At what [%] do you start/stop charging your battery?

I just got a new[-ish] battery and I'm considering the custom charging method, since my last battery sat at full charge most of the time and ... lasted 3.5 years, with 64 charge cycles. Power Manager (which I finally started using since last week) says battery bad, at ~17% of its original design, or ~10Watts (6-cell), but dies withing 2 minutes, LOL, and I was hoping for at least 15 ...

I'm almost all the time plugged in AC, so I'm thinking to start at 25% and finish when full.

any thoughts?

thanks

P.S. I opened the old battery already, so if anybody wants picture then I can post . I had some thoughts about resetting its controller/s, but then I realized I shouldn't be that cheap .. .. and bought another one.

 

I would say stop it before it's full if you don't use it that often, say 95%. If your not going to use it for an extended period of time store it about half charged unplugged from you laptop.

 

Picture is always nice. With 64 charge cycles is kind of low. Ever since I got my Thinkpad, I start charging at 75% and stop at 85%.

 

Or let the power manager automatically shift the charge threshold to extend battery life, its an option in the advanced settings under the battery tab.

 

I have 25/95 since I typically use the battery for 45min max when I need it. That'll change soon though.

 

Historically, there's been tons of posts regarding this feature. Admittedly, the search function of NBR is pretty sub-par, but Google does a good job if you input:

Code:

site:forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm threshold

Here's a few nice results:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...d-battery-charging-thresholds-do-you-use.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/407849-t400-9-cell-battery-thresholds.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/514829-battery-charge-threshold.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/298535-optimal-threshold-charge-settings.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/309726-best-battery-threshold-setting.html

Personally, I use 35/95 on my X120e, 30/95 on my T500. Those settings give me at least 2 (closer to 3 on my T500) hours of battery time, which is usually enough to get me through one day of lecture use.

 

When Im done working

 

Wait you guys don't charge to 100% I thought that's what your suppose to do. I charge below at 15 then never unplug till 100.

 

MidnightSun, thanks but all threads that I found were closed, so I could not post in those.



here's the opened old battery.

 

Since I've moved onto Ideapads, I have mine stop charging at 80% and I can't control when it starts to charge. (Anything lower than 75%, it'll charge back to 80%.)

 

Li-Ion batteries like being "in the middle" charge-wise, and also, minimizing the number of charge/discharge cycles is also ideal. 15% is kind of low, but if you rarely use it away from an AC outlet, it's probably okay. You generally don't want to charge to 100%, as cells don't like being entirely filled/overfilled.

No problem, hence I left this thread open. Thanks for the picture, interesting to see what's inside of these

 

As am I. I have a three year old T61 with the original seven cell battery that has 25 cycles on it and Power Manager says it's good. I've never reset the battery but it's always given me the time I expected when I've needed it (mostly over the past year). I'm currently on 86/90 and haven't deviated too much from those numbers as I prefer the battery to be sufficiently charged.

Now that I've posted about how great my battery is, I'm sure it'll die tomorrow.

Don

 

40/95 usually

 

My T61 battery lasted that long and is still kicking. Probably in the range of 200 cycles these days. I did burn through an ultrabay battery - that was where all the charging/discharging happened. But they were cheap by the time I needed a new one.

 

60/95 - sometimes I still need portability

 

I just let Power Manager optimize it. Have not set the charge/ discharge limits.

 

I set mine 35/95 for all my ThinkPad machines now.

 

experimenting with 50/90 right now. At 90% it gives me 50.08Wh capacity on the 6-cell, which is designed for 56.16Wh

Since yesterday the battery dropped charge and the capacity went down with ~0.15Wh (for 24 hours). Kind of warm in the room though, ~25 deg C. Laptop on AC all the time.

 

I set my X301 to 35/90 and my T410 to 35/95. Unfotunately my s30 does not have this kind of technology yet.

 

I only charge the battery when I need it. So most of the time, when it's plugged in, it's a low state of charge, from how much I discharged it the last time I used it. When I think I'll need to be unplugged, I'll set it to charge to 80%.

 

20-25/100.

 

ewww ... I found out why I didn't use the Power Manager before - it makes my laptop boot so slow ...

dang.

 

Quick question, I have mine set a 60/90, but every time it reaches 90 it stops and doesn't discharge or drop back to 60. When I unplug and wait till it goes to 65 or some number less that 90 to charge it just stays there, is it suppose to do this or is this a bug. I thought it would charge up to 90 drop all the way to 59 then start charging and repeat the process.

Is it bad to leave the AC adapter in, if I never fully charge?

 

When it reach 90 it will stop charging the battery, and until it reach 60 when it started charging again. The reason why we set the charging threshold is to extend the life of the battery, which like to be in the middle i.e. not fully charge. So it is better for the battery to be never fully charge.

 

The point of setting thresholds at 65/90, for example, is to minimize charge cycles. Charging will not start until the battery is used (off the grid) until it falls below 65%, and then will charge until 90% and stop. Charge thresholds let you keep your laptop plugged in without charging the battery as well--so in a sense, charge thresholds are what prevents it from being bad to keep a laptop plugged in and charging all the time.

 

Is this best done manually or does the Power Manager do a decent job of this?

 

I have not seen power manager do this automatically (Someone please confirm?). I've set it to charge below 40% and go up to 90%. If I know I'm going out, I let it charge completely before leaving.

 

I think I read somewhere that Power Manager can and does actually do this, but I can't remember where I read it. If you guys confirm that it does not do anything in this regard, I'll then set up a charge-plan.

 

What exactly are you guys talking about? Does it do what automatically? Pick the best charging thresholds?

For mine I use 40/90. Over a year since I got my Thinkpad and it has 0% wear with 59 charge cycles, so minimizing your charge cycles and not keeping your battery at full charge really helps maintain its capacity.

 

Yes...does the Power Manager automatically optimize the charge thresholds?

 

I don't use my battery often, and when I do it's for less than an hour usually, so mine is set at 60-70.