(Credit: Bob Al-Greene)
I always take my laptop with me on trips so I can squeeze in some work, but keeping my PC running for hours without access to an AC outlet can be a challenge. That’s especially true with the smaller batteries that often come with today’s thin and light laptops. That doesn't mean you need to buy a new computer with a better battery—though the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ did win our inaugural PC Labs Award for lasting 42 hours! Instead, you can adjust a few settings in Windows to help the battery last a little longer.
Things like choosing specific power modes, enabling energy saver mode, and even lowering the screen's brightness can go a long way. Not only will these features help your laptop make it to its next charge, but the energy-efficient options in Windows 11 can also help extend the life of your lithium-ion battery by lengthening your charging cycles.
1. Choose the Energy-Efficient Power Mode
The first thing to do is choose a power mode for your laptop. Open Settings > System > Power & battery and click Power Mode. Windows 11 offers three modes that balance performance and power efficiency. You can choose a mode for when the laptop is plugged in and one for when it's on battery power:
- Best Performance: Windows delivers the best speed, responsiveness, and screen performance, but it can also tax your CPU and battery.
- Best Power Efficiency: This setting limits CPU speed, background activity, screen brightness, and other power-hungry processes.
- Balanced: A middle ground between performance and efficiency.
For the Plugged in setting, you can choose Best Performance or Balanced. For the On Battery setting, I recommend Best Power Efficiency, especially if you’ll be running on battery power for several hours. Click the drop-down menu next to the setting and select the mode you want.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)2. Choose What Happens When Your Laptop Is Idle
As long as you’re using your laptop, the screen and storage drive will remain active. But if you step away, you don’t want your PC to keep draining your battery. With that in mind, you’re able to decide when the screen should turn off and the PC should go to sleep.
Under Settings > System > Power & battery, select Screen, sleep, & hibernate timeouts. For the Plugged in setting, you can set both the screen turnoff and sleep mode to a high number, such as five hours. But for the On battery setting, I'd say you should choose a smaller amount for both. The specific number depends on how long a battery charge typically lasts on your laptop. On my PC, I set the screen to turn off after pne hour and the sleep mode to two.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)3. Set Up Energy Saver
Another way to keep your battery charge alive is by enabling energy saver mode, which reduces your PC's power consumption and limits certain background activities.
At the Power & battery settings screen, select Energy saver. If your battery charge is already getting low, you can manually turn on energy saver. To make it kick in automatically at a specific charge level, click the drop-down button and choose a percentage. I usually set it to 30%.
To further help your battery, turn on Lower screen brightness when using energy saver, so the screen doesn't eat up as much charge as it normally does. You may have to play with that setting to make sure the screen isn’t so dim that you can’t work effectively.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)4. Customize Certain Actions on Your Computer
You can also control what happens when you press the power button or close the lid. At the Power & battery settings screen, select Lid, power & sleep button controls. As with other options, this one has separate settings for plugged-in and battery mode. For each action, you'll be able to choose among four options:
- Do nothing: When you press the power button or close the lid, your laptop will continue to run as normal.
- Sleep: This will put the laptop into a sleep state to conserve battery life.
- Hibernate: A deeper sleep state that may take slightly longer to wake, but also conserves more battery life.
- d: Turn off the computer completely, conserving the most battery life possible.
For plugged-in mode, I typically keep all the settings set to Sleep. For battery mode, I change the setting for pressing the power button to Sleep. I then adjust the setting for closing the lid to Hibernate, which will help preserve more battery life without having to completely shut down the computer.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)5. Follow the Energy Recommendations
One way to cut to the chase is to review the recommendations offered by Windows. At the Power & battery settings screen, select Energy recommendations. The screen offers several suggestions for conserving energy and preserving your battery charge. A green checkmark means that the action is already in effect. An Apply button next to an action means that this change has not been made. Click Apply next to any action you want to implement. Click Apply All to implement them all.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)6. Manually Dim the Screen
Often, I prefer to manually dim the screen rather than let Windows do it automatically. That gives me more control over how much to dim it—just enough to reduce the battery drain but not so much that I can’t see the screen properly. Your laptop should have dedicated function keys to adjust the screen brightness. For example, my Lenovo laptop uses F5 to lower the brightness and F6 to increase it.
Play around until you achieve the optimal screen brightness when you’re using battery power. To adjust this without using the function keys, go to Settings > System > Display. Here, you’re able to move the slider on the Brightness bar left or right.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)7. Lower the Screen's Refresh Rate
The refresh rate determines how often the screen is refreshed. The higher the rate, the faster and smoother the visual motion. That’s especially helpful if you’re playing PC games with high-fidelity graphics. But the higher the rate, the greater the battery drain. For that reason, you may want to lower the rate when on battery power.
For this, go to Settings > System > Display > Advanced Display. The screen will show the current refresh rate, maybe 120Hz. That’s fine if your PC is plugged in. But if you’re using the battery, click the drop-down button and change the rate to 60Hz. Alternatively, you can turn on Dynamic refresh rate, which will allow Windows to automatically vary the rate to save power.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)8. Turn on Airplane Mode
Normally, your PC is constantly looking for wireless signals, a process that adds to the battery drain. Your laptop may not always need to be connected to the internet for you to use it, especially if you’re in an area without an available connection. So turning off this feature can help conserve power. Head to Settings > Network & internet > Airplane mode, where you can turn off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth separately, or turn on Airplane mode to disable both.
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)