NP700G7C-S01UK battery - seeking advice from owners

Hi all

I bought a Samsung NP700G7C-S01 laptop recently, which arrived on 29 May.

Generally I am pleased with the laptop but have noticed a couple of unexpected things about the battery. I'd be grateful if other owners could comment:

- The battery will not start charging until its charge level drops below 90%.

- The battery wear (as revealed by HWMonitor) is 6%.

The reasons why these things are surprising are that: (1) battery life extender (which limits the charge to 80%) is not enabled; and (2) the battery has had only one discharge-charge cycle, when I ran the calibration utility in the BIOS. Otherwise, it has been run almost exclusively from mains power.

I'd be grateful if any other owners of this laptop could confirm whether their battery is the same.

Thanks!

 

Anyone?

 

It's overcharge protection most likely. Many cell phones will only charge to 95%. I wouldn't worry too much unless it doesn't happen to any other of the same unit.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks for the reply.

What do you think of the battery wear level? Is 6% unusual for a new battery or is it inevitable because of how batteries work?

 

6% wear is on the high side. My NP900X3B came with 3% wear but that hasn't changed in over 2 months.

I'm puzzled why the battery does not start to recharge until the charge level drops below 90% unless this is something special for the G7C. There's normally are margin of 2 or 3% drop. When the battery does recharge does it reach 100%.

Is your BIOS up-to-date?

John

 

Hi John

Thanks for the reply. The recharging behaviour has happened consistently since I got the laptop, with the odd exception of yesterday - when, unprompted, it started recharging from 95%.

In each case it does charge up to 100%.

The BIOS version is P03AAB, which was what it shipped with. There's a "firmware" update on the Samsung site, but that's dated 29 Feb so I think I'm up to date.

It looks like I should contact Samsung about the battery but before I do it would be helpful to hear from other users with the exact same model.

 

You may find that the BIOS updater program isn't actually the BIOS update but a program that checks for the latest BIOS and then (if there is one) will do the download and update. Run it and see what it reports.

John

 

Thanks for the tip. You were right - the firmware utility found a BIOS update which I've now applied.

Slightly irritatingly this caused Windows to redetect the card reader, wireless and LAN devices and number them as "#2" in device manager... :-s

Anyway I will test the battery some more having done the update and report back here.

 

Well yesterday evening, with the battery still shown as "98%, not charging", I briefly disconnected the laptop from AC, and allowed the battery to drop to 97% before reconnecting.

Upon reconnection to the mains it did start charging, up to 100%.

On a different note the BIOS update appears to have made the fan come on more frequently...

 

Just received a bizarre reply from Samsung support:

"From your description, I need to advise you that you are not using the battery the way it was intended, and as such, will lose the charge in your battery much quicker. Constantly running off the AC adapter does not help your battery life.

Basically you need to exercise your battery. Once you have the battery completely charged, you are advised to unplug the AC adapter and use the laptop on battery power only untill the battery runs low, then recharge it fully."

This seems really strange advice for a gaming laptop - what do the rest of you think?

 

Samsung really need to educate their support staff: Someone has been reading the instructions for nickel-based batteries which hold their capacity best if depleted before being recharged. Unfortunately a lot of that wisdom got carried over as advice for lithium based batteries which prefer to avoid the extremes of the charge and discharge range.

My advice is that unless you need all 100% of the battery capacity, enable the battery life extender in Easy Settings so that it keeps the charge at 80% or just below. You can temporarily disable it if you know that you might need the other 20% of capacity.

John

 

Interesting - I had thought the support person was right about lithium batteries, but just wrong about the battery being "worn" by running the laptop off AC power. I'm sure you're correct.

Yes, sounds like a good idea and I do intend to enable it. However I'm still trying to get a straight answer from support about the existing wear level and the erratic charging behaviour.

Looking over my notes (yes, I made notes) I now remember that it wouldn't charge even when the battery was at 0%! That was after I ran the calibration utility in the BIOS. I had to take the battery out for 10 mins before it would charge up... again, it may be nothing to worry about, but a more informed response from Samsung support would be reassuring...

 

I've tried to clarify this issue with Samsung Support but they have not answered my questions as to whether:

- 6% wear on a battery that's had one discharge/charge cycle is normal for this model

- the battery not always charging when not fully charged is normal for this model

They have offered to service the laptop but as this would be quite inconvenient I would still like to hear from other users whether the behaviour I'm experiencing is normal for the model. If it is normal, there's no point going through the hassle of sending the laptop away...

 

The charge level normally needs to drop by 2 or 3% from the target value before recharge starts. This is to avoid frequent top-ups which add to the wear.

Is the battery internal on this model? If so, that may be why Samsung need to have the computer returned for maintenance. It may be best to keep the problem on file and wait for a convenient time (if every) before sending it in.

John

 

Sorry for the delayed response.

The battery is removable and I have replied to Samsung to ask if it could be sent without needing to return the whole laptop.

Since my last post I contacted the retailer and they have also offered a return, but that would definitely mean sending the entire laptop.

TBH, so long as there are no serious side-effects of the charging behaviour and wear level, then it would be easier to live with the issues than to go through the hassle of returning the laptop.

Today I followed these steps, after which the battery immediately charged from 97% back to 100%. I will keep an eye on it before making a decision about returning it.

To any other owners of this laptop - I'd still be v interested to hear what battery wear level is reported by HWMonitor!

 

There is a setting in one of the pieces of software that allows you to set the maximum charge to 80% to protect battery life. I turned that on since I never unplug it.

