Should I Remove My Laptop Battery To Increase its Life? [Geeks Weigh In]

laptop battery life Does running your laptop on AC power damage the battery? Should you remove the battery to increase its lifetime? If you own a laptop, these questions have probably crossed your mind before. The short answer to both questions is: most likely yes. Curious to learn why? Continue reading for all the juicy details.

To support my arguments and recommendations made at the end of this article, I have to provide some background information. So let’s start with the basics…

How Does A Laptop Battery Work?

The type of battery found in laptops today is called Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion). In this type of battery, lithium ions are loosely embedded (intercalated) in the porous carbon of the anode (negative electrode). When the battery is used, the ions flow from the anode to the cathode (positive electrode) through the electrolyte and the separator. This process releases energy and results in a discharge of the battery. When charging, energy is applied to make the ions move in the opposite direction. A charge thus forces them to return to the anode.

How Do Lithium-Ion Batteries Age?

Theoretically, this process can go back and forth forever. Practically, however, the lifetime of a battery is limited. What happens is that ions get trapped and are no longer available to flow from the anode to the cathode. In other words, the battery loses capacity over time. In fact, Li-Ion batteries start aging the moment they are produced.

What Causes Lithium-Ion Batteries to Age?

Several things:

High voltage and Overcharge
Laptops typically have a charge threshold, which prevents overcharging and high voltage. However, constantly keeping the battery at a full charge also is a stress factor that contributes to aging.
Heat
Room temperature (21°C / 70°F) or higher temperatures promote chemical reactions, ultimately causing Li-Ion batteries to lose capacity.
Low Temperatures
Temperatures below 0°C (32°F) can damage materials inside the battery.
Prolonged Storage
Li-Ion batteries self-discharge at a rate of approximately 8% per month at 21°C (70°F). This increases with higher temperatures. When stored over long periods of time, the battery can reach a state of deep discharge (charge below 20%).
Physical Shocks
Batteries can break.

To Remove or Not To Remove

As indicated in the introduction, the answer is: yes, remove the battery to extend its lifetime!

When you continuously run your laptop on a reliable AC power source, you should definitely remove your battery. Firstly, the battery will not be exposed to heat from your laptop. Secondly, there is not even a remote chance that it will be overcharged or exposed to high voltage. Hence, removing the battery eliminates the two main causes for battery aging.

When I say remove, I don’t mean that you should simply take out the battery. Please turn off your laptop, remove the battery, and then boot your laptop. For safety reasons, please do not remove the battery while your laptop is running.

What Should I Do To Increase My Battery Lifetime?

You can do multiple things. I wrote an entire article on this topic (link above). Below you will find a summary.

Proper treatment of a Li-Ion battery:

never discharge battery below 20%
always partially discharge, then recharge
cycle* battery every few weeks or after 30 partial dis/charges
charge at lower voltage (if possible)
never leave charged battery in laptop when running on AC power

* Cycle means that you discharge the battery to around 20% and then recharge it fully. Going below 20% equals a deep discharge, something you will want to avoid.

Preparing a Li-ion battery for storage:

charge battery to 40-50%
remove from laptop
put into an air-tight zip-lock bag
store in fridge at 4-8°C
re-charge to 40-50% every few weeks

When storing your battery, take note how fast it self-discharges and make sure it never goes below 20%.

laptop battery life

For times when you have to run your laptop on battery, you should have a look at this article: 20 Ways To Increase Laptop’s Battery Life

What are your experiences with laptop batteries? Do you go through all the hoops to extend the lifetime of your battery?

Image Credits:MedusArt, Pavel Ignatov, D.R.3D, Andresr

Tagged: battery • battery life • laptop • pc maintenance

Tina Sieber

Tina is a freelance writer, editor, natural scientist, and cosmopolitan with a strong interest in sustainability. She has been writing for MakeUseOf since late 2007 and also is the Editor for MakeUseOf Answers.

Similar Stuff

Toby

Don’t run a MacBook Pro without a battery – your processor will be reduced to about 1GHz

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Ha! Interesting, I didn’t know that. That seems pretty silly. Why would it do that?
seb

lol, amazing, what if you took ur hdd out? would it run at 500mhz? and wonder about ram, maybe without one, it still boots up, but lets say at 16mhz, like my first pc?

Francisco José Peralta Pastor

Not even once since I bought it. Ok, maybe once, but only when I was cleaning the thing. And the battery life remains as it was when I bought it.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

What laptop model do you have?

Francisco José Peralta Pastor

Sorry for the long delay on my reply. Lot’s of work and no time for other stuff =(

My laptop is a Compaq Presario CQ40.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Interesting.

My best experience with a battery so far was with a HP Compaq. It went 5 years with only a little loss in capacity (from 3.5 to 2.5 hours in the beginning) before I sold it. Not sure it had a Li-Ion battery, though.

http://www.cornishgamerforum.co.uk/ Scutterman

I tend to find that the laptop packs it in before the battery does

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

What do you mean it packs it in? It breaks or you replace it because you want to upgrade the hardware?

http://www.cornishgamerforum.co.uk/ Scutterman

Usually the laptop starts to slow down without an easy cure (my past two laptops didn’t come with install cds), until it’s almost unusable. After that, the bluescreens start.

