Can we use new laptop without charging?

The appeal of a laptop is its portability and convenience, which makes it ideal for working on the go and business trips. Laptops are only as good as their batteries, however, and proper care of your battery is essential to making sure it retains a long life and charge. Leaving your laptop plugged in constantly is not bad for your battery, but you will need to be careful of other factors, such as heat, to prevent your battery from damage.

Laptop Batteries

  1. Most laptops use lithium-ion batteries. Unlike nickel-based batteries, lithium-ion batteries don't suffer from the "memory effect," meaning that discharging and recharging them will not have an effect on long-term battery life. Once your battery is charged to full capacity, it will simply stop charging, so keeping your laptop plugged in will not cause any issues to your battery.

Cycles and Calibration

  1. With lithium-ion batteries, it is better to avoid discharging them completely then recharging them to full capacity -- this is called a "deep cycle," and this process is only useful for nickel–cadmium and nickel–metal hydride batteries. However, you should perform a deep cycle once a month or so to recalibrate the battery. This allows the battery monitoring mechanics to remain accurate when displaying battery life and charge.

Heat

  1. While leaving your laptop plugged in constantly is not detrimental to its health, excess heat will definitely damage a battery over time. Higher levels of heat are most commonly produced when you are running processor-intensive applications like games or when you have many programs open simultaneously. When your computer is running hot and it is plugged in, disconnect the battery and keep it somewhere cool to prevent heat damage.

Battery Care

  1. To perform a deep cycle, first charge your battery to full capacity, then let it sit for about two hours to cool from the charging process. Unplug your power cord, then set your computer's power save settings to hibernate once your battery reaches five percent. Once your computer starts hibernating, leave it for about five hours, then plug in the power cable and let it charge to full capacity again uninterrupted.

Can we use new laptop without charging?
Question from Brenda:  I just bought my son a new laptop for his birthday. As I was paying for it the cashier told me I need to let the battery charge to 100% before I let my son start using it.

In the past I have always just unboxed my new laptops and plugged them in and started using them immediately, and as far as I know there was never any problem.

Do you think I really need to charge the battery before I give it to him? 

I’d prefer to let HIM open the box after he wakes up on his birthday and begin using the laptop immediately, but only if it won’t damage the battery or the laptop.

Rick’s answer:  Brenda, there is absolutely nothing wrong with letting your son unpack his new laptop himself and start using it right away. Just make sure he plugs it in and lets the battery charge up while he’s using it.

While it’s quite likely that the battery will arrive with only a partial charge, the AC adapter/battery charger will supply plenty of current for operating the laptop and charging the battery at the same time.

In fact, it was designed to do just that.

You just need to make sure your son lets the battery charge all the way up to 100% before unplugging the charger and letting the laptop run on battery power for the first time.

Bonus tip: This post explains why you should plug your modem and router into a battery backup device.

At one point or another, all laptop users find themselves pondering the same question: is it bad to leave your laptop plugged in all the time?

Turns out, the answer isn't entirely straightforward. So let's take a look.

Know Your Laptop Battery

There are two main types of batteries used in laptops: lithium-ion and lithium-polymer. Although they are different technologies, they function in broadly the same way, generating power through the movement of electrons.

This constant flow is also needed to help keep the battery healthy.

For both types of batteries, the following statements are true (at least as far as modern laptops are concerned):

  • A battery cannot be overcharged. There's no danger of overcharging a battery if you leave it plugged in all the time. As soon as it hits 100 percent, it will cease charging and won't start again until the voltage falls below a certain level.
  • Fully discharging a battery will damage it. Allowing the battery to become completely empty for an extended period can put it into a deep discharge state. This can be fatal---you might never be able to charge it again. (You can try these methods to jump-start a dead laptop battery.)

So, based on this, do we conclude that you should leave your laptop plugged in all the time? Not quite.

