Can a laptop be left plugged in all the time?

Main points

• It’s safe to always leave your laptop plugged in, but make sure the charger and power outlet are working properly.
• Keeping your laptop on a charger will accelerate the aging of the battery, shortening its lifespan and charging capacity.
• To prevent damage to the battery, unplug it after it is fully charged and avoid unnecessary charging cycles. Operating system level mitigation tools can also help.

One of the main benefits of owning a laptop is that you can take it with you wherever you go. After all, portability is important, and there are even ultraportable laptops designed specifically for travel. However, we’re not always on the go, which means your laptop is often sitting on a table or tablet, connected to a charger for long periods of time. It may even have always been this way.

Is it a good idea to keep your laptop plugged in at all times? Although this is a simple question, the answer is quite complex due to how battery chemistry works. Should you leave your laptop’s battery connected at all times? Let’s take a look.

Is it safe to leave a laptop plugged in?

As far as physical security goes, yes, it’s perfectly safe to leave your laptop plugged in at all times.

There is virtually no risk of fire. Modern laptops have voltage control built into the machine so that it knows when the battery is full and stops charging, even if the charger is connected. These mechanisms rarely fail, and laptops have safety mechanisms that cut off the connection before real damage occurs.

However, this all assumes that the charger itself and the outlet it’s connected to are working properly. A shorted outlet can cause a fire, but it’s not just limited to charging laptops. As a general advice, always check your point of sale occasionally.

Should you keep your laptop charging?

This is where the complexity comes in. There are many factors that work against lithium-ion batteries. Keeping the battery charge too low or too high can cause the battery to age prematurely. As batteries age, they lose their ability to hold a full charge. So while it won’t blow up your laptop, you may notice that your laptop battery no longer seems to be as charged as it once was.

Another concern is heat. Lithium-ion batteries lose charge over time, even when the device is turned off. This means the battery is almost constantly being charged, which generates heat. Heat (such as high or low charge) can also prematurely age a battery, causing it to lose its ability to hold a charge over time.

Finally, each lithium battery has a limited number of charges before it can no longer be charged. By keeping it on AC, you introduce additional charge cycles that the battery doesn’t need since it’s off. This will further shorten the battery life.

So leaving the laptop on the charger is a bit of a triple whammy. Your laptop is unlikely to catch fire or suffer any damage anytime soon. However, the battery will age faster than if you use AC power from time to time, which can cause the battery to drain faster than expected.

How to tell if your laptop battery is damaged

There are several ways to check battery health on both Windows and macOS computers. We’ll briefly look at each report and then discuss how to read the report.

apple

1. Click the Apple menu button and select system message.
2. Open the Hardware section in the left margin and select strength options.
3. Your battery information will be there.

Granted, macOS does this a lot easier than Windows, so you should be able to find it relatively quickly.

windows pc

1. Open a command prompt. The easiest way is to type “CMD” without quotes into the Windows search bar.
2. type powercfg/battery report and press Enter on your keyboard.
3. Command Prompt will generate a battery report, then save it to a folder, and it will show you the report when you enter the command.
4. Navigate to the folder on your computer and access the report.

The report is in HTML format, so you need to use a browser to open it. Fortunately, all browsers can handle HTML files.

How to read your laptop’s battery information

apple

For macOS, this is very simple.The power supply section will show you cycle counting, which is the number of times you charge the battery.under that is Health status.If it says except normalthen you may want to arrange a visit to an Apple Store to investigate. Maximum capacity Tells you how much more power the battery can hold. Only brand new Macbooks will show 100%, so your Macbook may be lower than that.

windows pc

For Windows, the situation is a little more complicated. This information is divided into the dates you used the laptop.So if you look at the following When fully charged partial sum active column, you’ll see how long your battery is expected to last that day.You can combine it with Design capacity lower part positive column to see how long the battery will last if it is brand new. Compare how much battery life you lose.

How to prevent damage to your laptop battery

In most cases, just don’t leave it on the charger longer than necessary. Fully charge it, unplug it, and don’t plug it back in until you need to charge it again. This does not prevent the battery from aging, as there is no way to prevent the battery from aging, but the battery will age much more slowly when the charger is not keeping it at 100% charge. Yes, you may lose a few percent of battery power when you turn it back on, but that’s a small price to pay.

Another option is to use operating system level mitigation tools. Windows has a smart charging feature that will essentially charge the device in a way that is less damaging to the battery. Apple has an Optimize Battery Charging feature that does the same thing. These limit the battery charge so it doesn’t stay full all the time.

The thing you really want to avoid is having your battery discharged and charged for no reason and leaving it on the charger 24/7. This reduces heat, reduces the number of unnecessary charge cycles, and prevents the battery from being left in a high state of charge all the time, allowing the battery to age better.

Can the laptop be left plugged in while in use?

Yes, but we recommend using the OS-level battery charging feature mentioned earlier so the battery isn’t always at 100% charge. Additionally, laptop brands such as Asus and HP have tools to limit power to 60% (HP) or 80% (Asus) to prevent battery performance degradation. This is for optimal health and helps extend the life of your battery.

This is essentially the same rule as when the laptop is closed. You want to avoid unnecessary charge cycles, and you also want to avoid being at 100% all the time. Take it off the charger, use the laptop, and put it back on the charger as needed. Think of it like a smartphone rather than a desktop computer.

Do you need to micromanage your laptop battery forever?

Well, yes and no. Here’s the thing. I own a laptop that’s about six years old. It spends approximately 98% of its life plugged in. Yes, my battery only lasted less than an hour after being disconnected from the charger and only retained about 60% of its charge. Things didn’t catch on fire, the battery didn’t swell or anything like that, the laptop still works great. I’m typing this word for word right now.

However, I understand how the battery ended up like this, and I know it’s mostly my fault. I’ve done this with my machine so far, basically leaving it on a charger for its entire life. I am ready to take responsibility for my actions.

The purpose of this article is not to scare you into spending hours a day maintaining your laptop’s battery. This is completely unreasonable. The goal is to help you understand why and how these bad habits can damage your battery over time. After that, it is recommended to do what you can. Conventional wisdom is that most people upgrade their laptops every four to five years, so you don’t have to keep your battery going forever. It just lasts until your next laptop.