Should i leave my laptop plugged in all the time reddit

Basically, the way to think about your battery's life is primarily driven by how many cycles it runs through, think about like if the battery has a life of 300-500 cycles, that means it can be CHARGED up 100% about 300-500 times, or it could be charged halfway twice that many times, etc. The "problem" with leaving your laptop plugged in all the time is that the battery charges up to 100%. Some people believe that the top end of the battery charge, from 90-100% or 80-100% causes more cycles than charging in the middle range, like going from 40 to 80 causes less wear than going 60-100. The actual objective evidence on this is somewhat limited.

When your battery is plugged in, what typically happens is that it drops down a few percent over time, and then it charges back up to 100%, and so it does very slowly accumulate cycles.

Besides cycles, elevated temperature of the battery is also bad.

The effects are pretty small - I just upgraded from my Spectre, which is almost always plugged in when it is at the desk, and the battery life at its best was around 6-7 hours and is now around 5-6 hours, this is after three full years of use. It's not a very dramatic effect, and the reality is that ultimately all Li-Ion and Li-Poly batteries do degrade. There are ways you could possibly baby it, to get more out of it, but I personally am skeptical, because if you avoid it being at 100% by not plugging it in, you are incurring cycles anyways by actually using the battery, and it's not clear to me you come out ahead.

I have a 2009 Toshiba Laptop with a lithium-ion battery. I have heard so many different things when it comes to batteries...deep chargeing is bad..leaving plugged in all the time is fine for batteries/pcs made after a certain year...u should charge laptop between 40-80 percent all the time.. i just want to knopw simply, what should i do? Will leaving my laptop plugged in ac power when i use it, decrease the battery life? should i charge it and use it til it gets low, and recharge it? or should i take out battery completley when using a/c power? does it matter? please, someone let me know the best practice. thx

“Technically” keeping your battery fully charged all the time causes it to wear out faster than keeping it partly charged. Somebody who misinterprets this fact will probably post in this thread that it’s bad to leave your computer plugged in.

However plugging and unplugging the laptop all the time so the battery isn’t full means you are constantly draining and refilling the battery, which is even worse for it! Batteries are not rated for time spent sitting there, they are rated for numbers of cycles. It is widely known that constantly draining and filling a battery will wear it out! So leaving your laptop plugged in is better than constantly discharging and recharging in an attempt to keep it partly-charged.

Now, the best possible thing is if your computer has an option where you can leave it plugged in 24/7 but it will simply stop charging at 80% or something like that. This would be found in a program called something like Dell Power Management Utility which should have been pre-installed on your computer from the factory.

However even if you don’t have this option, so keeping it plugged in means it’s always at 100%, the wear from sitting at 100% is still less than constantly being plugged and unplugged.

Is it OK to leave my laptop plugged in all the time?

Should I unplug my laptop at 80%?