Laptop battery / should they be initially conditioned

Hi folks
Should a laptop with a new replacement battery or a totally new laptop have its battery initially "conditioned". Some people say discharge to around 20%, recharge, discharge again to around 20% etc for around 4 times to "properly condition the battery" before using it as normal. Any views on this. (Assuming modern Lithium type batteries of course).

Cheers
jimbo

I know that was an issue a few years ago. What laptop are you using? I have a Dell XPS 15 9510 and learned the hard way that you need to be careful with deep discharges. When it started to show a little "wear" I decided to try a deep discharge in hopes it might gain back some capacity...it worked on older laptops in the past. The opposite happened. Neither the design nor full capacity values changed and I only added more "wear." I ultimately replaced the battery and opted not to condition. It shows the same design and full capacity as the original battery, but with 0% wear.

I put a new DELL battery in on Xmas Eve and I read the following article beforehand. It suggests there is no need for any special treatment regarding Li-On batteries. See BU-701: How to Prime Batteries

Extract from article: - "Lithium-ion is a very clean system that does not need additional priming once it leaves the factory, nor does it require the level of maintenance that nickel-based batteries do. Additional formatting makes little difference because the maximum capacity is available right from the beginning, (the exception may be a small capacity gain after a long storage). A full discharge does not improve the capacity once the battery has faded — a low capacity signals the end of life. A discharge/charge may calibrate a “smart” battery but this does little to improve the chemical battery. (See BU-601: Inner Working of a Smart Battery.) Instructions recommending charging a new Li-ion for 8 hours are written off as “old school,” a left-over from the old nickel battery days."

I have a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming 5577 model. I never did anything special for the battery and it still charges to 100% and discharges at the same rate as it did new.

I don't game, I use this laptop for on-site recording. Reason for a gaming laptop is it has more cooling and better suited for being powered on and used for long periods.

fireberd said:

I have a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming 5577 model. I never did anything special for the battery and it still charges to 100% and discharges at the same rate as it did new.

I don't game, I use this laptop for on-site recording. Reason for a gaming laptop is it has more cooling and better suited for being powered on and used for long periods.

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Batteries will normally show charging to 100% even when there is wear. the difference is that 100% 5 years ago may not be the same today, when accounting for wear. If you're truly still the same as 5 years ago, when you run a battery health report it should show that design capacity and full capacity are the same. Likewise, you can use HW Monitor and it will show you similar. The difference between design capacity and full capacity is the "wear." Ideally you want them the same....100% charge means full design capacity and not something lower.

My take on all rechargable batteries is use them regularly or their life will be shorter than advertised. Laptops should be used on their batteries for at least half the session and then powered by mains which takes care of most or all of the recharging. Purposeful conditioning will at least do no harm and possibly be a benefit to the life of the battery. Modern battery circuitry will not allow discharging to a harmful level, fortunately as Li cells will die quickly if run flat.

There is no publicly-available data to answer the OP's question. Or, indeed, to act as guidance for the other issues raised in this thread.
There are only claims & counter-claims.

Denis

i do nothing special with laptop batteries. I've had a few Dell's at work over the past 5-6 years that both suffered swelling batteries, but since it's work they just give me a new one.

My daughter has a 2020 Macbook air with the M1 chip and that think seems like it's never dead. Battery life on the apple silicon is incredible.

There is no real special procedure for conditioning LiIon batteries EXCEPT that they should be fully charged the first time before running the device on battery. After that, the batteries will reach peak capacity after a few discharge / charge cycles. It's not necessary to discharge them completely to condition them. Normal usage will serve fine for conditioning.

NOTE: It's perfectly fine to use the laptop on AC power while the battery is being charged the first time, just avoid running the device on battery until it has been fully charged.

tinmar49 said:

My take on all rechargable batteries is use them regularly or their life will be shorter than advertised. Laptops should be used on their batteries for at least half the session and then powered by mains which takes care of most or all of the recharging. Purposeful conditioning will at least do no harm and possibly be a benefit to the life of the battery. Modern battery circuitry will not allow discharging to a harmful level, fortunately as Li cells will die quickly if run flat.

