Your laptop's battery is its most vulnerable point but with a few precautions you can improve its quality of life

Batteries... how many headaches they give us today. And it is that the mobility to which we are accustomed has made three have to coexist versus the autonomy of our _gadgets_. Increasingly lighter, more compact devices that nevertheless have batteries inside that have not evolved in the same way And this in turn is combined with better performance and therefore more desire for energy.

Therefore, given the impossibility of working miracles it is essential, above all, to carry out good maintenance in the form of basic care that on the one hand, they prolong the life of the battery and, on the other hand, they improve or at least, do not diminish, its autonomy.And if a few days ago we talked in this sense about mobile phone batteries, today we are going to refer to those of laptops.

It is above all about demystifying some uses and facts that are taken for granted and publicizing some tips that you may know but which however for other users may be a novelty. A series of tips aimed at preventing battery life from decreasing faster than normal and therefore reducing the number of hours it is capable of offering.

The Myth of Total Charge and Discharge

You've bought your laptop and you're coming home. The clerk warns you that the first charge must be complete after letting it download previously. Here is the first error, because the battery comes with a charge of around 40% which is ideal so that the state of the battery does not suffer for long periods of inactivity.

That's why you shouldn't be afraid to start working without any problem and load it whenever you want without having to wait for it to reach the 100% in the same way that you should not wait for it to download completely. And it is that in the event of a state of deep discharge, the fact that the battery returns to life is often a matter of luck and time.

Surely you have seen cases of old cell phones in storage that have taken minutes to start charging after plugging them into the mains. Batteries have a protection circuit to avoid failures in case of total discharge but if this happens the charger will be responsible for activating that protection circuit again and this is not always effective.

And remember, except for calibrating the batteries, it is not good or advisable for them to drop below 20% on a regular basisAn adequate charge is between 20% and 80%, a range of percentages between which we should not have any concern for operation.

Always plugged in

It is one of the bugs that most users comment on. The fear of having the laptop always connected to the current and with the battery on while using it. If you are going to use the equipment frequently it is interesting to try to alternate between battery-based uses and others with electrical charge from the network, but it is not something necessary or It is a unified opinion across all manufacturers.

It can be interesting, yes, and if it is for prolonged periods, remove the battery, something that on the other hand is not possible in the teams that carry it incorporate it in a fixed way. It is about making the current between the battery cells not static and moving so that the cells of the battery do not deteriorate more than is strictly necessary.Remember, however, when the battery is fully charged the charging process stops and does not resume until it drops below a certain level.

Take care of periods of inactivity

How will I take care of the battery if I don't use it? Very easy, leaving high load levels in it. It is enough that it has a charge level that is around 75% So if, for example, we are not going to use it in two or three weeks, it is at lowering charge will never reach levels close to full discharge.

Similarly and if we are going out and we need to use the battery and it is at 70% for example we can charge it without fear until it reaches 100%or at the top depending on the time we have. And it is that there is no memory effect so we do not have to worry about a problem that is already a thing of the past.

Beware of non-original chargers

We already warned you in your day: you have to be very careful with chargers that are not original. The charger is a small part but it brings together all the technology that the manufacturer determines that is necessary for the proper functioning of the equipment.

And no, that's not to say that a compatible charger is necessarily problematic. They simply may not offer specifications that allow the same degree of charge as the originals or do not have the same measures that, for example, control surges or prevent overheating and overloads.

Avoid heat

This is told by a user who lives in Andalusia and who knows first-hand how a machine suffers in summer.phones, tablets and of course, laptops burn with the fans on full blast when the heat hits and this also affects the useful life of the batteries.

A factor that also affects the correct functioning of the batteries, causing all kinds of failures that can even generate explosions but which normally They do not go from showing increased battery consumption. It is therefore interesting as much as possible to maintain a temperature below 28 degrees to avoid stress on the batteries.

Take care of recharging cycles

The life of a battery is not determined by years or months but rather is established based on recharge cycles considering that each cycle It is equivalent to a charge that we carry out when the battery is above 20% charged.

Thus a battery has a maximum number of recharge cycles set by default This number sees how little by little the different battery charges. While there is an initial period in which the battery stabilizes based on the use we have given it, but when it reaches that inflection point, its capacity gradually reduces from a point until it reaches a final point where it can continue to be used but with greatly reduced capacity.

As you can see, it is about maintaining a minimum, very basic care in our battery. Some steps that, although they will not prevent the logical deterioration due to the passage of time, will make the wear as slow as possible.

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