Fast X201 battery deterioration

Hi guys,

This is my current battery degradation:



I got my X201 a month and a half ago - it took ages to arrive and turned up after uni was finished for the year, so at the moment, the majority of its usage is at home (at least until I go back to uni in March, where it will get daily battery grinding).

At home I tend to yank it off the cord, use it for a bit (until 70-80% power remains) and then plug it back in. It doesn't get turned off at night, though I've started putting it in standby if that helps. I also leave it on, plugged in, while I'm at work during the day.

My maximum capacity used to be ~106,000 mWh, with 3% deterioration, but two days ago it suddenly appeared as 96,000 mWh with 6% gone.

I've seen this question about managing the battery asked before, and many say "just don't worry about it". But I'm concerned I'm doing something particularly wrong to make it degrade this fast. Hopefully someone can help me out here!

Thanks.

 

how many cycles have you gone through?

Also you shouldn't top up charging, for your use you should set the charge threshold to start the charging when it drops to say 30 or 40% and then stop at 95%.

 

http://i.imgur.com/PuE1x.png

That's a shot of the Lenovo power statistics page. 23 cycles. There it says my design capacity is 86.58 Wh.

I've just set it to only charge when it goes below 40% and stop at 95%..

Would shutting it down/putting it on standby help when leaving it overnight or does it make no difference vs just leaving it turned on + plugged in?

 

you can try the battery reset function and see whether that brings the battery back to better condition. Given that your battery warranty is one year, you can use it for few more months and monitor its condition, if it deteriorates by a large amount then you can ask for a replacement.

 

Great, thanks for the help thus far. So do you think I'm better off turning the X201 off at night, or is it OK to leave it turned on and plugged in?

 

Passa
Perform reset of battery gauge. On my Sanyo battery 6 cell with 25-30 cycles (near half year using) where loss near 13-14%. After reset near 1%.

In my opinion slight disharge and full charge kills battery fast and cause errors in power meters of battery in first place.

 

Damn, that battery life number makes me envious, some day I will have X ultraportable too, some day...

 

Hi guys, just an update.

I did a battery reset. At first things looked pretty sweet, capacity had gone back up to ~106,000 mWh. I changed the settings to only charge when below 40% and only up to 95% as suggested too.

Today I had some work to do on the road. As my battery was nearing empty (I took it with only 45% charge, silly me) the X201 suddenly decided my capacity was 94,000 mWh instead, and slashed 30 minutes off the projected battery life.

So with 30 minutes remaining, it suddenly decided I needed to go into hibernation. I turned it back on, disabled the empty battery actions and am now letting it drain past 0%.

What's going on with my battery? Should I do another reset? Is it harmful to run it past 0% like this? Should I be turning it off at night or something?

 

6% deterioration with twenty something cycles sounds about normal, really.

Here's a couple things you can really do if you want to preserve your battery's lifecycle:
1.- Set battery charge thresholds. Personally, I find start charge at 30% and charge to 95% to work quite well. Lithium ion batteries like to be at middle-ish charge capacity--these thresholds will minimize charge cycles.
2.- If you won't be using your laptop off-AC for a while, remove the battery from your laptop. Batteries don't like heat, and tend to last longer at cooler storage temperatures.
3.- Avoid running your battery down to 0% excessively. Particularly later in a battery's lifecycle, this can cause it to lose capacity even quicker.

If you have charge thresholds set and you're not repeatedly topping off your battery at night, leaving it plugged in will not be a problem.

 

Shouldn't run it down to zero you say.. heh it just died. Well, if 6% is normal then I won't worry about it, just seems weird compared to my R50 9cell which hit 15% after over 200 cycles.

I'll start taking the battery out at night if you think that'll help. Nothing wrong with yanking three battery when the laptop is on, right?

 

From my thinkpad experience 6% deterioration for 20 cycles is little bit high, but you are not running Thinkvantage Power Manager.

Never run your battery to 0%, this will kill it. Ideally never discharge the battery below 5%.