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Modern batteries do not need to be conditioned. Doing a full discharge/recharge cycle every so many months can still help to recalibrate the battery capacity meter, but there's a caveat: doing so will cause additional wear and tear on the individual cells. You probably shouldn't do a full discharge/charge cycle to recalibrate the meter each time immediately as soon as the meter is off by one or two percent. Either way, lithium ion rechargeable batteries and lithium polymer rechargeable batteries do not have 'memory effect'.

They don't like to be discharged too far, but also they don't like to be fully charged. So, partial discharge/charge cycles that avoid deep discharges and avoid fully charging the cells are best, to extend cycle life. That is, in spite of the fact that cycle life ratings (as found in the official datasheet from the battery manufacturer) and cycle life measurements/guesstimates are counted as full cycles, so as to be able to make comparisons with an unbiased (or almost) battery test setup or lab.

Charging a battery pack to 100% doesn't necessarily also mean that the cells inside the pack will be fully charged to their maximum rated volts, though. This depends on the technical design of the internal Battery Management System (BMS) that's built-in into the pack. The manufacturer of the pack can squeeze more cycle life out of the cells by designing it such that charging it to 100% causes its cells to be a tad lower than the maximum volts that the cells actually are rated to. So as a result, the extra wear and tear you get from charging it to 100% (as opposed to only charging it to a percentage level that is lower) each time when you decide to charge it might be small enough for it to not really be worth worrying about. I suspect that this, at least in part, is why so many modern laptops don't give you the option to let it automatically stop the charging at any level that is lower than 100%.

That said, the main driving force behind accelerated battery aging is temperature. Letting batteries get hotter than 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) by a margin of more than just a few degrees and/or frequently and/or for prolonged periods of time should be avoided to prevent the aging from accelerating beyond what you might still call normal/acceptable. Never let the individual cells reach above their rated maximum temperature (usually around 75 or 80 degrees Celsius for lithium ion round cells, although this will depend on the actual specs in the official datasheet of the round cell in question). Using (i.e. discharging or recharging) batteries at temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) should be avoided. Never recharge a battery below freezing. Don't store your lithium ion rechargeable batteries in a fridge.

Exceeding the official temperature limits as specified by the battery manufacturer may internally damage the cells. They may short circuit internally causing them to burst, release toxic fumes and/or potentially catch fire (could also be violent like fireworks even though this happens only very rarely).

It depends on the battery.

Different battery chemistries behave differently. With LiIon batteries and their variants including Li Polymer and LiFePO4, there is no need to regularly cycle the batteries. Some manuacturs suggest that if you are not using the batteries for a long time, you might consider a cycle on the battery once every 6 to 12 months. However, leaving them sitting in a fully charged state can shorten their expected lifespan and the number of charges you will get out of them. LiIon batteries simply don't like sitting fully charged for extended times. This is why many laptops now have the ability to limit charging to 60%, 80%, or some other level.

I'm not trying to generate fear here - many laptops have no such capability and the batteries still work for many years. In fact, I have an old laptop that sits plugged in with a fully charged battery 24 x 7. The battery must be somewhere around 6 years old and still works fine. However, it would last even longer if a stored it in a partially discharged state.

NOTE: Aside from laptops, there are a number of battery chargers now that specifically have the ability to put LiIon natteries into a "storage" state (typically somewhere around 50% to 60% charged and a voltage of about 3.6V to 3.7V.

hsehestedt said:

Different battery chemistries behave differently. With LiIon batteries and their variants including Li Polymer and LiFePO4, there is no need to regularly cycle the batteries. Some manuacturs suggest that if you are not using the batteries for a long time, you might consider a cycle on the battery once every 6 to 12 months. However, leaving them sitting in a fully charged state can shorten their expected lifespan and the number of charges you will get out of them. LiIon batteries simply don't like sitting fully charged for extended times. This is why many laptops now have the ability to limit charging to 60%, 80%, or some other level.

