Laptop Battery Replacement?

paulyron · February 9

Have a Dell XPS 15 9520. Had this laptop for over 2.5 years and am still using the same battery. My laptop is plugged in almost always 100%. It is connected to 2 external monitors. Not only that, for quite some time, I have left my laptop on 24/7. I just lock it at night. I have bitlocker as well.

The only time when my laptop is not plugged in is if I power off my laptop which is rare or if during the night, my UPS powers off by itself... the battery is bad but I'm using the UPS as a surge protector... so when in the morning, either my laptop is very low battery or it shut off by itself because the power went out of the UPS.

It does seem if you are using a laptop while plugged into 2 external monitors but charger not plugged in... battery wears out much faster... can someone confirm this?

I recall people mention you should change your laptop battery every 2 years right? But that's if you use your laptop a lot? I use my laptop all day and it's on 24/7 while plugged in. It is charged at 100% as well so it isn't charged at 80%.

How do I check what is my laptop battery health? It is a 86 whr battery. When I do the laptop battery test, what should it show where I should then replace my battery? The thing is I almost always have my laptop plugged in when using it and rarely do I use it unplugged. If people use their laptop as a desktop replacement which is pretty much what I do, then you don't really need to replace the battery right? However, if there is power outage, I want my laptop to have a good amount of battery though. So you should always replace your laptop battery every 3 years at the minimum? Of course it seems like people say most people don't use a laptop more than 5 years it seems. My old Dell XPS 15 9550, I used it for like 6 years I believe. I had to replace the battery few times I recalled.

BlueChinchillaEatingDorito · February 9

1 hour ago, paulyron said:

How do I check what is my laptop battery health? It is a 86 whr battery. When I do the laptop battery test, what should it show where I should then replace my battery? The thing is I almost always have my laptop plugged in when using it and rarely do I use it unplugged. If people use their laptop as a desktop replacement which is pretty much what I do, then you don't really need to replace the battery right? However, if there is power outage, I want my laptop to have a good amount of battery though. So you should always replace your laptop battery every 3 years at the minimum? Of course it seems like people say most people don't use a laptop more than 5 years it seems. My old Dell XPS 15 9550, I used it for like 6 years I believe. I had to replace the battery few times I recalled.

Open command prompt and run the following command

powercfg /batteryreport

It'll export a battery report as an HTML file. Then type "battery' and hit tab and it should auto-populate a path with battery-report.html. Hit Enter and it'll launch in your default browser. This report will show you the design capacity and the full charge capacity. The difference between the two would be your battery health.

Kmsample2028 · February 9

7 hours ago, paulyron said:

Have a Dell XPS 15 9520. Had this laptop for over 2.5 years and am still using the same battery. My laptop is plugged in almost always 100%. It is connected to 2 external monitors. Not only that, for quite some time, I have left my laptop on 24/7. I just lock it at night. I have bitlocker as well.

The only time when my laptop is not plugged in is if I power off my laptop which is rare or if during the night, my UPS powers off by itself... the battery is bad but I'm using the UPS as a surge protector... so when in the morning, either my laptop is very low battery or it shut off by itself because the power went out of the UPS.

It does seem if you are using a laptop while plugged into 2 external monitors but charger not plugged in... battery wears out much faster... can someone confirm this?

I recall people mention you should change your laptop battery every 2 years right? But that's if you use your laptop a lot? I use my laptop all day and it's on 24/7 while plugged in. It is charged at 100% as well so it isn't charged at 80%.

How do I check what is my laptop battery health? It is a 86 whr battery. When I do the laptop battery test, what should it show where I should then replace my battery? The thing is I almost always have my laptop plugged in when using it and rarely do I use it unplugged. If people use their laptop as a desktop replacement which is pretty much what I do, then you don't really need to replace the battery right? However, if there is power outage, I want my laptop to have a good amount of battery though. So you should always replace your laptop battery every 3 years at the minimum? Of course it seems like people say most people don't use a laptop more than 5 years it seems. My old Dell XPS 15 9550, I used it for like 6 years I believe. I had to replace the battery few times I recalled.

Having your laptop plugged in all day he time will kill the battery life at a faster rate. It’s better to charge is up to 80%-100% unplug until close to draining the battery and repeat.

Mufpunter · February 10

For a quick overview of your battery health, you can view a quick check in the system BIOS. Since you have a dell, its pretty easy:

-Make sure the laptop is powered off.

-Press the power button and tap the F2 key a few times, this will enter the system BIOS menu.

-Depending on the dell BIOS version your laptop runs, the battery percentage, charging state, and health will either be on the first page you see, somewhere between 3 and 6 lines down, OR, you will have to select"Battery information" or "Battery health" from the drop down menu on the left side of the screen.

-The battery health will read either "Excellent", "Good", "Fair", or "Poor". If it says "Excellent" or "Good", you don't really have anything to worry about. If it says "Fair" or "Poor", its time for a replacement.

-Lastly, if you do have to replace the battery, make sure you use a dell OEM, or genuine dell, replacement battery. For a few different reasons, a non OEM battery might not be detected by the laptop, which means it won't charge when plugged in, or run on battery power when not.

paulyron · February 10

Battery Report shows

Design Capacity 84,292 mWh

Full Charge Capacity 62,027 mWh

Had this laptop for 2.5 years or so. When I look at the history of the mWh, I notice it first went down like 6 months later and then progressively went down. So 25% of the battery has worn out after 2.5 years? Is that good? Now would it need replacement now or not?