Should you charge your laptop overnight?

Many computer users have the habit of charging their laptops overnight before going to bed, thinking that this will ensure a 100% full battery for their laptops. Is this viewpoint correct? Should you charge your laptop battery overnight? Let’s explore this topic in this article.

Should you charge your laptop battery overnight?

Although most laptops nowadays have a good integrated management system, which is capable of automatically disconnecting the charging process when the battery is fully charged, constantly plugging in your laptop can cause the battery’s memory to lose its position and capacity, thus reducing the battery’s lifespan.

In addition, charging your laptop battery overnight will cause the adapter to continuously work, resulting in increased heat and faster degradation. As a consequence, the charging efficiency will be reduced over time. Moreover, a hot adapter can generate high temperatures and produce electric sparks that can easily ignite flammable materials such as paper or dry fabric.

These are some of the reasons why charging your laptop battery overnight can be extremely dangerous and may lead to fire hazards.

Should you charge your laptop battery overnight?

In reality, even when you are not using your laptop, Li-ion batteries still experience self-discharge, but this self-discharge is very minimal, about 5% per month. Therefore, charging your laptop overnight will result in continuous charging and discharging cycles for the battery, which will reduce its lifespan.

How should you properly charge your laptop battery?

Avoid using your laptop while charging when the battery is not fully drained

Using your laptop while it is charging and the battery is not fully drained can be extremely dangerous. In this situation, the laptop charger has to work at a much higher power than the battery, causing part of the electrical energy to be converted into heat in the laptop and reducing the battery’s lifespan.

In addition, when you use your laptop with high performance, the charging capacity will also be reduced. The reason is that part of the electrical energy needs to be provided to the CPU and GPU, and the charging adapter can only deliver about 2/3 or less than half of its original capacity.

Avoid letting your laptop run out of battery and shut down frequently

Sometimes, you may forget to check the battery status of your laptop, causing it to run out of battery and shut down multiple times. This will reduce the lifespan and durability of the laptop battery. Therefore, the best way to charge your laptop battery to ensure its longevity is to plug it in when the battery level is at 10-20%, and never let it drain completely and shut down on its own.

To protect the lifespan of your laptop battery, you should charge it to 100% and then stop charging.

Use genuine laptop chargers

When you purchase a laptop, the manufacturer will provide a charger with suitable specifications and standards.

If you lose your laptop charger and replace it with a charger that does not have similar performance, it may cause your laptop to short circuit and sustain severe damage. In this case, you should go to the manufacturer to purchase a charger with compatible specifications.

Avoid excessive maintenance of the battery

Many users often maintain their laptop batteries by removing them from the laptops. In cases when the laptop is used without a battery, it may encounter mainboard and hard drive issues, especially data loss.

According to VTC.vn