Advice to maximize your Laptop battery efficiency-Macs and PC’s
Computers are a great part of our lives. We work on them, make our money transactions, we socialise and chat, have fun and watch movies. Basically they are connected to our lifestyle. Who can imagine their life without one?
Taking that for granted, sometimes we forget that those machines need to be taken care of to ensure maximum lifetime and performance. Pc’s have to be cleaned once every 1–2 months to keep temperatures under control. An annual software setup (format) is really valuable to guarantee uninterrupted working condition and a hardware update when the system becomes really outdated is a good call.
For Macs there are some basic routines someone can do:
- SMC reset
- Nvram reset
- Start in safe mode, to clear system cache
- Reinstall macOS if the system is greatly malfunctioning.
The first 3 processes can be conducted at any time without problems. Actually they are worth doing to keep the system in great shape, both software and hardware-wise. But is that everything?
Laptops, in general, have one extra part that needs maintenance and that is, as u can imagine, the battery. At this article we will focus entirely on MacBook battery which is a lithium polymer (LiFePO4) also called ‘’ lipo’ used at newer MacBooks and how charging and usage can be altered for better health and lifespan.
I will not get off-topic with difficult chemistry theory and complicated mathematics. The main purpose is to present to you my project experiment I am carrying out since January which will later be formed to a research paper for review. So let’s begin.
I used my 13-inch MacBook pro 2018 with Touch-Bar that is powered by a 58Wh Li-Po battery and the original 65w battery by apple. All values (battery voltage, battery cycle, charge rate and percentage ) are being gathered by system information and the application called coconut battery available here: https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/ . The laptop is mainly used without being plugged in and the battery percentage was counted just after the charge was unplugged. Here are the results :
By viewing the results, one can say that battery loses its capacity as battery cycles rise but that's not entirely the case. We can see that small charged up to 20–25% and working with the charger plugged in really helps the battery not only losing capacity but instead gaining more because of lithium polymer restoration. It also maximized battery voltage so the battery can use less amperage to cover the power (watts) needed. Keeping the battery temperature in normal conditions is crucial but that can be checked within the program.
Of course, I cannot present many results because the experiment is still going on. The main focus is to prove that battery cycles is not a qualitative and for sure NOT the most objective factor to ensure efficiency and lifetime as much as possible. The battery is still a disposable component but keeping it at a great shape saves not only the environment from unwanted overwaste pollution but your pocket as well ;)
Anything you would like to ask to feel free to contact me at drimpas@uniwa.gr. Hope this advice helps to keep your laptops at its max potential for as long as possible. Peace.
