Sony Battery Care vs unplugging Vaio from mains

Guys,

I'm using my Vaio as a desktop replacement without any need for using its battery. Therefore, is it better to set charging threshold to 50% in Vaio Control, or is it better to simply remove the battery (dis) charged to 50% and store it in a dry place in order to prolong its life?

Cheers!

 

I would suggest keeping it at 50%, the laptop is smart enough not to charge when there is no need for it. Just see it as a backup for when you ever lose power.
The battery will slowly degenerate anyway,

 

I've lost my work more than once on a desktop due to power failures in high winds and the like. I'd keep the battery in and have battery care set to 50%.

 

I agree with Mitlov

But every 3-6 months it`s best to calibrate your battery, charge it to 100% then discharge to 0% and then charge it back to 50% or whatever you want, this will keep you battery gauge accurate also it will give you a true battery wear level, you can use HWmonitor to check this.

John.

John

 

For the battery itself, the best would be to charge it to 70-80%, unplug it, and store it dry and especially cold. The reason why you charge it more than 50% if you store it is the auto-discharge that albeit slowly, cannot be prevented. and you don't wanna risk a discharged (broken) battery. Every six months or so you could plug it in and check / charge. Note: If you store it cold, let it equilibrate to roomtemp first before using it again.

 

I've used battery care at 50% for 2.5 years now, and my battery has no wear at all. It's been plugged in for about 90% of the time. I see no reason to store the battery.

-Peter

 

Unfortunately, HWMonitor only reports what the battery/ BIOS report, not the real wear.

 

To get a true wear level you need to calibrate the battery, I have two Lenovo Z580 notebooks, and the battery wear out of the box was showing at 7% but after calibrating this dropped to 0% , you are simple re-calibrating the battery level and wear gauge, it does not repair the battery at all.

John.

 

I did not say anything about repairing the battery.

I simply stated, that if the notebook manufacturer chooses so, true battery capacity from when it was new will never be shown.

I have an HP Envy 14 and at some point updated the BIOS and now I can only see the current battery capacity, the original one from when it was new cannot be shown by any application.

 

Thanks for your responses!

 

Folks, do you know if it's possible to do similar thing on a HP Pavilion series laptop? Perhaps with a 3rd party app?

 

Personally I wouldn't worry about it much. The #1 thing you can do to preserve your batter is just to not allow it to be discharged deeply. I.e. discharging to 20% once does more damage to it than discharging to 90% 7x and the like. At least going by reported, my 4 year old battery isn't much different than when I bought it, since I never actually use it on battery except as a UPS.

Regarding 'calibrating' the battery, that may be true, but if you're not actually using it on battery it doesn't help you any, just wears it out some to do that.