5% Battery wear after a month of receiving the laptop - Normal ?

Hey guys, I am a newbie when it comes to batteries ... So I'm not quite sure if 5% battery wear after just a month of use is normal or not. If not what is the normal rate of battery wear for the same period.

Also after quite a bit of research I am still stumped as to whether or not I should keep the A/C plugged in after the battery is fully charged.

I would really appreciate if some people experienced in this matter could help me out. Thanks

 

This is a subjective matter some saying yoy dont need to 'manage' the battery while others saying you do. Mine got to 20% wear after about 9 months but now 2 months later since ive been keeping it at about 25% charge with charging turned off (have to turn it off after every reboot) its still at 20% wear so i guess it must help. But like i say a very opinionated matter.

 

All right, I use my Dell XPS 15 (L502x) as a replacement for my desktop, so it on all the time, and I usually keep the A/C connected.

But since i noticed the wear of 5% I am a bit skeptical about keep the Charger connected all the time

I have at the moment (using Dell's Battery meter option) Switched off Battery Charging (It stops the battery from charging till the next time i restart) - Do you think this might help ? even if the battery were to stay in.

From what I have read : Li-on Battery life seems to largely depend on the temperature of its surroundings, and mine is almost always on the cooling pad and also I've never felt it heat up.

 

Thats normal.

 

whomever is still under warranty, I did the following (simply because I got pissed)

Use the hell out of your battery, drain every last ounce of it. Drain it until the battery says 5% and shuts down, hit the power button a few times and let it turn on and off (the purpose is to get to as full of a discharge as possible, REMEMBER, do this ONLY if you're still under warranty, because in my case it worked). Plug it in, turn it on and let it charge. In my case, the full discharge brought me back down to 0.00% wear, and after a month or two of usage with the battery alone, I am now at 1% wear.... dissapointed that I am not getting another dell battery but also surprised at how long the battery's lasted so far (4+ hours with brightness up and watching vids).

 

My L702x battery wear is 14% at the moment and I have had my computer 8 months. I keep my laptop AC powered at all time when I'm at home, but when bring my laptop to school I notice that the battery wear has increased by a fraction after a few battery cycles.

 

I follow the same tactic whenever the battery wear goes over 8-10% (once a month on average). This way the battery wear status resets to zero and you get more battery life before the laptop goes into hibernation (at 7% by default). I still get 5 hours with wifi on brightness at 50% and watching movies

 

glad i'm not the only one elaesar I'm actually trying to break my battery to get the warranty, usually on dells, their last ounce of energy lasts JUST after your 1yr warranty mark has ended, it was definitely the case for my XPS M1330, and thta thing was a AC outlet queen.

 

so do you people remove the battery when it is AC Powered ?

 

This actually works? lol

Nope, just turn off battery charging.

 

I'm not sure that deep draining LI ION batteries is healty for their lifespan, as far as I know the first thing to avoid is to discharge the battery under 20%.
See more here How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

 

So what should we do? keep them at 20% all the time? as thats what ive been doing actually.

 

did you buy a brand new laptop or an outlet one
i got one off outlet and it came with 5% wear

 

My new out of the box showed 4%, after 5 weeks its still at 4%.

 

it has worked for me, now twice

I had 8% wear rate,and i was like maaan, i'm gonna mess up this battery on purpose, i dont want 8% wear! I tried draining it to it's death, then recharged it and it reset back to 0.00%.

Tried it again on 5.6% wear and now I am at 0.8% wear.

 

Its a Brand New Laptop

The wear is increasing quite fast, At the moment Hardware Monitor is showing wear of 6%

and the wear seems to be increasing everytime i use the battery and recharge it (I usually use it to about 30% and recharge it back to 99%) ... which is odd because most people suggest to do that to reduce the battery wear.

Sadly in my case battery wear increased by 1% in 2 days ... at this rate it'll last only a couple of months :S

Im not quite sure if that helps

 

I might try that, if the wear keeps going up at this rate.

Does that help ?

Edit : Sorry for double posting

 

For those whose battery lost 10% or so charge already, disconnect it from your motherboard and connect it back again. It's mainly a sync issue. (Calibrate it then do it)

 

i tried it with no luck. Im just going to keep it at about 20% and turn the charging off every time as ive been doing. It seems to stop the wear increasing.

 

That might not be right, I noticed that Hardware Monitor and my Gadget (Battery Meter 1.2) - both do not seem to register the actual wear until I fully charge the battery after use and restart the laptop

So you mean

Drain the battery completely, disconnect it from the Motherboard & Recharge it ? Have I got the steps right ?

 

Seems to be true. Cause last time my battery was 100, and now after reconnecting battery (bcs of HDD repair) it shows 5% wear level. Will try it tomorrow.

 

Glad it helped you! Calibrate it as well, MAYBE you can gain some more.

 

Well that doesnt happen to me. It shows wear at any battery level.

 

What do you mean by calibrate?

 

Charge till 100%, and then recharge until 0%. Then charge it again. So do it like 3 times, that is called calibration.