 

ok - would you be kind enough to run HWMonitor and let me know what wear level is shown for the battery?

(It only takes a moment and doesn't require installation.)

 

I currently have the previous model to yours. My 700G7A is currently displaying 6.8% in hwmonitor and i have battered the thing since Jan 2012. Hope that helped.

 

Thanks for the post!

I am not sure, though, whether it means mine is normal or faulty! Perhaps yours started at 6% and has increased to 6.8% since January...

Did you by any chance note the battery wear when you first got the laptop?

And have you ever found that it does not always charge up to 100% when plugged in?

Thanks.

 

No i didnt check the battery from new sorry and like a previous post i have always had the smart battery option enabled in the bios. And i always have it plugged in so it never passes 80%.


One thing i have noticed about my battery though is the connection on the 'brick' has become very loose. I tend to now unplug the mains lead altogether from that part because of general wear and tear. Be careful and treat it nicely.


To answer your main question : Batteries are volatile whatever hardware they are used for and always need to be replaced before you want them too. If yours is at 6% i think its just the norm mate. Just monitor it, i would only worry if, by say, next month, its at 8% or above.

Cheers
Steve

 

Thank you for the reply - it's reassuring actually, because if your battery is at 6.8% and is always plugged in (i.e. no wear from frequent discharge/charge cycles), then it seems that ~6% wear would be about normal after all.

 

6% is on the high side for a new battery. I stuck lucky on my new NP900X4C and the battery has 0% wear as delivered and the actual capacity is slightly more than the rated capacity.

John

 

Hi John,

I understand what you mean. I guess my concern is - is it unusual enough for this model of laptop to make a replacement worthwhile?

I.e. If all the batteries in this model start with ~6% wear, there's no point going through the hassle of returning the laptop.

Edit: just saw Steve's further comment in his edited post. Thanks!

 

I would consider 6% wear to be the upper limit of acceptability for a new battery. However, what really matters is where the wear gets to within the first year. Recent batteries, or maybe the software controlling them, seem to be improved compared to a few years back.

John

 

Bah - looks like this laptop may need to be returned sooner rather than later, after all!

It's been connected continuously to AC power since 27 June, when I enabled the battery life extender and it charged to 80% as expected.

But over the last four days the reported battery charge has dropped to "77%, plugged in, not charging", entirely without running the laptop off the battery. (HWMonitor gives the charge level at 76%!)

Can it really be the case that, as Samsung support suggested, the laptop is not intended to be run continuously from AC power? Seems nuts...

 

I've been unplugging mine when I close it to sleep, then I plug it back in when I use it.

 

Thing is, mine is set to wake overnight and perform an online backup.

What kind of drop do you see in battery charge from the sleep period (or is it set to hibernate)?

 

What you are seeing is normal. Once the battery reaches 80% then charging stops until the charge level drops a few %. Self-discharge occurs even if the computer is plugged into the mains. My X3B is currently at 77% and sometime in the next few days it will decide to top up the battery again. This reduces the number of top-up charge cycles.

Leave it plugged in and you should be fine. I've used a few notebooks in my time but during the past 5 years the batteries have been lasting better partly, I suspect, due to better charge management.

John

 

Ok - thanks for the advice - I wish Samsung Support were as articulate!

 

I like to think I understand how these things work.

Bookmark this thread and report back in a few weeks about how the battery is getting on.

John

 

Will do.

BTW for what it's worth I've not seen the same charging behaviour with a Toshiba netbook I've owned for a few years (NB-200) - it always charges to 100% and stays that way - but perhaps it's such a low-power device that it's designed differently from the Samsung laptop.

 

For the record, this is exactly what happened.

 

Just wanted to chime in real quick; my brick connections were loose to begin with, that's probably the only thing that has truly bothered me about this laptop.

The laptop has been plugged most of the time and the smart battery option has been always on. The battery is still at 0% wear after 2 months of use. If we extrapolate the wear for the next 36 months from the first 2 months of use, we can determine that this battery will never, ever fail. This obviously isn't true, since the battery will lose capacity even if stored under optimal conditions, in a cool, dry place.

P.S.

 

Hi all,

I checked the battery with HWMonitor today (about 3 months after purchase) and its wear level is still 6%.

Whilst 6% is higher than I would have liked as a starting value, at least it isn't increasing unusually quickly.

(For the record: the laptop's been run on battery for extended periods on around 10 occasions, in additional to some short periods of disconnection from AC while moved between rooms.)

Hope this info will be helpful to other users and thread-searchers.

 

I updated yesterday to the latest BIOS (06) and observed today that the battery had charged up to 100%, even though battery life cycle extension is ON in the BIOS.

Directly after updating the BIOS, the battery level had remained at 80%. The extra 20% charging must have happened sometime overnight!

Have any other users tried this latest BIOS version and noticed unusual charging behaviour?

 

I think you will find that the BIOS update disabled the Battery Life Extender Option (that is what happens on my NP900X4C). Re-enable it in Easy Settings.

John

 

Thanks John, but that's not it.

I was aware that the BIOS update would reset the BIOS to its default settings, so I reenabled battery life extender on the first boot after the BIOS update. (I do not have easy settings installed, so always use the BIOS to control the battery setting.)

Checking the BIOS again today after noticing that the battery has charged to 100%, I see that the life extender is still enabled, so it's a mystery as to why it's charged up.

I'll try draining it to below 80% then reconnect the charger and see what happens.