E6520 Excessive Battery Wear

Hi all,

I bought my E6520 in Feb 2012 and installed battery bar after a fresh install of Windows 7. Battery wear then was 0%. Now just 2.5 months on, my battery wear is showing at 17.8%. I never let my E6520 fully discharge and usually plug it back in around 10-20%. The average on time for my laptop per day is 13 hours.
My last laptop (Acer Timeline) was used in exactly the same way as my E6520, but over two years only accumulated 14% wear (according to Battery Bar).

If this continues, my battery won't last out the year. Is this usual for Dell batteries, or am I doing something wrong with it?

Thanks,

 

With LiION batteries you need to let it fully discharge every once in a while... not often, but still.

I have noticed that the Dell batteries wear faster than normal though. (If it's not a battery with a 3-year warranty.)

 

You are probably a victim of a Sanyo battery which have an nefarious record of crapping out faster than Panasonic. Worst case, call before the year ends and ask Dell to send a replacement battery. You can also get the 3 year warranty battery as HAL9000 mentioned.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

The battery type is T54FJ, if that helps identify it.

Yeah I'll have to call if this continues, never known a battery to wear this fast.

 

If you often partially discharge the battery and then charge it, that could throw off the battery meter and wear level.

Condition the battery a couple of times by running it down until the shuts off by itself and won't turn on again. See if the wear % changes.

 

OK, I'll give that a try.

Thanks Robin

 

This is pretty normal of dell batteries. My current laptop (latitude E6220) is almost 8 months old and battery shows 32.2% wear. At this rate I'll have lost over 50% capacity by the time the machine is 1 year old. this is same as all dell laptops I've used in the past 10+ years.
Our dept manages over 1000 dell laptops, and no matter how the users use them, they all seem to lose about 50% battery capacity during the first year.
most also die completely (the batteries, not laptops) during the first 18 to 24 months.
We're thinking about getting the new 3 year warranty batteries with our next batch of latidudes. Hopefully they will last longer.

When we tested lenovo laptops a few years ago, the batteries seem to only lose 15 to 20% capacity over 1 year, and less than 50% over 2 years. So it must be how dell designed the battery, or problem with the cell suppliers.