How to Increase Laptop Battery Life
Perhaps the single biggest battery saver is to have your screen’s backlight set lower. On some laptops, this will give you up to another hour of stated battery life, depending on what you’re doing with it.
Apps that are using a lot of CPU cause extra battery drain. Look under the Process or Detail tab in Task Manager to see if you can close anything using a lot of CPU. Giving the CPU less to do will vastly increase battery life.
As well as closing apps using a lot of CPU, closing apps running at the same time can make a huge difference – besides, most of the time you’re only looking at one thing. Don’t run anything you don’t need.
Do you have a mouse plugged in? What about your phone or tablet? When they’re plugged in, your laptop will be charging them. If you’re charging another device, you’re going to use a lot of battery.
If you step away from your laptop for a few minutes, its screen will still be on, draining power. You can set more aggressive display power settings to have the laptop dim and turn off the display when you’re not using it.
Windows offers power plans that can quickly change your laptop’s power settings to different profiles. For example, you can have your computer in Balanced mode most of the time and switch to Power saver mode when you need every bit of power you can get. Each power plan’s settings can be modified individually. You’ll find power plans in the Control Panel’s Power Options window.
Apps that are using a lot of CPU cause extra battery drain. Look under the Process or Detail tab in Task Manager to see if you can close anything using a lot of CPU. Giving the CPU less to do will vastly increase battery life.
As well as closing apps using a lot of CPU, closing apps running at the same time can make a huge difference – besides, most of the time you’re only looking at one thing. Don’t run anything you don’t need.
Do you have a mouse plugged in? What about your phone or tablet? When they’re plugged in, your laptop will be charging them. If you’re charging another device, you’re going to use a lot of battery.
If you step away from your laptop for a few minutes, its screen will still be on, draining power. You can set more aggressive display power settings to have the laptop dim and turn off the display when you’re not using it.
Windows offers power plans that can quickly change your laptop’s power settings to different profiles. For example, you can have your computer in Balanced mode most of the time and switch to Power saver mode when you need every bit of power you can get. Each power plan’s settings can be modified individually. You’ll find power plans in the Control Panel’s Power Options window.