Battery Maintenance.....what's best?

[Jay Marino]

My SP3 has about a 4% battery wear level after about 6 months use (hard to say because my current SP3 is a refurb).
Anyway, I am concerned that the battery life already can go pretty quickly, and if I get the battery wear level to 10 or 15% which I guess could happen in a couple years, what's the best way to prevent that?

I have always heard to drain your battery down all the way before charging it again, however, I can rarely perform this. I'll be in tablet mode for a couple hours on the couch and then go to bed with 50% battery and then when I get into the office, it's on the docking station all day charging. Which begs another question....
should it be on the docking station or on a charger all day..?
Does that degrade the battery over time?

Should I not over charge it?

Should I not charge it over night if at all possible?


What are your thoughts and inputs and findings to extend the battery life as much as possible....?

 

[leeshor]

You can't actually overcharge it. Running it down to 20%-30% is a good idea. Your worst enemy is the total number of cycles as there is a limit on cycles. You sound like you're in good shape with 4%

 

[Jay Marino]

gotcha. so what you are saying is that staying plugged into a charger or docking station is not bad?

 

[jnjroach]

From the Surface Support site:

Battery care
Operating temperature. Surface is designed to work between 32°F and 95°F (or 0°C to 35°C). Lithium-ion batteries are sensitive to high temperatures, so keep your Surface out of the sun and don’t leave it in a hot car.

Recharge any time. The battery doesn’t need to be empty or low before you recharge. You can recharge the battery whenever you like. However, it’s best to let the battery run to below 10 percent at least once per month before you recharge it.

Battery warranty. If your Surface battery is found to be defective during the warranty period, it is covered under the standard Surface Warranty. For more details about the Surface Warranty or for extended warranty coverage, see Surface standard warranty and Microsoft Complete for Surface.

Microsoft Surface battery and power | Recharge Surface

From what I've been told by the Surface Engineering Team - the typical laptop battery has between 500-800 cycles and the Surface battery has between 1500-2500 Cycles which should allow 3 years of normal use and still have about 80% capacity.

 

[Jay Marino]

Great information. Thank you. Although, although, keeping my surface between 32 and 95 is like impossible. under normal web browsing, and without my fan on, my temp is around 125.

 

[rikracer]

I believe that 32-95 is ambient operating temperature, not cpu temp