Can I Leave a Laptop Running All the Time?

✴️ Deciding to leave a laptop running all the time boils down to two things: your convenience and a decision.

✴️ OK to leave a laptop running all the time?
It’s perfectly fine to leave a laptop running all the time, but you’ll need to have it plugged in. This will keep the battery fully charged at all times, and possibly shorten the battery’s lifespan, but it’s a decision of convenience and how best to maximize your use of the device.

Chapters
0:00 Leave a Laptop Running All the Time
1:09 It all comes down to battery life
1:20 Batteries die
2:50 Use battery to between 80% and 10%
3:15 Use a matching charger
3:50 The pace of technology

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #laptop #battery

[peppa]

Quick note - some modern laptops offer 'conservation modes' which limit the maximum and minimum charge levels of the battery. If you want to use your laptop plugged in for a long time, use that.

[adetibakayode]

Thanks so much for the Delineation sir

[themadatheist]

I like how my LT bought earlier this year has a option to keep the battery at certain percentages while plugged in.
I would've loved that when I had one 10 years ago.

[JimE]

I only use a laptop and it is plugged in about 16 hours a day so this info was really informative. I had often wondered if I was killing the thing or not. When I shut it down at night I just unplug it. Thanks for looking in my head. JimE

[noahbrewer]

I found this pretty helpful, honestly.

[TomasLKarlik]

I am conflicted with this advice. As opposed to phones, which drain the battery even when charging, laptops commonly bypass the battery and run fully off of grid power while plugged in. That means the battery is getting charged up to 100% and then stays there (disregarding natural charge loss) - it is not getting drained and recharged over and over again (which, again, is what happens with smartphones if you let them plugged in, and which is why you shouldn't use those while they're being charged to avoid overheating the battery). That drain/charge cycle has big impact on battery life, which is commonly measured in drain/charge cycles it can handle until significant drop in capacity anyway.

However, you're definitely right that keeping the battery at 100% all the time is not doing it a service either. I don't know which of these two effects have greater impact on batter life. Tbf I thought it was better to have a laptop plugged in rather than force a charge cycle, but I'm not sure about that, only a gut feeling.

It would be cool if there was an option to charge the battery to just 80% or similar, to get the best of both worlds. Or, ideally, have it run in a two-step control mode - it stops charging at around 80%, and then retrigger only when it falls below around 40% (which, provided you have it plugged in 24/7, could easily take months to fall that low due to natural charge loss).

[buwgokn]

I am a software developer by trade. Since about 2000 or so, my employer's standard developer machines have been laptops. So-called 'desktop replacement' laptops... very powerful laptops indeed. They provided us with docking stations, two large monitors, keyboard, mouse, etc. I generally left the laptops on 24x7, and rarely un-docked them, except maybe to travel to the home office or something like that. So the batteries were on 100% charge literally for years. Even when traveling, I would generally run the laptop on the travel charger and not the battery. By the end of life of the laptop, I might get 20 minutes of battery time. The batteries were practically never used, and when they were used, they were useless.

Recent laptops now have a power option to charge the battery up to 80% instead of keeping them topped at 100%. I don't know if that will extend the battery lifespan or not. The feature is too new to tell. We shall see...

[lllll]

controlling battery levels should be more widely known and used. the default setting of 100% charge all the time is a bad idea for a lot of users

[MikaelKKarlsson]

To improve the lifespan of todays Li-Po and Li-Ion batteries, avoid primarily having it discharge completely if you can avoid it.
Some laptops come with the optional functionality to also keep the charge from ever reaching 100, which is also not ideal. Without that function built in though, it's not really a practical goal to aim for by manually unplugging the charger. Just avoid the complete discharge situation.

If you're putting away a device, storing it with a charge around 50-60% would be a good target.

Never actually "excercise" modern batteries.

[ncrdisabled]

i have a dell laptop that is 1.5 years old and the battery is bad I can not replace it as its soldered in place .

[doonguitarlessons]

Hi, thanks for the info. I just wanted to ask if leaving my Lenovo laptop plugged in when I have set the battery to conservative mode okay?
By that I mean it won't charge it more than 60%

[msun]

With modern laptops, temperature seems to be the main shortener of battery life rather than whether the battery is cycled or not.

[ivangaming]

Mate, thank you so much, now I know that i can let my laptop be on all night so i can grind in some games but i will do it just sometimes cuz i want to keep it safe a bit and im not worried anymore.:D

[WyzrdCat]

If it's truly purposed as a desktop role you can avoid the pitfalls of leaving it plugged in by going into BIOS and limiting the total charge to around 60%. This preserves the life ideally, but of course that won't matter much if you forget to turn it off if you ever use the charge because it'll only be at 60% anyway lol.

[MrMac]

Another reason to shut off and restart. When a laptop goes into sleep mode and you wake it up,
in ( LINUX ) it does not restart the fan and may over heat, I found this out in two Laptops using Linux.

[vanneslee]

mine is always on 24/7 for 1 year now. but i my temp is always 34c because am running it power saver mode. also new laptop today has this feature called "conservation mode" in legion 5 laptop that it won't charge the laptop even if you plug-in in the wall and always stays at 60% battery. last check on my battery life still at 99% capacity only 1% is gone for whole year :)

[barryhutchinson]

If it helps any, I have mine connected to a wifi smart plug. It's on for an hour, then it goes off for an hour, then back on again. This process repeats itself 24 hours a day. It's been 3 months, and nothing has broken, as yet.

[RachelCop]

I'm just wondering what if you have overcharged your laptop for 2 years?
That's what I did and my laptop seems fine but I noticed the battery status is draining, I'm unsure if unplugging it will mess it up or not

[bam]

i have an old toshiba satellite it has a bad battery and wanted to know if i keep it unpluged for a couple of days while im gone will it hurt it

[MrTripleXXX]

I've done it all the time, no issue. Had my first laptop for 7+ years, still have it. Don't use it much anymore because it's specs just can't keep up with modern tech. It only has 4GB RAM. Anyway my first laptop I kept on all the time for all those years, with a restart once every month or so. It's still alive and kicking.
I do it with my gaming laptop too which I've had for 2 years. No problem with that either.
Unless it has a habit of getting hot or something on idle, it will be fine.