 

Well i did this once and have now gained an extra 1% wear lol, so im now at 21% wear...

 

Wow 21%?? Call dell support and tell them to fix it. All they have to do is remove a few cables and plug it back in. That's ridiculous man.

 

How will removing a few cables help (what cables anyway)? it will only reset the wear level, it will not replenish or repair the physical condition of the battery. Tbh i have it plugged in all the time anyway so if it dies completely dell will have to give me a new one.

 

My wear was 4% the day I got the laptop in September 2011. It was 11% last week and now it is at 12%. The thing is I don't even use the battery. It is always plugged in. If I do use the battery even for only five minutes it discharges quickly then if I plug it back in it takes about 30 minutes to charge and then the wear goes up 1%.

 

look at table 2 on this page http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries, on average at 100% of discharge they measured 500 cycles, while at 50% it's 1500 cycles and so on.

Simply do not abuse deep discharge.

 

Yes, you are correct. It will reset wear level. What is the current CAPACITY of your battery in Wh?

 

designed capacity: 93240 mwh
Full charge capacity: 73982 mwh
current capacity: 60717 mwh (battery at 82%)

Dont think resetting will effect the physical condition of it. Wear level from what i understand seems permanent.

 

Yah, u're right. You should really ask for a replacement battery. That's ridiculous.

 

18% wear ... how long since you got you lappy ?

 

About 11 months.

 

6 Months and mine is at 23% wear

 

Sam work your butt off to break that battery ASAP, once that year's over you're in for a heck of an annoyance with the dell quickset telling you "battery dead replace soon" lol. I am currently working on wearing my battery I have right now. It's not agreeing with me so far lol.

 

Im extending the warranty another two years so it doesnt matter. But yeah do that if you just have a year on the warranty.

 

18% wear in 11 months, thats more than 1.6% a month ...

how is that even possible ... I thought Li-ion batteries lasted long ... and from what I hear from you people it sounds like most do not last more than a year ...

 

9 months, 10% wear

 

All this assumes that these battery wear figures are accurate. I've not seen any thorough, long-term testing to show that this battery wear software is accurate.

 

Should I mention the time-bomb that Dell builds in where the charging circuit is programmed to gradually lower the level the battery is charged to over time?

 

I discharged battery twice and wear went down from 18 to 7

 

Did you know that Vaio provides a software that stops charging the battery at about 80% or 90%

and I have been told that it is one way to extend you battery life - Is there any truth to this ?

 

That tells me that these battery wear figures are not accurate.

The software comes up with a figure based on characteristics it senses, but it probably isn't fair to call it "wear". If the battery really were 18% worn, it couldn't suddenly get newer and less worn. The so-called "wear" figure may be more a measure of how much charge the battery can hold as compared to some baseline. Exercising a battery, as you did by discharging and charging twice, can allow it to hold more of a charge if it hadn't been exercised in a while.

 

That makes sense. But from what I have heard that does not seem to work in all cases.

 

Hi Sam,

you must remove the ac-adapter once charging is complete. Keeping it in, will only heat up the battery and heat is one of the major reasons for battery malfunction. If you know you're going to use your laptop with its ac-adapter connected for a long time, it's better to remove the battery completely but not after you made sure it is 40% charged.

Doing this will help you keep your battery at a healthy state.

 

Most batteries come from the factory with 0-5% capacity loss. Best thing to do is recalibrate every few months. Use your computer on battery as normal, then boot into BIOS, leave overnight, and let the computer just die/shut off. Recharge the battery completely, then you should have an accurate reading of your battery life. Recalibration doesn't magically add capacity. It just calibrates it for more accurate measurement.

Keeping your machine plugged in all the time doesn't hurt it contrary to what some people say. USING your battery is the biggest killer of capacity... but that's what it's designed to do. If you're too paranoid to use your battery, don't get/use a laptop. It will deplete over time whether you use it or not, and it's relatively inexpensive to replace compared to the rest of the laptop. You will probably have to replace it after three years anyhow whether you use it or not, because it just loses life over time.

Removing the battery completely defeats the purpose of having a laptop. Think of it as a built-in UPS. Accidentally yank the cord out, oops, there goes your data. There goes your hard drive.

Keeping it in won't heat up the battery unless you have a very poorly designed laptop. I used a gaming Sager notebook for 18-20 months and it was plugged in 95% of the time with battery installed. Guess what, after that time, battery lost less than 10% of it's capacity. Laptops have smart battery management technology. If your machine allows you turn off charging, then that isn't a horrible idea if you drain your battery to 40% and leave it, but you will only gain yourself maybe an extra few months of life for the battery.

See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...lease-contribute-data-battery-life-usage.html

 

Probably the best advice in this whole thread.

 

Agreed, my battery is 8 months old and at 2% wear. The machine stops charging the battery when full charged is reached. It won't start to recharge until battery gets down to around 95%. The only reason I use the battery for is in case of power failure...basically acting as my UPS. Have never took it out so won't worry about it.