Battery vs AC- what's more convenient for x220

[petko8680]

Hi,
was wondering which one is better- staying on battery or always plugged in via AC adapter as from what i read sometimes have the ac adapter plugged in all the time may quickly spoil the battery. cheers

[Neil]

If you're going to always be on AC, it's better to set power management to prevent overcharging the battery. Set thresholds somewhere in the mid range of the charge cycle.

[EOMtp]

+1. Specifically, set to start charging circa 70%, stop charging no higher than 98%. That way, you will always have a relatively full battery which is not being "stressed" by constant overcharging.

[u751920]

My laptop is nearly always on A/C so I discharge it once a week or so. As I have a bay battery not sure if you can set different batteries to charge at different rates. To be honest not sure where you set battery charging.

[RDKirk]

The danger is heat. Heat shortens the life of a Li-Ion battery, and a battery being charged is being heated.

That's the wisdom of the previous posters to set your battery maintenance to allow the battery to drop to 70 or 80% before charging and to stop at a bit less than 100%. It gives the battery a lot more cool time over its life.

The compromise there, of course, is that if you take it off the mains right after using it for a while, it may be close to the bottom charge level.

You can use the Lenovo Power Manager Battery Maintenance function to set the recharge points.

[petko8680]

The danger is heat. Heat shortens the life of a Li-Ion battery, and a battery being charged is being heated.

That's the wisdom of the previous posters to set your battery maintenance to allow the battery to drop to 70 or 80% before charging and to stop at a bit less than 100%. It gives the battery a lot more cool time over its life.

The compromise there, of course, is that if you take it off the mains right after using it for a while, it may be close to the bottom charge level.

You can use the Lenovo Power Manager Battery Maintenance function to set the recharge points.

Thanks to all you guys. Will do it once I get home today. So, set it up to start charging between 70% and 98% charge level, right?

BTW will it work on AC with battery removed as my x31 was able to do so or it's not a good idea?

[Neil]

It will work fine without a battery installed, but in the event of a power outage, you won't have any back-up power. That's when it's real nice to have a (mostly) charged battery in the machine, so you don't loose any work.

[petko8680]

So, did the settings for charging, but what I noticed with the power manager is that when running on battery, the laptop is running apparently slower than when on AC plus before installing power manager i think it was running faster while on battery only. Is that normal? System performance is set to Maximum turbo both- battery and ac.

[EOMtp]

Suggestion: Set operation to "Balanced" for both ... the CPU ramps up to whatever is needed, as it is needed, thus there is no general reason to force the setting to anything else.

[petko8680]

Set up both to "balanced", but i think that power manager messed things up even when I plugged AC in, laptop was running very slowly. I checked task manager and it showed that CPU is using only 5-6%, but physical RAM is using 56-60%. Plus once battery level reached 97% it stopped, but level didn't fall down below 97%. I just didn't have time to restart and try again as some Windows Updates were running, but will try today. So, do you think there is an issue with power manager or you think it's something else as before installing it laptop was running excellent both on battery and AC. cheers