I'm not trying to generate fear here - many laptops have no such capability and the batteries still work for many years. In fact, I have an old laptop that sits plugged in with a fully charged battery 24 x 7. The battery must be somewhere around 6 years old and still works fine. However, it would last even longer if a stored it in a partially discharged state.

NOTE: Aside from laptops, there are a number of battery chargers now that specifically have the ability to put LiIon natteries into a "storage" state (typically somewhere around 50% to 60% charged and a voltage of about 3.6V to 3.7V.

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Yeah, but like I said having the battery indicator sit at 100% does not necessarily also mean that the cells will be fully charged. For starters, the manufacturer of the cells that the battery pack uses may not necessarily be the same as the manufacturer of the pack, and, 100% is 100% of what? Is it 100% of the rated capacity that is specified in the official datasheet of the cells, by the manufacturer of the cells? Or is it 100% of something else, like, e.g., 100% of that which the laptop manufacturer thinks should be the maximum charge for the best tradeoff between the various factors that they consider to be important, also including the endurance of the battery and the logical relationship between the life expectancy of the laptop's hardware components and it? That's the real question IMO. The bottom line is that the State of Charge (SoC) of the cells should not be confounded with the battery status indicator of the laptop, as these are two completely different things.

Only thing of concern is the calibration. On my laptop I went from 6h battery life to 30 minutes on "full" charge...after calibration, it went back to 6 hours on full charge.

LiIon battery capacity is usually measured by the voltage. So, even if you substitute a battery of a wildly different capacity, it SHOULD be able to measure percentage charge correctly. Where it gets tricky is if individual cells of a battery age differently and the voltages of the cells vary.

hsehestedt said:

LiIon battery capacity is usually measured by the voltage. So, even if you substitute a battery of a wildly different capacity, it SHOULD be able to measure percentage charge correctly. Where it gets tricky is if individual cells of a battery age differently and the voltages of the cells vary.

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Thanks for that. I realize now that you are quoting me that I misspoke. I used the word "capacity" but should have said the level of charge from 0% to 100%.

Capacity is actually how much of a charge in maH the battery can hold so thanks for the followup.

hsehestedt said:

Thanks for that. I realize now that you are quoting me that I misspoke. I used the word "capacity" but should have said the level of charge from 0% to 100%.

Capacity is actually how much of a charge in maH the battery can hold so thanks for the followup.

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Yeah, but I highly doubt that there exists a linear relationship between the voltage and the percentage number that is reported by the laptop's hardware. The low cut-off voltage for lithium ion rechargeable round cells like 18650s, that is most typically associated with 0%, is at 3.00V or maybe a little bit higher. Most of these cells (although this still depends on the make and model of the cell) are fully charged when the voltage reaches 4.20V. But the laptop manufacturer may have designed the battery pack and the charging mechanism thereof such that charging stops at a voltage that is lower, so as to extend cycle life, and designed it such that it still reports 100%, despite this.

They may play with the numbers, but it is based upon the voltage. On my ASUS laptop, I have the ability to limit the charge to 60% or 80% and as a result the charge level never shows as higher than 60% or 80% when those options are set. They could, of course, consider those as being 100% charged and call it that, but no we are simply redefining what the 100% charge point is.

This is the reason you can transfer a Li-Ion battery from one device to another and get an accurate charge level reading right away on the device it was transferred to.

The fact that we can determine charge level by the voltage is a huge advantage of Li-Ion. I used to own laptops back when the batteries were nickel metal hydride and even before that nickel cadmium. It was almost impossible to get good charge level readings out of those due the behaviors of those chemistries.

At least the metal hydride was a big improvement in that you didn't have to constantly discharge them fully to avoid memory effects. I modified a laptop by replacing NiCd cells with NiMh batteries before any commercially available NiMh batteries were available in laptops. As a result of that change, I was able to sell that laptop used for way more than I bought it new.