Hello Sportsfans,
The battery stats on the Dell XPS non4k screen usually says "2 or 3" hour remaining right after unplugged.
Now the indicator states 84% 3:53 remaining after 40 minutes of battery usage.
I never conditioned or ran the battery down, i never took the laptop outside.
do I worry, or just ignore the stats?
How new is this laptop? It generally takes a good few charge/discharge cycles before these battery life estimates become accurate. The remaining time is calculated from the remaing charge and your normal usage behaviour. If you haven't been using it for long that last one is going to be a rough guess at present.
You can see more details about you battery life and your usage pattern if you generate a battery report.
Generate Battery Usage Report in Windows 10
Thanks for the reply!
the Dell xps in April of this year. I use normal setting, were the screen res, Bluetooth and wifi are full blast
My concern is the different advice on conditioning a laptop battery, and who to trust.
In 2013 I conditioned the battery in a MacBook air after upgrading to another OSX and had my battery life go from 5-6 hours to under 1 hour!
The 'tools' at the store insisted i drain the battery then restart, and the battery would have fresh cycles, woah were they wrong! so i switched back to the pervious OSX version and the battery duration went back to normal and still holds a good charge today. I never took anyone's advice working a computer store again!
I guess i need to see how much battery life on the Dell XPS has by simply using the fine laptop for many hours.
A Li-ion battery inevitably looses some capacity with each charge cycle. The amount it loses depends on the depth of discharge (DoD). Generally, 'little and often' is the best way to charge it if you want to prolong its life. For (much) more detail, see:
How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery UniversityThe smaller the discharge (low DoD), the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine. There is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life....
Any battery remains with almost constant voltage when discharging and when reaching the end the voltage drops very fast.
The battery capacity also degrades depending on how they are charged, discharged, temperature, number of charges, age, etc.
As battery remains with almost constant voltage when discharging, the devices don't really measure their capacity but estimates it by calculating current along time. This remaining charge estimation can be by nominal capacity (not very precise) and by recording previous discharging data.
In other words, you don't measure the remaining charge, it is estimated. And it can be vary imprecise due to many factors (how they are charged, discharged, temperature, number of charges, age, etc.)
Some new computers has a option to extend battery life by not fully charging them.
A friend of mine found a solution to extend the battery life. He only attach the battery to the laptop when he is going to visit a client. On the way back he charges till 80% and then removes the battery and uses the AC power supply.
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