There are a few things we can do to get the most run time from a laptop battery, the most important being the screen brightness. When manufacturers give battery life estimates, they run a locally stored video with brightness set to 40% and switch off all unnecessary features for running a video - such as WIFI, Bluetooth, Anti-Virus, etc.. Of course, in real life we need much of that for general use, however, do always have a look at the brightness settings, if at a high level it will be the biggest drain of your battery.
Equally, if you have a third party anti-virus installed (Norton, McAfee, etc.), especially one with real-time monitoring, this will be using a lot of resources and in turn, run down your battery. We use the Windows 11 integrated anti-virus on all of our office and home machines and find that the vast majority of users do not need any extra paid for anti-virus - you can read our thoughts on that here: https://thetechoutlet.co.uk/blogs/refurbished-laptops/do-i-need-to-buy-extra-antivirus.
Also check what services and applications are running in the background, one that springs to mind is Microsoft Teams, this can often be auto started when the laptop is powered on, even if not in use. This application, and others, then sit there working away in the background, and using resource and battery life when it is not needed.
Allowing updates to run is essential to the health of your laptop - but some of the bigger updates take up a lot of system resources, and in turn use up a lot of battery. These updates can be downloading and installing in the background without you knowing. So if you notice that your laptop battery is giving you less run time than you expect, always check to see if there are any outstanding updates, maybe connect to the mains and allow these to install.
Above all, check your screen brightness - you might just be amazed how much more your battery has to offer if you drop it down. The laptop I’m using right now, is currently at 60% screen brightness and is perfect for indoor regular use.
As always, if you would like any advice or have any questions, please get in touch. You can call us on 0161 850 8501 or email sales@thetechoutlet.co.uk