do laptop batteries really go bad or

[WhyMe]

are they designed for a certain amount of cycles? i am still using a older laptop. i have been through 2 batteries and am on my third. whne i do a diagnostic on the battery it shows the amount of cycles it has done.

So are they programmed to die at a certain cycle? if one had the ability to reset the cycle , would it come back to life?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Li-ion cells don't last forever. They are typically designed for around 500-1000 cycles, depending on usage.

What kills laptop batteries is keeping them at near 100% SOC at all times while you have the laptop running on AC power. If that's how you mostly use your laptop, you should consider enabling battery saving mode where the computer will keep the battery at around 60% charge.

 

[WhyMe]

one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12 unlike the $200 we paid for my daughters mac book

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by WhyMe
one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12
$12 for an OEM battery?

 

[14Accent]

Laptop batteries are probably good for 3 years, at least at designed capacity. All Li-Ion batteries lose capacity over time.

Lucky for me, my laptop is nothing more than a glorified desktop, now, so the junk battery in it doesn't bother me in the least.

 

[WhyMe]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by WhyMe
one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12
$12 for an OEM battery?



ebay. same place i got the last one. last one lasted 2 years. the new battery shows 5 hour on time while the old one was less than an hour with a full charge

 

[wrcsixeight]

I have a 9 year old Dell laptop. The original battery made about 4 years and had 6 18650 Li-ion cells

I have had at least 4 replacement batteries since, all of which had 9 18650 cells.

3 of those generic replacements were lucky to last a year.

This latest one said it was a 'genuine dell' replacement and has indeed been the best replacement battery.

I have opened up the old batteries carefully and found usually one cell was quite poor, while the others would recharge and maintain 4.2 volts for a week or more.

But compared to a Panasonic NCR 18650b (3400mah), in my headlamp, they would last about 1/5th the amount of time. I basically quit bothering using them.

Th replacement batteries cells, those that I could find specs for, were 1800 to 1900 mah, when new.

Since it is usually just one cell which fails, a lot of cheapo packs are actually used cells, rewrapped and built into a new battery pack.

The 'genuine' Dell laptop battery was not much more expensive than the other brands which failed in short order, and while it has certainly retained its capacity much longer than all the other replacements, it could also be a 9 year old battery that was sitting on a shelf that whole time, as when i bought my first replacement, the 'genuine dell' was 4x the price of the one I purchased.

 

[bdcardinal]

I had to get a new battery for my Alienware M18 laptop. I think it was ~$50 on Amazon. Probably the problem is that I keep it plugged in all the time.

 

[MoneyJohn]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete

What kills laptop batteries is keeping them at near 100% SOC at all times while you have the laptop running on AC power. If that's how you mostly use your laptop, you should consider enabling battery saving mode where the computer will keep the battery at around 60% charge.

How do you do this? I have searched a lot on this and didn't find any solution. There are apps that alert you when the battery reaches to a certain point but then you need to remove AC power. That defeats the purpose.
The goal is to maintain the battery at 60-80% and run laptop of AC power bypassing battery

 

[henni]

Lenovo Thinkpad enables the Power Manager service to keep battery at about 78% capacity if plugged in. That is their way of maintaining maximum lifespan. Other manufacturers may have a similar .DLL or .EXE

 

[Kira]

When the battery in my 2008 vintage MacBook Pro died I got replacement which basically doesn't hold a charge. I can get 40 minutes from it charged.

I later learned there's a charging card or some other kind of conditioner which fails in 'em.

 

[Dave Sherman]

I have found it's a combination of the cells just not holding a charge like they used to, but it can also get out of whack because the smarts in the battery that calculate the battery capacity get out of calibration. I picked up a secondhand Acer netbook that reported it only had 1 hour of battery fully charged. I noticed it would get down to about 5% and it kept reporting it had 6 minutes left for another half hour. I finally left it on until it really died, and now it reports about 3 hours. I bought a new battery for it; it's more like 5 hours with a fresh one.

