How to improve your Windows laptop’s battery life
Can you get through a full work day without having to charge your laptop battery? Laptop manufacturers want you to think this way. That’s why so many brag that their models should have 8 hours of battery life. But no matter how carefully you look for a new Windows laptop, you won’t get anywhere near this.
You are doing nothing wrong. Instead, as you’ve discovered, there really isn’t an industry standard for measuring battery life. And even if this were the case, there is no guarantee that the standard measurement will give a result that corresponds to what you see in your daily work. CPU-intensive tasks like rendering video files or compiling large software projects will drain your battery much faster than simple browsing and document editing.
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This is why many laptop manufacturers these days avoid battery life estimates. Instead, they stick to glittering generalities. For example, when I searched HP’s website, I found a PC that listed “Long Battery Life.”[1] and HP Fast Charge technology [that] you can work, watch TV and stay connected all day.”
That footnote was far from reassuring: “Battery life depends on a number of factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, usage, wireless functionality, and power management settings.”
For its line of Surface laptops and tablets, Microsoft releases numbers based on “typical usage of Surface devices.” This test consists of browsing eight websites along with a “productivity test” using (of course) Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook.
And of course, third-party checkers usually have their own benchmarks, which can be as simple as looping a video until the battery dies, or as complex as running a scripted set of programs.
But what really matters is understanding how much actual battery life you’re getting on each charge when using your laptop for the things you need to do. Luckily, your Windows PC includes a command-line tool that measures usage very accurately. You can use the Powercfg command to generate a battery report, and then look at the numbers in the Battery Life Estimates section to get a very detailed picture of your real-world battery life. For a full guide, see: “Check Your Laptop Battery Performance.” (Although these instructions are for Windows 10, the utility works the same in Windows 11.)
Next, find out which programs are the most responsible for using your battery. In Windows 10, these details are under Settings > System > Battery under the Battery usage per app heading. In Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Power & battery, and then open the Battery usage section.
Armed with this knowledge, how can you get more battery life out of this Windows PC?
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The simplest change you can make is to turn down the screen brightness while on battery power. The brighter the display, the faster the battery drains. You’ll be amazed at the difference small changes can make.
Next, go to Settings > System > Power and sleep (Windows 10) or Power and battery (Windows 11) and set your display to turn off when not in use. Changing this setting from 5 minutes to 2 or 3 minutes can also make a noticeable difference.
If any of the previously identified battery-consuming apps are set to run automatically at startup, disable those auto-launch settings. You can find these options in Task Manager on the Startup tab.
For the most extreme power saving options, turn on Battery Saver mode, which disables all types of background activity and can add hours to your work session. To turn on Sleep mode in Windows 10, click the battery icon in the notification area and then click the Sleep option. In Windows 11, click the battery icon and then click the remaining battery gauge to open the power and battery settings, and then click the Turn on now button in the Battery Saver section.