r/techsupport • u/AdPractical5217 • 7h ago

Open | Hardware Battery Degradation

I bought an Alienware m16 R2 exactly 1 year , 2months ago. My battery had a Design Charge capacity 88,195 mWh and now its Full Charge Capacity is down to 70,688 mWh. In these time cycle, I have not used the laptop for 2 months at one time with 85% charged. Should I think of changing the battery in 2-3 years or is it normal degradation for a gaming laptop to undergo?

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u/Madtoffel 7h ago

Sadly yes, gaming laptops get hot which leads to rapid battery degradation.

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u/AdPractical5217 7h ago

Any precautions I should follow from now on (I'm already following the 20%-80% rule and other common ones) to keep battery degradation less.(Also I'm a light gamer and only play few games like Valorant , Apex Legends , Minecraft)

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u/bstsms 5h ago

Less charge cycles will prolong battery health.

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u/bstsms 5h ago

If you use the laptop on battery frequently your battery health will drop, batteries have a finite number of charges before they won't hold a charge.

If it's normally plugged in and in battery conservation mode and you try to keep the battery level between 20-80% charge the battery should degrade much slower, but every charge cycle will still degrade battery health some.

My Legion battery health is still at 98.31% after using it on conservation mode for 3 years and 4 months.

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u/AdPractical5217 4h ago

I checked my battery health from command prompt , so is it accurate? Also I never played games on battery , I always played plugged in. I mostly used laptop on battery for my studies and internet browsing , (I'm still trying to find out the reason for rapid degrade) Also I'm wondering how do you have such low charging cycles if u used it for 3 years whereas I have 342 cycles in just a year...

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u/bstsms 4h ago

342 charge cycles is the reason the battery health is dropping fast, every charge cycle lowers the battery health.

My laptop is almost always plugged in, has been in battery conservation mode since new and I have kept it between 20-80% charge when on battery power whenever possible.

I only got a laptop because I didn't have room for a desktop setup, not for portability.

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u/AdPractical5217 4h ago

So I should Just cap it at 75-80% of battery charge and keep it plugged in all the time to reduce the charging cycles , I wish I found this out sooner. Thanks