Situatie
As a Windows laptop user, you know the frustration of searching for a charging spot because your laptop’s battery life is short. The problem is worse if your laptop is older, since batteries lose capacity over time. Luckily, you can change some Windows settings to improve your laptop’s battery life.
Solutie
Modify the Power Plan Settings
Link State Power Management is a feature on your Windows computer that saves battery life by controlling the connection between the CPU and devices connected through the PCI Express (PCIe) slots. It works alongside Active State Power Management (ASPM) and offers three modes to configure — “Off,” “Moderate Power Savings,” and “Maximum Power Savings.”
If you select the “Off” option, your device won’t save power. If you choose the “Moderate Power Savings” option, your laptop will conserve less energy and wake from the Sleep state more quickly. If you select the “Maximum Power Savings” option, you’ll get the most battery savings, but it’ll take comparatively more time to wake from Sleep.
Since you want to maximize your laptop’s battery life, you should select the “Maximum Power Savings” option. To do this, open the Control Panel and navigate to System and Security > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings.
In the Power Options window, double-click the “PCI Express” option and the “Link State Power Management” option. From the On battery drop-down menu, select “Maximum Power Savings.” Then, choose “Moderate Power Savings” from the Plugged In dropdown menu.
Click “Apply” and “OK” to save the changes. After that, restart your laptop to see the impact on battery performance.
Change Video Playback Settings
Many UWP apps and third-party applications use the video platform built into Windows 11. You can control the video playback settings for these apps when your device is on battery to reduce battery consumption compared to before.
To do that, open the Settings app, choose “Apps” from the left sidebar, and select “Video Playback” on the right.
Choose the “Optimize for Battery Life” option from the Battery Options menu. Then, check the “Play video at a lower resolution when on battery” option.
Apply the Energy Recommendations Changes
Windows 11 has an Energy recommendations option in the Settings menu that shows all the minor changes you can make on your device to improve battery life. To apply these changes, open the Settings app, select “System” from the left sidebar, and click “Power & Battery” on the right.
Select the “Energy Recommendations” option.
You can click the “Apply All” option to apply all the changes recommended by Windows. Alternatively, you can click the “Apply” button next to the change you want to make on your device.
Disable the RGB Lighting
If your laptop has a backlit keyboard or you have an external keyboard with RGB lighting attached, you can improve your battery life by disabling the RGB lighting. Different laptop and keyboard brands use different key combinations to turn off the lighting.
For example, on my HP laptop, I can disable the keyboard backlight by pressing the Fn+F5 keys together. If you’re unsure of the key combination for your device, you can check the user manual that came with your laptop.
Switch to the Dark Mode
Switching to dark mode on your Windows 11 laptop can help improve battery life, but the increase won’t be as significant as other tips in this article. Specifically, you can expect a 2-3% increase in battery life after switching to dark mode, and even that increase depends on your laptop screen. If your laptop has an OLED screen, you’ll see that 2-3% battery life boost. However, if it’s an LCD screen, the percentage will be even lower.
This is because an LCD screen uses a backlight to illuminate the entire screen, regardless of the color displayed. Therefore, enabling dark mode will have a negligible impact. On the other hand, OLED screens have pixels that produce their own light and when you switch to dark mode the black pixel get turned off by default. Since the display doesn’t need to light up those pixels, it uses less battery compared to light mode. However, keep in mind that the impact will still be quite small.
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