Battery Wear (W3V)

Just wondering about where other people's battery wear levels are at. I have had my W3V for about 3 weeks now and it's already at 2%. Not really sure where this stands though and whether I can extrapolate this value to figure out the life of my battery.

Also are there any more tips to keep the wear level low. I have already followed the couple guides that are out there. I discharged my battery fully 3 times and I've run a calibraiton through the BIOS. I also don't let it fully discharge anymore and I plug it in whenever I can.

 

Battery wear is probrably nothing to really take interest into, often it doesn't really matter.

Batteries are meant to be used, so....don't take it too seriously

 

I concur... if there was a serious problem with your battery, it should be covered under warranty anyway.
Just enjoy your notebook

 

Mines is at 3% after almost 6 weeks, I've used to 0% about 3 times. Haven't calibrated it yet though

 

http://www.batteriesdigest.com/id235.htm
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp

 

If I need to tell people not to use the bios recalibration tool one more time I think I'm going to stop caring.... don't freak out about your battery....... it's a computer and it's under warranty.... worry about it when it starts to go to 90,80, 60& and that's it.... The battery is under warranty for a year. You don't need to fully drain the battery every time you charge it... I've seen very little if ANY memory in all of the batteries I've used in the last 3 years since Asus went to all Lithium-Ion cells.

I know it's your new toy, but if you stop worrying about things like this you'll enjoy it a lot more.

 

Very true. The BIOS 'recalibration' doesn’t actually recalibrate the battery at all, that's just a common misconception. All it recalibrates is the internal gauge from 0-100% where when the battery comes from the factory this range is set from a predetermined critical low voltage up to the designed voltage. Recalibrating will only reset these values to the point where the computer shuts itself off (min) and where the battery will no longer accept further charge (full).

If anything doing such a deep discharge will *hurt* the capacity of the battery (but it may improve the accuracy of the 'time remaining' reading in Windows.

Leave it alone.

 

Aside from the battery completely dying and not powering up the laptop, is there a wear level within that year that Asus considers too excessive that it warrants a replacement?

 

I'd be amazed if they do. Wear levels is mostly reliant on usage pattern.

A user that never use the notebook on battery could find that after a year of heavy use of the notebook it's reduced to less than 60% of it's original capacity, even without using it at all (basically hot storage while fully charged is very bad for batteries).

Another user that use his notebook only for light use and only on batteries, mostly charging the notebook when it's off, could have more than 90% of the original capacity left even after charging it on average more than once a day (Li-ion loves lots of shallow discharges).

Using a notebook battery will eventually wear it out, but not using it will probably wear it out faster. I have seen both, and trying to explain to someone who can't phantom why their battery died because 'I haven't been using it' that that's exactly *why* it died (never, ever leave a battery discharged for prolonged periods of time) is not very entertaining.

 

Battery wear is at 5% on my W3A after over 6 months. I try to avoid running the computer until the battery is fully drained and raise the alarm thresholds in the power properties to avoid full depletion. [Strictly speaking, if using the bottom 5% of the battery is bad for its health, then that 5% should not be part of the designed capacity.]

As for the battery calibration, I will need to run it again sometime. As the battery wears, the loss in capacity shows up as a rapid loss of power as the battery drains. For example, 5 minutes from 20% remaining to the alarm coming on.

The Asus BIOS seems to recharge the battery once the remaining charge drops to 99%, which results in more charge cycles occuring than with, for example, the Fujitsu Lifebooks where recarge does not start until the remaining charge drops below 90%. Has anyone got any views on the recharge algorithms?

John

 

..... first those wear numbers aren't totally accurate to begin with.... If your battery is suddenly 1/2 of what it was... they'll replace the battery for you, but a lot goes into as Bugmenot said and that's a hard one to call.

 

The the battery only can be charged half level, dealer will deal with a RMA regularly, but some of them will replace another new one after purcharsing for a few days, might be not. To contact the dealer should be the 1st step to do.

 

BUGMENOT----(Li-ion loves lots of shallow discharges). Can you care to enlighten us on this statement? Does this mean to "fully drain it" or stay right around "5%" before charging it back up.
Im @ 6% wear, and I drain the hell out of it until theres like 1min left, then i Pull it to let it cool off.

 

Theory has it that Li-Ion batteries are damaged by full drains... I read about it, but don't remember why.
Older batteries had a phenomenon known as "battery/charge memory"...where draining the battery to near completion was preferred.
However, with Li-Ion, which do not experience battery memory, a full drain is NOT required, nor is it advised on a regular basis.

 

I've got to agree with Justin on this: the batteries are meant to be used, so use them and unless your battery has some serious problem (and you'll know if it does), don't worry about it!