My last laptop is still going at the moment, I switched to a computer because I wanted a bit more power, but before I switched I found it was getting a bit unstable. It was starting to find it hard to run skype and watch youtube at the same time, and even playing Minecraft was almost unbearable. The battery, however still seems to be doing all right when I use it.

I guess it all comes down to the quality of the hardware, the quality of the battery, and how you use the laptop.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Did you just say that you rather buy a new laptop than to re-install!? I hope not!
Even if the laptop doesn’t come with an install CD/DVD, it should have a recovery option / partition.Unfortunately, with Windows it’s normal to re-install every one to two years. More often if you test a lot of software like I do.

Anyways, try Linux if there is no way to re-install Windows. Might be a revelation, who knows.

http://www.cornishgamerforum.co.uk/ Scutterman

I wouldn’t rather buy a new laptop than re-install. My first laptop’s charger port broke (it melted two power jacks) and my second one is still in use, though less so because I got a desktop for the extra hardware power.

I I tried Ubuntu twice. Both times I was faced with driver and other issues. Then the first time the partition managed to corrupt itself, and the second time it refused to boot after updating to 11.10

When I try linux again I’ll probably go with Fedora or CentOS, but until then I’m happy with a computer that works without fighting it.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Thanks for clarifying!

http://www.makeuseof.com/ Joel Lee

Are there any data sources or experiments that show the effects of these battery-prolonging measures? For example, what is the lifespan of a battery that is constantly plugged into AC vs. the lifespan of a battery that is carefully tended to?

That sort of information might be useful for determining whether these prolonging measures are even worth pursuing!

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Joel,

excellent questions. These studies do indeed exist. The Battery University discusses some of these data. No joke!

http://profiles.google.com/jonathantm Jonathan Maingot

Beh! Their data isn’t specific enough to this very simple issue.

We need data of people testing actual computers.

I know! I’m gonna go do something else and just keep using this laptop until I get another one! Yay problem solved!

Gregb7677

I read one article it says no need to remove, and then another says to do it. ugh!

http://twitter.com/lhamil64 Lee

Me too. And I’ve read some articles saying it wont hurt the battery to leave it plugged in all the time, and others saying it’s bad (or that it’s bad to charge it to 100%).

One interesting thing though. What if you have a Macbook without a removable battery? You can’t exactly take that out when you aren’t using it…

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

As long as the ventilation / cooling is efficient and the battery doesn’t get hot it’s not a big issue. Apparently, heat is what kills the Li-Ion battery.

Anonymous

And overcharging too, some poorly designed products continue to maintain it at 100% even when full.
Which is a bad thing for lithium ions.
So don’t blame the product if it goes into discharge once it hits 100%, it is to save your battery.

http://about.me/parrack Dave Parrack

Experience tells me you should your battery when not using it. Mine died on me after 12 months, and that was after using my laptop plugged in with the battery in for up to 12 hours a day.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

I’ve had the same experience with a laptop that got rather hot.

http://about.me/parrack Dave Parrack

Yes, my fan is constantly working overtime. It’s my fault for working my laptop too hard I guess.

http://www.smidgenpc.com M.S. Smith

I’m not aware of any safety concerns related to removing a laptop battery when it is running.

As far as life goes, this is all correct, removing a battery when you aren’t using it will improve life.

With that said, though, I don’t see much point in doing it. Okay, it will last longer – but batteries aren’t that expensive and laptops usually are getting long-in-tooth within 3 years. I’m just don’t think it’s worth the hassle.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Cheap? I disagree. Sure, a new battery is affordable, but it’s not cheap. Much more importantly, treating your hardware well also means it won’t end up on the mountain of trash as quickly, which is an overall good thing.

http://www.smidgenpc.com M.S. Smith

You’re right, cheap isn’t the proper word to use.

It does depend on your perspective. I’m going to buy a new laptop every 3 years anyway. So taking out my battery to increase life isn’t worth the hassle to me.

http://about.me/parrack Dave Parrack

After mine crapped out I looked at the price of replacing it and decided it wasn’t worth it when I’d be buying a new laptop in a couple of years time. I’d still rather it had lasted the life of the laptop though!

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Ever cleaned the heat sink? Try it, you’ll be amazed!

Centrino CPUs actually throttle their performance when they get too hot, so you’d be well advised not to let them overheat.
http://profiles.google.com/jonathantm Jonathan Maingot

Actually a reply to Tina’s comment to this the reply this one’s branched as a reply of.

I cleaned a laptop out once. Was great fun, and very thrilling putting back together wondering whether or not it would work again.

It worked better for a couple of months, then it started sucking again.

So, reinstall OS, still sucked a lot, WiFi didn’t work with some networks that it worked on before, so I got a new computer for two days wages. Gave the old one to a kid for Christmas. He was stoked.

(ps sorry for the distracting email Dave)

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

So what do you do with the laptop after 3 years?

