Dell XPS 9570 Battery Issue??

So I just received my new Dell XPS 9570 and decided to check on battery performance and ran a battery report. I noticed that my battery is not even charging up to the full design capacity (97003 Design Capacity vs 87438 Full Charge Capacity). Its a brand new battery. Any insight on this? Anyone else with the new Dell XPS 9570 having the same issue?

 

So it's charging to 90%? AFAIK, isn't adaptive charging enabled by default in these computers? It basically sets lower charge capacities to preserve the battery's longevity (in terms of cycles), since charging that top bit of capacity is usually the most stressful part of a charge cycle (in terms of heat generated). You can change that in the BIOS.

 

So am I better off leaving it the way it is to prolong the battery cycle life?

 

It's up to you, but if the slightly reduced battery life doesn't bother you, then I would let the system automatically limit battery charge. That being said, go into the BIOS and disable it (just for testing), to make sure it really is the adaptive charging system, and not a more serious issue. After that, the decision of whether or not to reenable the system is up to you.

Of note, the adaptive charging system will automatically increase the battery charge level if you utilize the battery a lot, and it will automatically reduce the charge level if you mostly leave it plugged in. As to its exact hysteresis, I don't actually know, I've set a custom one on my Dell E8450 (80% charge limit, resume charging at 75%) and my Vaio has a preset at 80% charge limit (it has a rudimentary charge limiter compared to newer Dells). My Vaio still delivers ~3.5 hours of useable battery life after 5 1/4 years of service on the original battery, which is very good for a Vaio.

 

@jeremyshaw very interesting contribution.
As will most like keep my laptop plugged in 99.999% of the time would you suggest me to discharge the battery and disable the charging from the bios?

 

I'd just let it default to adaptive. If you want, there should be an "AC Use" (or similar) setting in the BIOS which limits the charge state to 50% or so.

Fully discharging the battery harms it as well. Basically the extremes (approaching 100% and approaching 0% - both are set by the battery OEM to chemically/thermally safe limits) are always pushing the limits of modern chemical batteries. Manufacturers are pushing ever harder for every last mW from ever shrinking battery volume (thin is in). Some manufacturers set "safer" limits and live with less battery life (Nintendo), others push the battery to its safe limits (Razer, Apple, most consumer laptops), others will let you set a more conservative upper limit (but not the lower limit; ASUS Zenbook, Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude/XPS, etc).

 

You do not have to use the BIOS to set your charging thresholds. You can use Dell Command Power Manager for that. It has exactly the same options as in the BIOS, but is available for Windows. It allows for on the fly switching of the charging profiles.

If you are not using your battery often, try to set the thresholds between 50 and 60 percent. You'll extend your battery's lifetime by a fair bit.

 

I am nearly certain that your laptop is exhibiting wear rather than being set to a charging threshold. If it's wear, it will say it is charged to 100%. If it's at a 90% threshold, it is the BIOS setting. It is common for XPS 15 to have 10% wear out of the box

 

It's also common for that wear to be a miscalculation. Sometimes it reads your full capacity as the wrong thing and says you have much more wear than you have.

My guess is you need a couple of discharge and charge cycles for it to show the real values.

 

my xps 13 has probably had 30 cycles by now but still reads the same 5% out of the box. my previous 10% wear ones never re-adjusted either, only replacing the battery worked.