Why is My Laptop Battery Draining So Fast? 8 Fixes

If you own an old laptop, chances are your laptop’s battery doesn’t serve as it used to. Did you ever think about why is my laptop battery draining so fast? Here are the 8 reasons and solutions.

Needless to say, a laptop’s primary purpose is its mobility. But if your laptop isn’t providing enough power backup and you need to charge it every now and then, that becomes a real issue.

If you’re wondering why your laptop’s battery drains so fast and how you can fix it, then you’ve come to the perfect place.

In this article, we deep dive into the causes and fixes of your laptop battery draining fast. We also cover some nitty-gritty details about laptop batteries so that you get to know about your battery’s health.

For demonstration purposes, we’ll be using a Windows 11 laptop. If you’re using macOS, Linux, or any other Operating System, you can still pick up some great info to improve your laptop’s battery life.

Enough talking.

Let’s increase your laptop’s battery conservation!

How Long Do Laptop Batteries Go In One Charge?

This depends on how old your battery is, your battery’s capacity, and your activities, among other factors.

Considering everything is positive, you should get 4-6 hours of backup in one charge. 3-4 hours for moderate use is good. You can think your battery is starting to wear out any less than that.

How Long Do Laptop Batteries Last?

Again, this depends on many factors. Generally speaking, 2-4 years or 500-100 charge cycles (more on this later) is a good period.

7 Reasons Why is My Laptop Battery Draining So Fast and How To Fix Them

Let’s have a look at the real causes behind this problem. Once you can identify what’s causing your battery to drain so fast, you can take proper measures to fix them.

This ensures you take the exact steps you take to improve your laptop’s battery life without any guesswork.

1) Your Battery is Old or Damaged

Batteries, depending on many factors, have a lifespan. After a certain time has passed, laptop batteries decrease their backup time.

For example, if your laptop took 5 hours to reach 0% charge from 100% when you first bought it, as time passes, this time will reduce. Depending on how old your battery is you may even get as little as 30- 60 minutes of backup from your battery.

Again, this depends on many criteria like

• How much do you use your laptop?
• How often do you charge your laptop?
• Your battery type and laptop materials.

It also depends on the brand of your laptop. HP, for example, says their batteries usually last for 2 to 4 years or 1000 charges.

Fix:

If your laptop’s battery has become old or damaged, try to replace your battery.

If you know how to replace the battery yourself, then go for it. However, if you’re a beginner regarding a laptop’s internal hardware, it’s best to call a technician or take your laptop to a nearby repair shop. Otherwise, you could end up harming your laptop(and yourself).

2) Wrong Battery/Power Options

Have you checked your battery and/or power settings? You can control how much battery your laptop consumes depending on which mode your laptop is operating on.

Usually, there are three power modes on your laptop.

• Performance mode
• Balanced mode
• Battery/Power Saving mode

When you are using your laptop in high-performance mode, your laptop will drain the most battery.

In balanced mode, the laptop will consume battery moderately, balancing saving the battery and enhancing performance.

In the Battery/Power Saving mode, your laptop will save the most battery it possibly can while sacrificing performance.

Fix:

If you’re running your laptop in either Performance or Balanced mode, consider changing it to Battery Saving mode.

To do so, go to Settings → Power & Battery. From the Power mode option, choose Best power efficiency.

On Windows 10, just click on the battery icon you see on the taskbar and adjust the slider. Bring it to the left on the Best battery life mode for saving the most battery.

3) Screen Brightness

Your display’s brightness settings drain a lot more battery than you think. It may consume the most power out of all battery consumers currently on your laptop.

Surprised? You can check it out yourself from the Settings → Power & Battery → Battery usage menu.

Chances are that you’ll see the display taking the most battery out of your sessions than other utilities.

Fix:

The most common fix is to reduce your screen’s brightness and keep it to an optimum level. This way, you’re saving a good chunk of your battery power without putting your eyes into much pain.

You can adjust the screen’s brightness from Settings → Display → Brightness & Color. Adjust the slider to change your brightness.

You can also opt for the dark mode to save some battery life. Some studies show that dark mode may save your battery life.

To enable Dark Mode in Windows 11, right-click on your screen and go to Personalize. Go to Colors. From the Choose your mode menu, pick Dark.

4) Keyboard and Mouse (Back)light

Besides your screen’s brightness, using a backlit keyboard with lights always turned on will consume your battery much faster than if you turned the lights off.

The same goes for using a fancy rainbow litten mouse that changes color every second.

The extra lights that are lit on your keyboard and mouse require extra power, resulting in the fast battery draining.

Fix:

For the gamers and fancy keyboard/mouse lovers out there, try turning off the lights of your keyboard. This will save you battery so you can continue your favourite activity for longer.

5) Too Many Resource-hungry Programs/Processes Running(in the background)

This is a problem that gamers and content creators fall into.

