Which method is the best for battery life-time?

Hi, I have had my Dell XPS 9550 for couple of weeks now and it has been fantastic. Just curious about the proper way to use it. Since almost 100% (from now until several months later) of the time I'm going to use it at home. Is it better to just stay connected with the AC power and not using the battery? If I don't use it for a day or more should I unconnect the plug and reconnect when using?

Thank you!

 

There's an option under BIOS to set the battery charging option. You can limit your max charge around 60 - 80% (whichever fits you better) and start charge around 20 - 30%

 

Lousygreatwall is right. Go into BIOS, and set your battery charge range to keep the battery at around 60%.

If you actually need to use the battery, go back into BIOS and change that setting to allow it to hit 100% (or just change the charge behavior setting to Standard).

Ignore anything setting along the lines of advanced, adaptive, etc. Those cause more confusion than anything else.


Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

You can access these settings directly via Dell Command | Power Manager, no need to go into BIOS.

Apart from the custom charge ranges, there's also an option for keeping the laptop mainly on AC.

 

Using Dell Command Power Manager, it looks like by default it's on Adaptive. I'm assuming that will mean it will figure out my pattern and adjust the charging level automatically? Or will it always charge to 100% when plugged in even if battery is high already? The modes they offer are:

Standard
ExpressCharge
Primarily AC Use
Adaptive
Custom (you can set the threshold to stop charging and start charging)

I've got it on Adaptive now but there doesn't seem to be a way to tell what it's choosing.

 

The "set and forget" Adaptive option is indeed opaque. If you regularly keep it running on AC, after some unspecified threshold it will stop charging before 100%. At other times it won't. Quite how it learns from usage is not clear, and it doesn't report anything about its current state.

If you've set it and now can't forget it, best to go with one of the other options that suit your needs better or it will just bug you

 

Thank you for all your quick responses. Somehow I couldn't set the start charge below 50, so I just select the primary AC power in the BIOS settings, hope it will help the battery life-time.

 

I don't see the Dell Command Power Manager anywhere on my XPS. Where is a download link? I couldn't find it in the downloads section on the Dell website.

 

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us...-15-9550-laptop&languageCode=EN&categoryId=UT

 

Thank you!