and try to not run your daily virus check in the background. Many of those security programs can be configured to not do a deep scan while on battery. Check out the advanced settings in the security suite of your choice.

Macs are more efficient in handling many open programs at once than Windows machines. Still, working efficiently and neatly, closing what you don’t need, is never wrong.

Extra-Tip: When you’re on Windows 10, go into Taskmanager (press the Windows Key+X and from the menu popping up select “Taskmanager”). Select “more details” and check out the now open “Processes” tab. You see a list of open and running programs and how much CPU-power they need. If you scroll to the far right of this window you can see a column for “battery usage”. If you click on it, it sorts the open programs by the amount of energy they need. This way you can identify battery-life drainers and kill the program for more endurance, if you don’t need it currently.

№5 Power profiles

Laptop manufacturers provide power management profiles. They are called “balanced”, “quiet”, “ performance” or something similar. Macs manage their energy setting automatically pretty well, but you can still make your adjustments in the system settings under “Energy”. On Windows those settings are easiest asccessed by right-clicking on the battery-icon. Select “Windows Mobility Center”. Now under the icon for the battery you should be able to select a different power plan. Choose something that sounds more “efficient” than “performance”. In the Windows 10 energy settings you can also create such power plans of your own.

Lenovo for example provides enhanced quick settings for your computer and also your battery with their Lenovo Vantage suite. It lives in your taskbar and is easily accessed by clicking on the battery icon. From there you can choose to quick charge your battery or even to enhance the general lifespan of your battery by only charging it to about 50% to 60% of full capacity. Of course, this will limit your battery runtime between charges.

Almost all manufacturers provide a similar service. Make sure to actually read your manual once you get a new computer and read about power management and how it is handled best with your machine of choice.

№6 Networking

I know it’s a weird concept to say in modern times, but if you want to conserve a little bit of extra juice, go offline. Yes, you read that right. No e-mails, no spotify, no social media. I know that many of our jobs just don’t allow to be offline. Thing is though, that your WiFi chip inside your laptop drains a lot of juice. So does Bluetooth, even if you don’t have any devices connected. So, if you don’t use bluetooth currently, switch it off. Also to try to go offline as often as possible. This has many other benefits besides improving your battery life, like being less distracted.

№7 Battery packs

If nothing else helps, you still got the option of battery packs or battery banks. Those are basically external carry-with-you-battery packs that can be connected to your laptop or other electronic device to charge it up. Depending on the size and capacity of the battery pack, you can even charge your devices multiple times. Best suited for this kind of recharge-on-the-go approach are Laptops that can be charged via USB-C port.

Make sure you know what kind of wattage your Laptop needs to fully recharge in time and provide it with as close to that wattage as you can. If your battery pack doesn’t offer enough wattage, you won’t be able to charge your Laptop in a reasonable amount of time.

You can also connect the battery pack to the laptop while you’re working on it, thus reducing the draining of your laptop’s battery a bit.

Bonus: 5 or a 7?

Usually, when you buy a new laptop, it’s the question to go with an Intel i5 or i7 or an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7. Well, as of 2020 if you want energy efficiency and long battery life, I don’t see why anyone would go for any high end Intel chip really. AMD has overtaken Intel in many markets and in my opinion also in the mobile market as their Ryzen 4000 series chips at the moment provide even thin and light laptops with plenty of cores, power and battery life. Neat!

But regardless of your choice of processor brand, what about the difference between the 5 and 7 lines of processors. The 7 ones are the stronger ones, with more cores, more performance and more power draw. So, does it make sense to go for the lesser option if you value battery life?

There is no clear answer to that because after watching many Youtube videos on that subject it seems like that it’s highly dependent on how the manufacturer of the Laptop implemented the cooling solution, the mainboard and many other factors that play into the energy efficiency of a certain processor.

Personally I believe that the 5 series chips might be a “tad” easier on the battery life, I’d still rather go with the more powerful option and in the worst case help myself out with a battery pack. But that’s just me.

In general, the further technology progresses, the smaller the processors can be manufactured, the more energy efficient they are, so if battery life is of utmost importance to you, you should always go with the latest processors.

Conclusion

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

It’s obvious, that the real battery life of your machine varies greatly with it’s specs and your usecase. But this also means that you have some sort of control over it. Times are changing and conserving ressources is a good and timely thing to do, let’s not stop at reducing our waste, but also our use of battery life. It’s really all aboout conscious living and conscious use of the ressources available to you to get your things done. Luckily efficiency seems to become the new thing to strive for and brag about, not only in mobile computers. Also, Apple will transition to their own processors for their whole computer lineup , starting later this year — I’ll keep a close eye on that, as it probably will usher in a whole new era of power-efficient computing. Cutting down on uneccessary or even toxic relationships is another wise thing to do nowadays, but that’s for another article…