Table of Contents

Battery Lifespan

What reduces total battery capacity over time

  1. Heat (can’t really be avoided)
  2. Using rapid charge
  3. Keeping it above 80% charge level for prolonged periods
  4. Letting it drop bellow 30% charge level
  5. Natural aging of the battery

How to prolong the period before the capacity/health falls under 80%

  1. Use battery conservation mode if your laptop has it. Keeps the battery between 55-60% charge level
  2. Use rapid charge only when necessary, not all the time by default
  3. Don’t put your laptop on a stove

What are battery cycles

Every battery has an estimated number of charging cycles, which it can go through before the capacity/health falls under 80%. One cycle is 100 times charging by 1%. In essence: One cycle equals charging from 0% to 100% or charging twice from 50% to 100%.

The number of maximum cycles until reaching 80% health is different for each battery and is greatly affected by other factors, such as those described above. Generally, on average, with average usage, one can expect about 500 battery cycles before the capacity falls under 80%.

Where can I check my battery cycles

You can use a free monitoring application, such as HWiNFO, or if your laptop came with a proprietary application, check for battery information in there.

For Lenovo Legion laptops, you can use for example Lenovo Legion Toolkit and check the information in the Battery section.

“My charge falls down even when plugged“

Battery charging will start only when the charge level falls under preset threshold. For Lenovo Legion laptops, the battery will be allowed to drop by 5% before the charging is resumed. In normal mode, that is when battery drops to 95%, in conservation mode, this is 55% charge level. This is a smart feature implemented to prolong battery lifespan. There are two reasons why the battery level may drop even while plugged: Normal loss of charge, that can't be affected and happens in all batteries in all devices. The other reason is when a device draws from the battery even during charging. Ideally, a device will be able to draw power independently from the outlet or the battery as needed.

“My cycles go up even though I was plugged all the time”

Battery can not hold its charge indefinitely and will slowly lose charge over time. Additionally, if you unplug your battery while not using your laptop, there is a chance the laptop still draws some idle power. Whether because it keeps something internal on standby, or has some device connected to an always-on USB port, or it's put in a low power state instead of being fully shut down, like in sleep, etc.

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