 

[Rand]

my 5 year old t520 is still going strong I keep it on battery max lifespan mode which wont charge it to more than 80% or so.

it gets infrequent use, and when used is mostly on AC with occasional battery use...

ie 15min to setup a router etc.

 

[Andrew1972]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by WhyMe
one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12
$12 for an OEM battery?




Buyer beware, Chinese knock offs label themselves as OEM but really laptop batteries with less capacity new and last about 6 months. The upside is you can buy them every 6 months and likely be ahead compared to a true OEM battery.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by MoneyJohn
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete

What kills laptop batteries is keeping them at near 100% SOC at all times while you have the laptop running on AC power. If that's how you mostly use your laptop, you should consider enabling battery saving mode where the computer will keep the battery at around 60% charge.

How do you do this?
I'm afraid this is manufacturer specific. For example, Lenovo calls it "Conservation Mode" and it is enabled through the Lenovo Vantage utility. You would have to research if the maker of your laptop offers something similar.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by madRiver
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by WhyMe
one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12
$12 for an OEM battery?




Buyer beware, Chinese knock offs label themselves as OEM but really laptop batteries with less capacity new and last about 6 months. The upside is you can buy them every 6 months and likely be ahead compared to a true OEM battery.

Exactly. That is what I was getting at.

A genuine 6-cell battery for my 7-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad is around $50.

BTW, I am still on my original battery, although it obviously doesn't hold anywhere near the original capacity. According to Lenovo power manager, current capacity is about 50% of original design capacity. Since I use the computer at my desk 99% of the time, it doesn't really matter to me.

 

[Smokescreen]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by madRiver
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by WhyMe
one good thing about this old laptop is the batteries are cheap. got the new one for $12
$12 for an OEM battery?




Buyer beware, Chinese knock offs label themselves as OEM but really laptop batteries with less capacity new and last about 6 months. The upside is you can buy them every 6 months and likely be ahead compared to a true OEM battery.

Exactly. That is what I was getting at.

A genuine 6-cell battery for my 7-year-old Lenovo ThinkPad is around $50.

BTW, I am still on my original battery, although it obviously doesn't hold anywhere near the original capacity. According to Lenovo power manager, current capacity is about 50% of original design capacity. Since I use the computer at my desk 99% of the time, it doesn't really matter to me.



This is exactly me.

I will add that Li-on batteries have a finite number of full charge cycles, meaning from completely empty to completely full.

So arbitrarily lets say they have 100 full charge battery life cycles. You can charge the battery 100x from zero to 100%. Or...you can charge the battery 50% to 100% 500x as you are not using the full cycle. Lenovo's battery management strategy is that it somewhat trickle changes the battery in a very small charge window so that the battery has 1000 or more charges. The numbers I have given aren't fact but just to illustrate.

People have applied this logic to cell phone batteries as well. There is a camp that say they can extend the over all life of the battery by charging when it hits 30% and charge only to 80%...not really an app for that tho....

 

[Hall]

Originally Posted by bdcardinal
Probably the problem is that I keep it plugged in all the time.
Why not use it without the battery ? Most will allow the battery to be removed and still operate as long as it's plugged in.

 

[BearZDefect]

From experience I agree that those "Genuine Dell" batteries available on eBay are counterfeit.

Re battery charge management, Dell doesn't supply a Windows app to do this, but their Latitude laptops that contain a real Dell battery pack have charging options in the BIOS setup to set charging thresholds. So someone who uses the laptop plugged in most of the time can set it to stop charging at 95% and start charging at 80% (for example) to extend the life of the battery.

And keep in mind that heat accelerates degradation of the cells, so try to keep devices out of the sun.

 

[PimTac]

Originally Posted by hallstevenson
Originally Posted by bdcardinal
Probably the problem is that I keep it plugged in all the time.
Why not use it without the battery ? Most will allow the battery to be removed and still operate as long as it's plugged in.






The problem with that is if the power goes out or disconnected you could create some problems.