Tips to Extend Laptop Battery Life

Power management is a critical thing to understand in laptops. It's possible to buy an expensive laptop and end up not using it because of bad power management practices.

[thenstop]

I've been watching you for a few years now, and you are one of the few youtubers than explain things on guides. Many of these "top pages" on certain search engines really suck. They say "copy these commands" with no explanation, which for new linux users, thats an issue because they don't understand what those commands do. Thanks for making actually good content.

[sysandy]

Thanks for another helpful video, Chris! I've always struggled with battery life on my Linux laptops over the years. I' have even gone to the extreme of using Apple macbooks since the battery life on those guys is amazing. However, I recently started playing around with Linux on the laptop again and these tips will come in handy. As a 20+yr Linux user I have played with various tweaks over the years but none of them provided much improvement. However, I was unaware of the tools you mentioned in this video. I will definitely have to revisit this and see if I can squeeze out better battery life. Thanks, again!

[jamesavent]

Hey Chris, really useful guide! For Windows, I use Process Lasso to restrict cores on a per app basis on my laptop. I can then use it on the desktop to set the priority of apps so games get more CPU power. Definitely worth a look!

[Cathyprime]

Perfect time for this video, thank you. I was just wondering how to extend my battery life on windows and bring it with line on linux, because on linux battery life was halved

[Tiamorg]

This helps a lot. Testing that manual setting in windows for my ryzen 7 4800h legion 5 got me the resunlts: at default, it goes up to 4.1-4.2ghz using 65-70w and like 90deg. At 99% max performance, it goes up to 2.9ghz(about 66% of the max frequency), but uses only 20w. It's a third of power, very low fan noise, and just 30% performance loss. Amazing. Thanks a lot.

[m.heyatzadeh]

Thanks for the great tips. I lowered my maximum processor limit to 50% while on battery. I also use dynamic GPU in order to save more battery.

[ArniesTech]

With Ubuntu 22.04LTS my Laptop lasts almost as Long as Windows 10 💪😎

[fredmckinney]

Linux user here. On my laptop, even though I have 8 GB of RAM, I use Debian Stable with the Openbox window manager, and I decided to go with that in order to get as many hours of use as possible between charges. Setting it up was a bit of fun, too, including settling up obmenugenerator.

[gidgiddonihah]

I don't usually comment on YouTube but I have loved my time on this channel and there were a couple of things I would like to mention.

1. Gamer’s Nexus did a video awhile back comparing varying amounts of thermal compound. The conclusion was to err on the side of too much paste. Too little dries out quickly and may not operate sufficiently as a thermal conductor. I do agree to re-paste though as OEM’s generally use crap quality compound which dries out very quickly. Arctic MX4 or anything non conductive from Thermal Grizzly would be recommended.

2. Software measurements of power usage can be misleading. This is due to the usual calculation of simple multiplication across core counts by current average core voltages. Average voltages can be highly misleading and may even not be accurate to true voltage depending on platform, hardware, kernel, etc. Maybe powertop takes a hardware report from the battery? If so then it could be more accurate but I would still would suspect software power draw reporting (even if it was pulled from hardware) unless its been verified on the hardware and OS you are running. Plenty of cases of inaccurate reporting of software which misread the hardware's output.

3. Reducing the number of cores can significantly reduce power consumption, but reducing it too much will increase power usage as the fewer enabled cores have to clock up to handle more requests. As the power and thermal envelope decreases, the boosting algorithms are set to boost more aggressively when presented with load so just keep that in mind.

Otherwise, great video! Thanks for the awesome content :).

[robertt]

Would also suggest adjusting the system to never really charge beyond 80% battery. I had to use bios to do it but my laptop is plugged in so often that it's worth protecting the battery over "unplugged longevity"

[mh-jwgr]

For Ryzen CPU's there's `ryzenadj`, which will let you specify in watts how much power the CPU can draw, which is much better than fscking about with governors & cpu clocks. Also, `battop` is a reliable way to see power draw of a laptop. :)

[klote]

Windows users: command line, powercfg /batteryreport & powercfg /energy. Very helpful info!

[novellguySA]

thanks for taking the time to teach, appreciated

[xperience-evolution]

Using auto-cpufreq on Linux (Zorin) and the fans are just silent most of the time (compared to windows in powersafe mode it is absolutely astonishing).
Battery also lasts very long compared to Win10/11

[edwardaudet]

Thanks Titus, always good info.. your videos are always educational.

[hamidmazuji]

excellent coverage of how to manipulate power management to get a longer uptime for each charge
i've found that the most important consideration for laptop power management is:
sleep after x minutes plugged in
always on on battery
this way the battery gets a chance to charge down, which many people never allow it to do

[buuhuu]

The Myth with to much thermalpaste was busted a time ago. And mit rather more than less u can be save that the whole SoC is covered and will last longer without drying. More important is what compound u use. Go for a Arctic or Grizzly one and u can leave that in for a couple of years.

[rfdiego]

Thanks, this is really helpful! One of the few weak points (for me at least) about using linux on laptops is exactly the battery

[kppi]

You go and get Arm based laptop Chromebook ditto. You can install linux apps or desktop. Live long and prosper

[peterschmidt]

I'm not sure but it either depends on what laptop you have or Windows version whether processor speeds come up or not (even using config.cpl). On the ASUS Vivibook these settings aren't available in Windows. Although I'm pretty sure they are in the Acer Nitro I have.
But at least you've given an indication of what to change under Linux and that's where I think power management really needs to be tweeked for laptops.