Understanding Laptop Battery Lifespan

Laptop batteries are essential for portable computing, but their lifespan can vary based on usage, charging habits, and environmental factors. Let's delve into how laptop batteries work, why their capacity diminishes over time, and what you can do to extend their life.

Battery Lifespan and Capacity Reduction

A typical laptop battery can handle around 500 charge cycles before its capacity starts to noticeably decline. A charge cycle is defined as using 100% of the battery's capacity, whether it's from 100% to 0% in one go or through partial discharges that add up to 100%.

Capacity Reduction

• After 500 charge cycles: The battery's capacity can drop by about 20%. This means if your battery initially lasted 5 hours, it might only last 4 hours after 500 cycles.
• Time Frame: For most users, reaching 500 charge cycles takes about 3 years. This can vary based on how often you use and charge your laptop.

Factors Affecting Battery Lifespan

• Charging Habits: Frequently charging your battery to 100% and letting it drop to 0% can accelerate wear. Keeping the charge between 40% and 80% can help prolong its life.
• Heat: Excessive heat can damage the battery. Avoid using your laptop on soft surfaces that can block ventilation and cause overheating.
• Storage: If you store your laptop for extended periods, keep the battery at around 50% charge and in a cool, dry place.

Lavawall® Battery Monitoring

Lavawall® monitors factors that lead to battery degradation as well as the battery health itself

• Heat: Lavawall® has two trigger points for laptop heat. These appear in the dashboard, notifications, device detail, and summaries. The initial Hot level gives a warning that battery life and performance are likely getting degraded. It might also indicate ransomware or cryptominer malware. Lavawall® responds by double-checking for those factors. We provide optional notifications to the computer user as well because it can often be resolved by moving the computer away from obstacles. There is also a Critical Heat threshold that indicates more severe damage and performance issues.
• Charge Cycles: Lavawall® includes the charge cycles in its hardware replacement priorities and battery status. We also add an additional prioritization once a computer hits 500 cycles since this is often where batteries start degrading faster.

• Battery Health: Most laptop brands give the operating system a bit of a head's up when batteries have other problems. Lavawall® checks for these too
• Battery Capacity: Lavawall® reports the designed and available battery capacity. It also reports how much the battery capacity has degraded. This level of degradation is factored into the computer replacement priority with an additional boost once it hits 20%. This is also often the trigger point for warranty repair, so knowing earlier can save you money on a new laptop and/or battery.
• Computer Age:Lavawall® uses several factors to estimate the age of the computer. Typically, batteries and storage start to degrade around 3-5 years.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out through our chat, phone or email on our contact page!