Unplug your laptop now or it will stay plugged in forever

Do you want to be tied to a socket your whole life? of course not. This is why you buy a laptop in the first place.To some extent, many of us believe that our Laptops should always be plugged in to improve their performance. This is a myth that’s slowly ruining your laptop. Once your laptop is charged, you need to unplug it or you might be permanently tethered to the wall.

Many laptops require charging throughout the workday and throughout the evening. We don’t even think about it; we just plug it in everywhere. We charge at work, at home, at coffee shops—a collective addiction to 100% battery on our laptops. There’s nothing more frustrating than a laptop that won’t charge, but your charging addiction may be accelerating the problem.

Kent Griffith, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego, says keeping the battery at 100 percent charge is the worst thing you can do to your computer. He studies battery degradation and says that this fully charged state puts a huge strain on your laptop.

“When your laptop battery is in this worst-case condition (100 percent charge) for weeks or months at a time, it can take a toll on it,” Griffith told Gizmodo in a phone interview. Quite a lot of damage.” “So when you take it off and expect it to last 8 or 10 hours, it may only give you half of what you expected because it degrades so much in that time.”

According to Griffith, the optimal state of a battery is between 20 and 80 percent. He recommends fully charging your laptop, then unplugging it and letting it run all day. You should keep your battery in this “mid-range” area for most of its life to extend the battery’s performance.

The reason why a laptop is stressed at 100% charge is because of its lithium-ion battery. It consists of two layers, one made of graphite and the other of lithium cobalt oxide, with lithium ions passing between them. A fully charged battery appears to be (mostly) all lithium ions in the graphite layer, which releases energy into the computer when it enters the lithium cobalt oxide layer.

When there are too many lithium ions on one side, the battery becomes stressed. It performs best when the number of lithium ions in the entire battery is roughly equal (i.e. 50%). Griffith also pointed out that high-speed charging cables can damage the integrity of the battery by transferring lithium ions too quickly.

origin of myth

You don’t need to leave your desk to understand where this myth comes from. Many of us believe that our laptops should always be plugged into a power source, and this may be due to your computer’s antecedent. Macs, PCs, and all desktop computers before laptops have been permanently plugged into a power source.

This is flawed logic. Your laptop doesn’t draw power from a wall outlet like a desktop computer does. Instead, it draws energy from a battery. At the same time, your battery remains in this high-stress state, performing numerous small charges between 99% and 100%.

Another reason people “charge forever” is so their computers never die, I hear you. While letting your laptop’s battery drain and recharge is healthier for the battery, it’s not as convenient. With a permanently plugged-in laptop, you’ll always have a fully charged battery ready to go wherever you go.

But this doesn’t work out well in the long run. With older laptops that charge forever, you may have a fully charged battery, but a full charge won’t get you that far.Newest Apple M3 MacBook Battery life is advertised as 18 hours, but poor charging habits over the years may cut that time in half.

Keeping your laptop charged permanently is not a way to optimize performance, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Still, laptops are constantly plugged into a power source.

why it is so common

There are two reasons why notebook computers are “permanently charged”. On the one hand, it feels like it should be true. You want to get the most out of your computer, so connecting it directly to a power source seems like the best way to get power. but it is not the truth.

Another reason is that most people rarely leave their desks to use their computers. It’s easier not to think about it and keep the laptop plugged in just like a desktop computer.

The problems start when you step away from your desk. You embark on a journey, on the train, and come to a sparsely populated coffee shop. Suddenly, a weak battery is the most noticeable feature of a laptop.

There’s a lot of talk about smartphone battery life, but I don’t think it’s an issue due to its optimized charging capabilities. iPhone learns your charging mode and slows down charging overnight so that your phone is charged at 100% for the shortest amount of time. This feature is very helpful for smartphone users as they usually only charge their phones while sleeping.

new Windows and Apple laptop These same optimization features are available, but they’re still not a perfect solution if your laptop is charging 24/7. The optimizer will only slow down battery charging up to 100%, once it reaches 100% it can’t help you. A good solution is to simply leave your laptop plugged in overnight and optimize battery charging, but remember that you’ll have to unplug it throughout the day.

Therefore, the responsibility of maintaining your battery falls on you. Lithium batteries naturally degrade over time, but there are a number of things you can do to extend the life of your computer. Stop charging your laptop past 100% today so you can be worry-free tomorrow.