Is it advisable to keep your laptop plugged in 24/7? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Is continuous laptop charging a problem? Does using it while charging affect the laptop battery lifespan? Let's explore these questions together.

You want your laptop always fully charged and ready to use at any time, but you're aware that this can damage laptops, phones, and any other electronic devices. So what should you do? Should you charge your laptop fully or use it until the battery is depleted and then charge?

Accept that there's no perfect solution

Before we delve into the laptop battery issue, optimal charging methods, and what laptop manufacturers have introduced, let's revisit the perspective on the battery lifespan of electronic devices like mobile phones or laptops nowadays.

Batteries have a limited lifespan. The battery in your phone or laptop will be in use for years before you replace it with a new one, and it's essential to accept the fact that it's not designed to last forever.

Batteries have a lifespan with a certain number of charge cycles - typically from 500 to 1,000 cycles. Since you started using your laptop, you've been shortening the lifespan of the battery. For optimal use, your laptop battery should not be exposed to excessive heat and should not be kept below 20%. We shouldn't be frugal with battery usage or let the device run out of battery for too long.

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In recent years, the quality of electronic device batteries has significantly improved. Don't let the discomfort of an old battery you used a decade or 15 years ago affect how you use your laptop today. We know that laptops used in the early 2000s had very short battery life despite being well-maintained, but today's laptops are much larger and have a longer lifespan. You might even replace your laptop before needing a battery replacement.

Simply use your laptop in the most comfortable way. Here are some things to pay attention to and some simple tips to better preserve your battery.

Don't fret about excessive battery charging

There's a rumor that overcharging a laptop battery can damage it. There are many ways to reduce the lifespan of your battery, but overcharging is not one of them.

Even older laptops come with built-in protection against overcharging and the risk of battery swelling due to excessive energy input. You might risk damaging your laptop with a cheap, substandard charger, but using an original or high-quality replacement charger won't turn your battery into a lithium-ion bomb.

When a laptop battery reaches 100% charge, it stops charging and only resumes when the battery level drops below 100%. Nowadays, some smart chargers can automatically cut off power when the device is fully charged and resume charging only when the device starts discharging below 100%, ensuring the device stays at full charge.

Make the most of smart charging features on your laptop

Many modern laptops support smart charging features designed to safeguard the laptop battery and prolong its lifespan. MacBook boasts a feature called Battery Health Management, similar to the Optimized Charging feature on iPhones. When active, this feature takes into account your daily usage patterns and waits to fully charge the battery until just before you typically use it.

This technology works well if you plug in your MacBook for charging every night and then unplug it for work or school. If your usage schedule is less predictable or you hardly ever unplug the laptop, this feature won't maximize its potential.

On Windows 11, there's a feature called Smart Charging, entirely different and functioning differently from Windows Battery Saver. Instead of optimizing charging time just to keep your battery always at 100%, Smart Charging prevents your laptop from charging to 100% to extend battery life. However, this feature is only equipped on certain devices depending on different brands.

Explore more: Does using a laptop while charging affect the battery?

Furthermore, many laptop manufacturers such as HP, Dell, and ASUS provide separate battery management tools allowing you to customize battery usage rules similarly through Windows software or BIOS settings. By using these settings, you can customize your laptop to not charge the battery beyond 80%, even if you keep it plugged in all day.

If possible, remove the battery to limit overheating

As laptops and batteries become increasingly integrated, it's rare to find removable batteries, especially in sleek, modern laptops. However, if your laptop has a removable battery, consider taking it out when using it as a desktop computer. Insert the battery only when you're truly on the go, using the laptop at a cafe or meeting clients, but remove it when you're at home.

If your laptop lacks a removable battery, you can still extend battery life by keeping it cool. Use and charge it on a stand to help dissipate heat effectively.

Is it advisable to keep my laptop plugged in continuously?

Currently, you might be pondering what to do with your laptop: charge it only when needed, keep it plugged in continuously, or adopt a flexible approach based on battery capacity?

Unfortunately, there's no precise answer to this issue. Many laptop manufacturers simply don't provide a clear response (or don't address this matter). Apple, in the past, advised against keeping a MacBook plugged in continuously, but their battery-selling website no longer offers this recommendation.

If you search through HP's support documents, you'll find a FAQ page on laptop battery charging, where they acknowledge exactly what we've discussed here - charging degrades the battery, unavoidable, and keeping it at a low charge can extend the battery life. In general, their suggestion is to charge the battery as infrequently as possible.

You'll find other manufacturers either sidestepping the discussion of the uncomfortable truth that laptop battery lifespan is limited or providing similar advice. For instance, Dell advises unplugging your laptop when it's fully charged and only plugging it back in when the battery drops below 50%.

These are technically accurate recommendations but somewhat impractical. Nowadays, many gaming laptops and high-performance graphic design models need to be continuously powered to operate at peak performance. Having to plug in while working or gaming is something users have to accept and is hard to avoid.

Conclusion

The advice for you is that everything should be based on reality; charge your laptop battery as infrequently as possible depending on how you use your laptop.

If you know you'll be heading out the next day, fully charge your laptop to avoid interruptions. Additionally, you can set up smart charging to only charge your device during specific periods, optimizing battery lifespan.

Finally, if you rarely use your laptop without being plugged in or use it outdoors, there's probably no need to worry too much about complex charging strategies. If you have a gaming laptop that consumes a lot of power, requiring continuous charging for usage, there's little sense in stressing about the battery health over many years of gaming.

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