Windows Laptop - Bypass battery on AC?

Question

Windows Laptop - Bypass battery on AC?

Anonymous

Hi all,

I have been wanting to ditch my high end desktop / low end laptop combo and replace it with a single high end laptop. I use it for business and occasional gaming, so when I travel it's very convenient to have all of my data with me without having to sync it manually (in the past, I just Teamviewer to my desktop), but when I'm at home I'd like to use it to game on once in a while.

I've seen some very nice high end laptops, some which are thin and light even while having RTX GPUs (such as Razer Blade's or newer ASUS ROG laptops), but a huge concern I've had is that when under heavy load like gaming, the batteries seem to constantly drain and refill even when on AC power. I am guessing this will cause longevity issues with the battery and I don't want to deal with battery swelling issues that many seem to have with high end laptops.

There are two ways I can see to avoid this:

1.) Remove the laptop battery when at home, put it back in when travelling.

2.) Some software to force bypass charging the battery when on AC power, so the wall power is only used even when under load.

For option 1, this would be a huge inconvenience, since if I wanted to move the laptop even when not leaving my house, I'd have to take the backplate off and put the battery back in.

So option 2 seems like the best of both worlds. But it doesn't seem possible. I'm not talking about just "limiting battery charge to 80%" or something like that, I mean an option to set it to bypass battery altogether as if a battery wasn't in the laptop, like a Windows app you could tick on and off to bypass battery or not bypass battery.

I've looked at many laptop manufacturers and none have capability to do this, be it Windows software or in BIOS. Windows power options don't cover anything like this.

Is this just technically impossible? If not does anyone have an idea on how about any software to achieve this?

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3 answers

Answer 1

Hi Nigel,

> Designed 'Gaming' laptop will have been tested under heavy loads and each vendor WILL be able to supply to details on best practice in terms of battery/charging, and will have datasheets showing battery life under loading.

I was looking for a gaming laptop, but I'd really just like to avoid the battery being in use when under heavy load. I've used a battery info app to monitor draw rate and charge rate when gaming on a very high end gaming laptop and it was constant. I want to avoid any risk of the battery swelling after a year and just to prolong the life of the battery when it technically isn't even needed 97% of the time.

Lenovo has a "disable built in battery" option in BIOS but it turns the laptop off like for maintenance. It would be useful if Windows or manufacturers implemented this directly for powered on use.

Answer 2

Hello,

Acer I believe also have the same function in their laptops.

Dell (Alienware) however have a feature 'running on battery mode until the charge dropped down to 75%, at which point it said "Plugged in, no charging" and held the charge steady at 75%.' Dell feature aimed at protecting the longetivity of the battery by occasionally discharging it and is called Battery Desktop Mode?

I believe each vendor has provision for this, however it could be BIOS or through 3rd party software. Their is nothing in Windows 10 which will natively address this.

ASUS for example seem to be providing some really good high end gaming laptops, provide a piece of software called 'ASUS Battery Health Charging software'. This may be more optimized for gaming laptops with higher capacity batteries.

Basically, it will be down to what each vendor provide, though BIOS or their own software running in Windows.

Hope this helps!

Feel free to ask back any questions and let me know how it goes.

If you don't have any more questions, feel free to choose a rating and let us know whether this information was helpful to you!"

Answer 3

Hi, my name is Nigel and I am an Independent Advisor for Microsoft here to try and work with you on this issue you are having.

Apologies if this reply is not as thorough as your question. You seem to have done a lot of work looking into this.

Yes you are correct, you need to have the battery always connected. You are also correct that for regular laptops this can lead to a drastically lower battery lift, never mind also problems with overheating and damage to keyboards.

However true 'gaming' laptops have been designed with this in mind.

it is not only the higher capacity battery, they will also have significantly improved cooling and more tactile (heavy duty) keyboard.

One one bit of advice is buy a gaming laptop, NOT a laptop which is just an regular laptop with a slightly better video card in.

Designed 'Gaming' laptop will have been tested under heavy loads and each vendor WILL be able to supply to details on best practice in terms of battery/charging, and will have datasheets showing battery life under loading.

Hope this helps!

Feel free to ask back any questions and let me know how it goes.

If you don't have any more questions, feel free to choose a rating and let us know whether this information was helpful to you!"

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Windows Laptop - Bypass battery on AC?

3 answers