Is my new battery healthy?

I bought a replacement battery for my Samsung laptop from the service centre a few days back. The only thing is that the new battery has only a 7 day warranty and I'm on my 6th day today.

Over the past few days, I did some battery calibration.

The first time I calibrated I ran it down in Windows until it entered hibernation. However, it refused to boot up after that so I assumed the battery was flat. The wear level was 2.27% (47,328mAh).

Then, I realised that to properly calibrate I should run it down in BIOS. However, I noticed that when my battery reaches 3%, it will suddenly jump to 0% and then shut down a few seconds later. I thought, ", this means my battery must have more wear than expected". I recharged it and went to work. When I got home the wear level showed 4.55% (46,620mAh).

I was wondering if my battery degraded and I could get a new replacement, so I did another drain last night. Strangely enough, when my battery reaches 3% again, it suddenly jumps to 0% and shuts down a few seconds later! Is my battery degrading?!

I then gave it a re-charge again and boot it up shortly after it charged fully. I disconnected the power supply and it showed 0% (48,400mAh)! I shut my laptop down and when I woke up this morning, I checked again and wear level is at 2.27% once again.

So... is my battery still healthy? I'm a little concerned that the battery jumps from 3% to 0% every time. Is this normal behaviour? I'm asking this because it didn't happen on my old battery (though my old battery tends to jump from 61% to 59% every time). Does this mean my battery will wear around 2-3% everytime I give it a full-recharge, or it's just some anomaly and my real wear is constant at somewhere between 0-4.55%?

Thank you very much for reading

 

Every time you run the battery down (including calibration) you will add quite a bit of wear. Batteries wear the most when they are at low charge levels.

Considering that, I think you should be satisfied with the 2-3% wear you have now. Charge it quickly, and keep it at fairly high charge -- except when you need to run on battery, of course.

 

A few comments:

1. The purpose of the calibration in the BIOS is to run the battery until it is genuinely empty (as defined by some voltage value). It's a bit like cleaning a water tank to remove the sediment in the bottom - something to be done occasionally but not very often (as noted above, frequently fully draining a Lithium battery isn't good for its long term health).

2. It is unusual for a recently recalibrated battery to jump from 3% to 0% because the calibration should have updated the storage curve. However, if that is the only problem then I wouldn't worry because Windows will shut down the computer before you get there.

3. If your notebook has the Battery Life Extender option (it will be listed in (Easy) Settings) then use it unless you need to have maximum time away from a power socket. BLE limits the charge to 80% and avoids the extra wear that happens when fully charging to 100%.

4. If you don't need to use the battery then don't. The more you drain and recharge a Lithium battery then the more it wears out. Leaving the computer plugged into the mains power won't damage the battery.

John