If the battery still worked and had acceptable capacity, it would surely increase its re-sell value! From personal experience I know that re-selling is totally worth it, even for a 5 year old laptop that is in good condition.

http://www.smidgenpc.com M.S. Smith

I’ve found this site to be a good source for battery information:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

That’s where I got my information.

seb

You ARE joking, right?
Baterries are known to have a cycle period, mostly about 600 (approx 14-24 months), as they wear out (that afaik can be changed by Polish coders, but its a bit pricey, therefore useless). You can care about them, store them at fridge (lol), take them to bed, they WILL wear out no matter.
And for crying out loud, i bear not a laptop for storing a baterry, and in case of power failure – losing my data. Duh!
And yes, totally discharging and charging doesnt increase the life of a Li-Ion battery.
And no, the battery cannot be overcharged. While using AC, ure not using a battery.
Relax, ‘its not like you killed someone’ (couldnt help myslelf), its just a replaceable item. For some – right, Apple users? rotfl
Oh, Tina, where did u hear about 20% discharge point? Besides that weird “let me tell you, that you need to replace your battery soon” site?
rgds
seb

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Seb,

the lifetime of batteries is measured in charge/discharge cycles, Li-Ion batteries are no exception. However, this is not an absolute number, this is an estimation. If used with care, the number of cycles can be increased.

Of course using Li-Ion batteries wears them out. But even while not used, e.g. when sitting fully charged in a laptop that’s connected to AC power, they age. Fact is, they start aging the moment they are produced. Hence you should not buy a Li-Ion battery that has been sitting on a shelf for a year or two.

What can slow down the aging process is keeping the battery cool, i.e. storing it away from a warm laptop in a cool place. I didn’t say you could stop it from aging or wearing out, however, you can extend or increase its lifetime.

Studies have shown that a depth of discharge of 100% (i.e. no charge left) reduces the amount of possible charge/recharge cycles to 500 compared to 1500 for a 50% depth of discharge. Generally, it is recommended not to discharge Li-Ion batteries below 15-20%.

You have a point regarding power failures. If power failures or power fluctuations are a problem, then by all means use your battery! Once you have to get a new battery, use the old one to bridge a few minutes of power cuts and treat the new battery with care. That’s my advice. You can do whatever you want of course.

http://www.jackcola.org/ Jack Cola

I have a laptop that is always connected. I left the battery out when I first purchased it because of the reasons mentioned above, but found the AC source wasn’t that reliable. As soon as there was a small flicker in energy, the laptop shutoff, while a desktop still had enough power to continue running.

It happened quite often, so I put the battery back in. I don’t see the laptop being used as a laptop, so the battery is still in there.

However, over a year, there as been a decrease in the battery life.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

As mentioned below, power fluctuations or power cuts definitely warrant leaving the battery in as a backup.

http://www.techtip.org/ Asif Ahmed

I don’t agree with this at all..If any of your point would be tru, I wouldn’t be able to use my 1.5 Year laptop on a battery which still gives me an hour of backup. I have been using it on AC with the batteries in it.

It’s been a decade since these laptops are being manufactured and sold by Computer Companies. And they must have found a way to keep the batteries from overcharging.

I have used over 5 Laptops from Different companies and I have observed that there is very less you can do about saving battery life. The only thing you can do is, use it when you don’t have access to AC power.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Maybe your laptop doesn’t get hot, meaning your battery is always relatively cool.

Overcharging isn’t an issue with laptops that don’t keep charging when the battery is full and most have such a mechanism.

http://meena-tech.blogspot.com/ Meena Bassem

do these things apply to a phone battery too?

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Principally yes. However, you typically can not run your phone on AC power. Also, I would say phones don’t get as hot as laptop CPUs and cool off easier because they are smaller. So I gues it is less of a problem.

Kael_snip

removing battery can increase its life. how about your laptop without battery.. then accidentally. loss power.. what will you choose? battery? or internal parts? some manufacturer include auto stop charging. and direct it from current. maybe your pc is an pentium 2 or pentium 3… nice post.

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

As stated above, if reliability of AC power is an issue, there is no other way but to keep the battery in. In this case I would strongly recommend investing in a passive laptop cooler and make sure your fan is clean and the CPU heat sink working properly. Although I would recommend that in any case…

http://profiles.google.com/jonathantm Jonathan Maingot

(imho) there is one very important thing missing from this article: HOW MUCH extra life you get out of your battery by taking care of it.

If doing all the above save me (using my $450 Acer for an average of 6 hrs a day) – after two years – from having my laptop’s battery last 50% as long as when it was new… that’s significant.

If however, it’s 5%: meh.

Any data on this?

http://www.makeuseof.com/answers Tina

Good point, Jonathan.

Depending on how much you “abuse” the battery, I’m sure you can get over 50% of extra battery life out of it, e.g. make it last 3-5 years instead of 1-2. If, however, your laptop doesn’t overheat and has a charge threshold, which most laptops do, then you may be looking at only 5-10%.

Unfortunately, there is no simple standard answer. It simply depends…