battery charge threshold

since we are all talking about batteries today, what do you guys use for your charge thresholds?

I use custom 18%/95%.

what do you use and why?

 

30% and 95%. I find that except for certain situations (ie: airport), 30% charge is usually sufficient. I'm around places with A/C outlets quite frequently.

 

it depends on what battery size you got and how long you plan to use the laptop between charge.

For example if i was to use a 4 cells battery on the X200 and use it for 1.5 hrs on battery time, then i would set the charging to start at 70% and stop at 95%.

If i was to use the 9 cells battery with the same 1.5 hrs use, then i would start the charging at around 25% or 30% and stop at 95%.

 

I let Power Manager set its own optimization. I have not set any thresholds.

 

Start at 60% stop at 100% right now.

In the past I have set stop at 80%, 95% and started at 40% and 80%.

However, because I use my system on battery fairly frequently I let it charge fully to 100% now. Reaching 100% is only really a problem the battery stays at a full charge for a while (i.e. the system is always plugged in).

60% gives me 4-6 hours of battery life depending on usage. I'd rather not leave the house with anything less than that.

 

As I was reading this thread I was wondering why people have it stop charging at a percentage other than 100 until I got to this. Can you explain why this is the case, as in why is it a problem, if the system is always plugged in?

 

Lithium Ion batteries like staying in the middle range of their charge capacity - it's detrimental to their charge capacities if they are either completely discharged or charged completely full. Hence, many of us charge to 95%.

 

@ MidnightSun...what then is the function of "Optimize for Battery Life" in the Power Manager? I am asking because as mentioned above, I have selected this option in PM.

Thanks

 

Optimize for battery life lets the Lenovo Power manager automatically select charge levels based on your usage pattern. If you don't use more then a certain percentage of the battery every time you have it unplugged then it'll lower the charge levels (transparent to you though, the battery might still say 100 percent charged but it's actually only 85 percent charged or so). Then the next time you use a majority of the battery capacity it'll actually fully charge the battery.

 

For myself..... I leave mine at 2-6% so that it won't kick off a charge cycle until I want. I'll just use the laptop on battery for small amounts at a time until it gets low enough or until I think I'll need it charged. Then I fully charge it. I wrote a little script that does it for me.

 

never let the battery discharge below 5% if you can help it.

 

I set it at 35-40 on x200 with 8 cell battery. that was the general recommendation here in the forum.

 

I have it set at 70%/95%

what I don't understand is, while connected to the AC, how does the battery charge go down?

I'm at 94% charge, Win7 power manager tells me it's plugged in and not charging, so I'm assuming my laptop is running on AC only. How does the battery ever get used when in this mode?

 

From what I understand about batteries is that they discharge even if you do not use them... leave the battery out of the computer for a week or two and you will see that it goes down slightly.

 

that is true, but the self discharge rate is pretty slow.