Gamers regularly install and run games on their laptops that quickly eat up their battery power. High-end games probably consume more power than any other apps on your laptop.

Content creators need to run several apps on their laptops at the same time. For example, if you make video tutorials, you may need a screen recorder, an annotation app, and other apps you’re making tutorials for opened and run at the same time. This makes your device laggy and consumes a lot of battery power.

Sometimes, your system runs many apps in the background that you may not even know about. These programs secretly consume battery even when your laptop is just sitting idly.

Fix:

Try to level down the settings in your game, like lower resolution and other graphics settings. You may not get the best gaming experience, but you’ll extend the battery life, which means more gaming(yippee!).

Try to minimize how many apps you’re running at the same time. If you don’t need an app at the moment, close it.

Check what apps are running in the background that you don’t need. Open the Task Manager with the Ctrl+Shift+Esc keyboard shortcut. Check the apps and processes running in the background. Right-click on them. Then tap End task.

You can also check your battery usage per app to find the real culprits who take out most of your battery.

From Settings, go to Power & Battery → Battery usage. Scroll down to see which app has taken how much battery power. This lets you calculate and plan your future app usage.

6) Too Many Hardware and Peripherals Connected

Software isn’t the only thing consuming your battery. Hardware does it as well. Again, gamers fall into this problem more often than others(sorry, dear gamers).

If you have mice, keyboards, gamepads, headsets, USB drives, webcams, and speakers all connected to your poor laptop simultaneously, your laptop will run out of battery drastically.

Why?

Where do you think all these peripherals are getting their power from? Your laptop!

Fix:

Don’t connect all your peripherals to your laptop at the same time. If you don’t need something, disconnect and remove it from your laptop. If you have external hard drives, CDs, or DVDs inserted into your laptop, eject them in case you’re not using them.

Especially if you use wireless hardware like a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, or speaker, it’s time to switch to wired connections again.

7) Network Connections

The more network connections you set up on your laptop, the more battery consumed. Network connections include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, VPN, adapters, and more.

Fix:

Try to minimize your network connections. Do you have unused network connections? Turn them off to save your battery.

To check your network connections, go to Settings → Network & Internet.

8) Your Laptop Might Be Infected

Have you noticed anything phishy going on in your laptop (Other than the unusual battery consumption, of course)? If so, it’s possible that your laptop got infected with malware and virus.

In case you didn’t know, malware affects your battery significantly. This isn’t a matter you should take lightly.

If you’re sure there is a virus on your laptop, take immediate measures. Because in such cases, battery draining shouldn’t even be your priority. Your laptop’s health, files, and important documents are in great danger.

Fix:

The Windows Defender is a powerful tool for fighting back malware. This is built into your Windows laptop that can take care of any malware or viruses on your laptop.

You may also get a good antivirus for your laptop(though not required). Scan your laptop for malware and remove them from your laptop. This will improve your battery power vastly.

Other Laptop Battery Saving Tips

Besides the above mentioned issues, there are some small measures you can take to save some battery. Nothing groundbreaking, but you can prolong your laptop usage when these add up.

So the tips are

• Turn on the battery saver
• Turn on Air Plane mode
• Shorten the screentime duration
• Lower screen refresh rate
• Restart your laptop

How to Improve Your Laptop’s Battery Lifespan?

So far, we’ve covered how you can save your battery consumption. But, what can you do to improve your laptop’s battery life?

In other words, how can you ensure your laptop battery doesn’t wear out quickly in the long run?

Since laptop batteries become dead(RIP) or damaged the more you use them, here are some simple tips you can follow to increase their longevity.

1) Try to reduce your charge cycles.

A charge cycle basically means to charge your laptop from 0% all the way to 100%. Laptop batteries have a maximum amount of charge cycles they can go through, as we mentioned above.

The more you’re careful about saving your battery, the fewer charge cycles your laptop’s battery has to go through. You can learn more about the science behind laptop batteries here.

2) Keep your laptop in a cool environment.

More heat can damage your battery. If you often find your laptop is heating, use a cooler to cool down your laptop.

3) Keep an eye on the battery health reports.

Generate battery health reports using Windows Powershell or other software. You can keep track of your battery usage and other stats. This way, you can take the appropriate measures to take care of your battery(Hey, batteries need care too).

4) Buy laptops with massive battery life.

If you want a new laptop, buy one with better battery life. This ensures you get more charge cycles and long backups.

Some brands like Dell, Asus, and Apple are known for their battery lifespan.

Final Thoughts:

This guide took you through everything you need to know about your laptop’s battery life and answered your question ‘why is my laptop battery draining so fast.’. The above methods are applicable for Windows 11, Windows 10 and other older versions.

We’ve also included tips and tricks to improve your battery lifespan so that you can use your laptop for a couple of more months or even years. It doesn’t matter which brand of laptop you have, like Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer or MSI, but following the above steps will be useful.

Have any tips you would like to share? Let us know in the comments.