Battery life, alongside storage, is the one thing we can never have enough of . Without enough “juice,” even the best, most beefiest laptops get turned into unusable bricks.
Our needs in regards to endurance vary wildly — some only tend to work whilst on the go for a couple of hours before, eventually, reaching a wall outlet. Others, however, need as many hours of battery life as possible.
The way in which we use our laptops differs, but one thing’s for certain: there’s no such thing as having too long a battery life .
The longer our laptops last, the longer we are able to work on our projects, to create, study, and explore.
For many a year, mainstream laptops couldn’t really give us the kind of endurance we wanted and, more often than not, needed.
Now, though, in 2023, we have a litany of laptops at our disposal, some of which can easily last for 15 hours on a single charge (if not more, depending on the usage).
Those are mostly developed by Apple, but the Windows side of things isn’t all that much worse — AMD’s U-series processors are incredibly efficient and are, by all means, worth the asking price.
Getting ten hours of battery life is no longer as rare as it was in the past, and we couldn’t be happier for that being the case.
Still, what if you need more? What if your processor isn’t all that efficient, your battery is not as large, and your needs are not as modest?
Down below, we’ll take a closer look at a myriad of different ways in which you can “squeeze out” as good a battery life as possible, regardless if you’re using a Windows laptop or one running macOS.
Windows Laptops — How to Extend Battery LifeYou can prolong your laptop’s battery life by doing the following:
Lower the brightness — This one’s obvious but, to be fair, cranked up brightness does incur a tremendous hit to battery life. Lower it whenever you can.
Turn on Battery Saver — Click on the battery icon in the lower right-hand corner of the Windows taskbar. Once a small menu pops up, you’ll be able to see your quick settings — one of which is called “Battery Saver.”Turning it on is essentially the easiest and quickest way of prolonging battery life (alongside lowered brightness).
Depending on your laptop’s internals, you might not even notice that big of a difference performance-wise (especially if you’re just browsing the web and doing general productivity work).
For more demanding tasks, however, you’ll definitely want to turn it off.
Use the most efficient power mode — Go to Settings > System > Power & Battery and then, under the “Power Mode” setting, select “Best power efficiency.” This’ll reduce your CPU’s operating frequency and, in general, slow everything down without incurring too big of a penalty performance-wise. That being said, if it’s turned on — and you happen to start pushing your laptop — you will notice a difference in speed.
Power Saver Mode on LaptopsSet your laptop to its most efficient performance profile — Most laptops nowadays come with at least three different power profiles (which are created by the OEM itself). Their nomenclature varies but, for the most part, they adhere to the following: Silent, Balanced The first one basically limits the power draw of your components which, in turn, lowers internal temperatures and, by proxy, fan noise. The last one allows your processor and graphics card to draw as much power as possible. Balanced, as the name implies , offers a solid middle ground.In other words: the more modest the profile, the less power your components will draw.
And so, if you’re not doing anything overly intensive like video editing, gaming, 3D modeling et cetera — and you want to extend your battery life — make sure to set your laptop to its Silent profile, as opposed to Balanced or Performance.
The easiest way of doing this is by simply pressing the appropriate key combination — Fn + F on ASUS laptops, Fn + Q on Lenovo, and so on and so forth.
Lower your display’s refresh rate — If you have, say, a 90Hz display (or faster), switching it to 60Hz will help extend your laptop’s runtime by a fair bit; Windows laptops , unlike the latest MacBook Pros, still do n’t come with variable refresh rates which, in turn, affect their battery life by quite a bit.Change Refresh Rate WindowsTurn off Bluetooth/Wi-Fi — If you don’t need a constant internet connection, turn Wi-Fi off. Leaving it on will have a much bigger impact on your battery life than you’d expect. Bluetooth isn’t as big of a culprit, but the same holds true nonetheless.Close all unnecessary apps and background processes — This one’s self-explanatory.Turn off keyboard backlighting — One of the easiest battery life “fixes” around.Disconnect all external media — Much of the same holds true for all unnecessary peripherals and external media like SSDs, hubs, docks, and whatever else.Tiny 11—The Core Windows 11 ExperienceThis is essentially a stripped-down version of Windows 11 and, needless to say, it includes everything one needs to get up and running without the extra (and wholly superfluous) bloatware.
It doesn’t require TPM or SecureBoot, it needs just 2GB of RAM (or less), and will only consume a measly 8GB of storage once installed.
It isn’t officially supported though, and it won’t automatically update, so that’s definitely something worth keeping in mind. Still, users have reported tremendous gains in battery life, so it’s more than worth recommending.
You can download Tiny 11 at the following link and, if it happens to have piqued your interest, make sure to give the embedded video a look:
Windows Laptops with OLED Displays—Battery Life TipsOLED displays are a sight to behold, in no small part because of their awe-inspiring contrast ratio and incredible color coverage.
They’re not as energy efficient as their alternatives, though, so that kind of “eye candy” sure does come at a cost.
All methods listed above are still valid here, but we do have an additional few tips to share if you happen to own an OLED laptop:
Lower brightness is a must — If you have an OLED display — and you need as much battery life as possible — make sure to lower the brightness battery life just turning it down a notch; OLEDs are notoriously-power hungry.Turn on “Dark Mode” everywhere — Windows has a built-in “dark mode.” Activate it immediately. If you’re browsing the web and your favorite websites happen to have such a mode, turn it on. Dark mode is absolutely vital if you have an OLED display as each individual pixel is self-lit. If a good number of them aren’t activated (and are, as a result, pitch black) or are only marginally bright (to portray a shade of gray, for instance), then the panel itself isn’t going to draw as much power.Dark Mode WindowsThis also holds true for any wallpaper you might have: make sure it’s as dark as possible.