Custom Battery Settings

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Ye that is my plan - to use it frequently on battery but to only keep it at 80% charged when plugged in. Not sure if I should cap it myself to 80% or use the "Primary AC Use" from Dell Power Manager

Thanks Mary G for your response. Please forgive my ignorance,

but I was under the impression that the purpose of the custom battery settings was to ensure that the computer only started charging at x% and stopped at y%.

I thought this mechanism would avoid the detriment of having it "charging all the time"

Whilst also avoiding the classic charge to 100% then plug in when the low battery notifcation comes on. 

I see the head funder of battery university stated that

"ideally everyone would charge their batteries to 80 percent then let them drain to about 40 percent. This will prolong the life of your battery -- in some cases by as much as four times. The reason is that each cell in a lithium-polymer battery is charged to a voltage level. The higher the charge percentage, the higher the voltage level. The more voltage a cell has to store, the more stress it's put under. That stress leads to fewer discharge cycles."

To me it seems employing the custom battery settings at 50% and 80% (The setting won't allow 40%)

would be the best way of achieving this.

Please forgive for any misconceptions I may have.

Kind regards

Connor

For those who want/need to keep their laptop plugged in all the time, use My Dell Power Settings in Windows 10 to help prolong your battery:

1. Click the Windows 10 Start Icon on the taskbar.
2. Find My Dell in the list of programs, and click on it.
3. Click on Power.
4. In the Power Manager that comes up, click on Settings at the top.
5. Click on Charging (on the second row of menus).
6. Click Custom, and then set when the battery is to start and stop charging.

Thank you for posting this! I've been looking for how to change power manager for 30 minutes! 

AFAIK the way connor.gilbert wants to do it is the same way I would like to do it and for the same reason: using AC whenever possible and charging/discharging the battery as less as possible, although I will be using the laptop on battery from time to time (a few times a week, so I keep the "fluids flowing", which is recommended as well).

Ideally there should be an option to NOT charge the battery at all. Let's suppose one works with the laptop on AC for quite some time: after a while the battery has discharged itself slowly till the point of 50%, where charging occurs again. On the other hand, if we don't want to discharge below 40% (or only when really necessary), then perhaps it is better to do charging anyway when the battery reaches 50%. It would be better if DPM gives the option to configure 40% (and even lower for those who want something lower) instead of 50%.

Can Dell and others confirm connor's and my visions are correct?

Thanks!

Regards,

Pedro

You make a fair point, but then again, once you have set your custom thresholds and let the AC adapter charge it to its max (80% in your case), it will take weeks and weeks and weeks to slowly discharge to 50%. And if you use your laptop on battery even just once a week/fortnight then it's really all just theory!

When you plug in the charger:

• if the battery is below 60% it will start charging to 80% then it will stop and use AC power
• if the battery is above 60%, it won't charge and use AC power

same question , if the laptop is always plugged in ,what's best mode for extended battery life? ;  "Primary AC Use" or  "custom"