Does desktop resolution affect battery much for non GPU things?

[Thready]

Does my desktop resolution affect my battery life if I'm only browsing Chrome and using it for PDFs and MS Word? My Asus Zenbook is 1800p and I love the crispyness of words, but I'd like more battery life out of it. The GPU is Intel 600 and I notice the GPU usage is never very high. But I need more usage out of it because my classes are 3 hours long and there's no way to charge it. 

 

Also, if I were to replace the battery on my own, do aftermarket batteries work as well as factory batteries or is there a drop in quality? The laptop is a year and a half old and I only use it for school, so I should hope that the battery isn't too worn down by now, but it just won't last. I really don't know anything about batteries other than it's not good to leave them in the charger.

[Mateyyy]

I honestly don't think dropping the resolution would make that big of a difference in terms of battery life in your case. Best I think I could suggest is drop the brightness, use Windows' power saving mode, disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the keyboard backlight.

I also don't think changing the battery would help much, since I wouldn't expect the battery to have degraded that badly in just one and a half years. Have you considered buying a powerbank?

[Jasun]

You shouldn't really be worried about your desktop resolution ruining your battery life because the resolution only contributes to how many pixels your GPU has to render and even with an iGPU, that should be no problem. I would look into any specific background tasks that may be running and optimizing windows for battery. 

General Windows tips for longer battery: 

- turn on power saving mode (battery icon, drag all the way to left side)

- lower brightness if possible

- close all unneeded background programs (taskbar -> up arrow -> right click -> quit/close)

- turn off any peripherals or keyboard lighting if applicable

- undervolting (only if you know what you're doing, dave2d has a nice video on how to lower thermals on a laptop [it also reduces battery usage to a certain extent])

- etc. (you can always find articles/videos online that tell you how to reduce general battery usage on a laptop)

[Thready]

1 hour ago, Jasun said:

You shouldn't really be worried about your desktop resolution ruining your battery life because the resolution only contributes to how many pixels your GPU has to render and even with an iGPU, that should be no problem. I would look into any specific background tasks that may be running and optimizing windows for battery. 

General Windows tips for longer battery: 

- turn on power saving mode (battery icon, drag all the way to left side)

- lower brightness if possible

- close all unneeded background programs (taskbar -> up arrow -> right click -> quit/close)

- turn off any peripherals or keyboard lighting if applicable

- undervolting (only if you know what you're doing, dave2d has a nice video on how to lower thermals on a laptop [it also reduces battery usage to a certain extent])

- etc. (you can always find articles/videos online that tell you how to reduce general battery usage on a laptop)

I took a screenshot of this advice and I'll make sure to keep it around on my desktop as a reference. 

1 hour ago, Mateyyy said:

I honestly don't think dropping the resolution would make that big of a difference in terms of battery life in your case. Best I think I could suggest is drop the brightness, use Windows' power saving mode, disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the keyboard backlight.

I also don't think changing the battery would help much, since I wouldn't expect the battery to have degraded that badly in just one and a half years. Have you considered buying a powerbank?

I'll have to keep wifi on but I can turn down the brightness and keyboard backlight easy. I also have a mode called battery saver which I can customize and I'll make sure to look at that. 

 

I guess I can turn my resolution up then. Thanks guys