Things That Damage Lithium Batteries

The truth about lithium-based batteries is that they are inherently unstable. They begin to lose capacity from the moment they are produced, and numerous factors hasten their decline. These include:

  • Charge/discharge cycles. Every battery has a finite number of times it can be charged and discharged.
  • Voltage level. The higher the charge level (measured in volts per cell), the shorter the battery's life.
  • High temperature, over 30 degrees celsius. This can cause irreparable damage.

The last two are the ones that we're most concerned with here. A comprehensive study by Battery University highlights how voltage levels and high temperatures will shorten the life of a battery in isolation and even more when they combine.

Charge or Voltage Level

Lithium-ion batteries charge to 4.20 volts per cell, which amounts to 100 percent of its capacity. At this level, the battery will have a lifespan of 300-500 discharge cycles.

Can we use new laptop without charging?

Every 0.10V/cell reduction in the charge doubles the number of discharge cycles until the optimum level is reached: 3.90V/cell, with 2400-4000 discharge cycles.

Unfortunately, at this level, the battery is only around 60 percent charged. The runtime will be a little more than half of a fully charged battery.

Heat

And then there's heat. High temperatures, typically classified as being over 30 degrees Celsius, will shorten the life of a battery irrespective of any other factors. Simply leaving your laptop in your car on a summer afternoon is a bad idea.

When you combine the stress of high temperature with the stress of high voltage, the effects are even worse.

The Battery University study shows that a battery stored with a 40 percent charge at 40 degrees would see its capacity fall to 85 percent after a year.

Can we use new laptop without charging?

Charged to 100 percent, the capacity falls to 65 percent under the same conditions. For a fully charged battery at 60 degrees, the capacity plummets to 60 percent in just three months.

The evidence seems clear. Keeping the battery permanently charged at 100 percent will slowly shorten its life. Keeping it at 100 percent and exposing it to high temperatures will shorten it much quicker.

And remember, these high temperatures are not just environmental. Resource-intensive tasks such as gaming or video editing will considerably increase heat levels, and using the laptop on a pillow or in a poorly designed case will trap that heat as well.

For the sake of your battery, it's always a good idea to fix an overheating laptop.

Should You Remove the Battery?

If heat is such a danger, it begs another question. Should you remove the battery altogether when using your laptop on AC power?

Obviously, this isn't possible on the growing number of laptops that sport sealed batteries.

Where they are replaceable, the answer seems to vary from one manufacturer to the next. Acer, for instance, says you don't have to remove the battery on AC power, but should remove it if you aren't going to use it for several days. When Apple produced laptops with removable batteries, it advised against ever taking them out.

Can we use new laptop without charging?

It all comes down to the power management setup in the laptop. Some may reduce the power when a battery isn't present, just as some do when the battery level gets low. This could leave you with subpar performance.

If you do choose to remove the battery, ensure that you store it properly. This usually means being charged between 40 percent and 80 percent and kept at room temperature.

Should You Keep Your Laptop Plugged In?

Does leaving your laptop plugged in ruin the battery? Yes, it does. But then so does charging it every day.

Curiously, the industry as a whole doesn't seem to have settled on a single answer for the question about whether to use your laptop on AC or battery power.

We've seen that Acer recommends removing the battery when you aren't using it. Asus says you should drain the battery to at least 50 percent every two weeks. But Dell says there's no problem leaving the laptop plugged in at all times.

Can we use new laptop without charging?

Apple's advice is no longer on its website, but you can still read it online. The company recommends against leaving a laptop plugged in all the time. Instead, it suggests:

"An ideal user would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing..."

Leaving your laptop plugged in will not cause short-term damage, but if you only ever use it on AC power, you'll almost certainly find that after a year, the battery's capacity has been significantly reduced. Similarly, if you only ever use it on battery power, you'll get through the battery's discharge cycles quicker.

So, the best solution is something of a compromise between the two: use it on battery power some days, and keep it plugged in on others. And whatever you do, you'll want to make sure it doesn't get too hot.