The battery of your laptop is one of the most important components for the proper functioning of your computer, alongside the screen, but it is especially one of the most essential for maintaining portability (while waiting to be able to change the battery, you can continue to use your computer with its charger).
Several reasons can be the cause of this weakness, from improper use to overheating, or simply an old battery. Batteries have an average lifespan of 18 to 24 months.
You may also want a battery with greater autonomy than the current one, offering you more possibilities.
If your PC's battery is no longer sold (obsolete product), you can find New or Refurbished Asus PCs on our site at very attractive prices!
The Accessoires Asus team offers its expertise and some methods to confirm the battery failure of your PC and know exactly what steps to take to order a new one and proceed with its replacement.
Accessoires Asus exclusively sells official Asus batteries
How to recognize battery issues?
Let's start by identifying the symptoms and causes of this unexpected and incongruous failure.
- Your battery no longer holds a charge and forces you to stay plugged into an outlet?
- Your battery fully charges, but its autonomy decreases rapidly?
- Your battery heats up to become hot?
- It is no longer recognized by the computer?
- It no longer charges or stops at a certain level and does not fully recharge? Once charged to 100%, it suddenly drops to 0%?
- The battery prevents the computer from starting?
The causes of battery failure are often the same:
It has remained plugged in too often, being used or fully charged, which has caused overheating or a short circuit. It is also possible that you have discharged the battery to its minimum, and it can no longer recharge, or you have exposed it to the sun, which is strongly discouraged.
Remember that usage instructions and startup advice often prevent many battery failures.
How to test your battery?
If you suspect that the issue is with your battery, there are easy ways for everyone to test it and confirm your suspicions.
Your PC turns on but the autonomy is low
First of all, before performing any checks, when Windows detects a damaged battery, it will inform you directly about its condition and notify you if it needs to be replaced.
However, if Windows does not give you errors but you seem to have lost autonomy, you can check the actual capacity of your battery.
To do this, you can download HWInfo 64, which will give you the theoretical capacity of your battery as well as the current capacity.
After downloading and opening the ZIP file, click on "HWiNFO64.exe". If a Windows window asks if you allow HWiNFO64.exe to run, click "Allow."
Next, check "Sensors-only" and click "RUN". It will take a few moments for HWiNFO to initialize.
Once the loading process is complete, HWiNFO64 will display all available information on your computer, including details regarding your battery.
In our case, our battery originally had a capacity of 62Wh, and HWiNFO shows a capacity of 38.56Wh at 100%.
Therefore, our battery is at 38.56 / 62 * 100 = 62.6% of its initial capacity. It would soon need to be replaced as it has lost 100 - 62.6 = 37.4% of its capacity. Depending on the model, HWiNFO will directly display the result of this calculation by indicating the "Wear Level".
In our case, it is 37.4%, so from the original capacity of our battery, we have lost 37.4% of its capacity. Therefore, if we had a battery life of 3 hours when it was new, today it is 1 hour and 52 minutes.
Your PC does not turn on anymore
If your laptop does not start up after you have completely drained the battery, it is possible that the battery is causing a short circuit in the motherboard.
To check if the battery is indeed the problem, simply remove the battery and try to start the PC again. If it restarts without the battery (but plugged into the mains), then the battery is out of service.
How to remove the battery, know its references and capacity?
Now it's about partially disassembling your laptop and identifying its battery, its capacity, and its specific features to ensure that you order the same one or one that is 100% compatible with your laptop.
Depending on the type of your laptop, there are several ways to access the battery:
Laptop with a removable battery
This is becoming less common due to laptops becoming increasingly compact, but if your laptop has a removable battery, here is the procedure to follow to remove it:
- Unplug your laptop from any power outlet and turn it off.
- Turn your computer over and find the latches that hold the battery in place.
- Slide the latches and remove the battery.
Laptop without a removable battery
With the latest generations of PCs being very compact, batteries are often directly fixed in the chassis and less accessible. Here is the generic procedure to access the battery for this type of PC:
- Unplug your PC from any power outlet and turn it off.
- Turn your computer over and remove the various screws.
- Using a flathead screwdriver or a card, gently go around the laptop, unclipping the bottom case from the keyboard with your tool placed in the gap.
- Be careful when you separate the keyboard from the bottom of the case, as a ribbon cable connects the two. You will need to gently disconnect it from one of its attachments before opening.
- The battery is generally located under the keyboard, along your screen, and is also connected to ribbon cables.
- Disconnect them and then remove the battery. You can then replace it and reverse the steps to reassemble the computer.
Numerous details are stated directly on the battery, such as its type, model, capacity, and voltage.
Today, the majority of batteries are made of lithium polymer (Li-Po) or lithium ion (Li-Ion).
In addition to the battery model, you need to note three elements:
- The voltage (in Volts or V): The nominal voltage of the battery, which is the voltage at which your laptop operates, must be identical on the new battery.
- The capacity (in milliamp-hours or mAh): It represents the autonomy of your laptop. The higher the battery's mAh, the longer your autonomy will be.
- The power (in watt-hours or Wh): A product of the two previous indicators (amps X volts), this tells you the power of the battery. You can use a battery with higher power than the original as long as it has the same nominal voltage and is compatible with your laptop.
Regarding the battery capacity, if a high-capacity model exists for your model, there is nothing stopping you from choosing it to increase your autonomy.
However, be cautious: increasing the power (in mAh) too much is not advisable either, as your charger may not have the capacity to recharge it, or it might take 10 hours instead of 2!
How to choose your new battery?
A very wide range of batteries is available to you, both in stores and online, and it's important to choose wisely by adhering to the information previously read on it.
Avoid batteries sold at low prices on the internet, as they are very often assembled with poor-quality elements that will not last and may damage your laptop.
You can also easily find your new battery by choosing your laptop model on the following page:
How to maintain the battery of your Asus laptop?
First Use: For the first use of your new battery, it is recommended to perform 3 complete charge (100%)/discharge (20%) cycles to condition the battery.
Then, the Accessoires Asus team offers a maintenance guide to preserve the autonomy of your battery for as long as possible:
- Do not drain the battery to 0%: A belief dating back to the first mobile phone batteries (Nickel-based) is that you should completely drain the battery before recharging it. This is exactly what severely degrades the Lithium batteries in laptops. It is important to keep at least 20% of the battery's capacity; going beyond this damages the battery irreversibly.
- Do not keep the battery charged at 100%: Just like draining the battery to 0%, keeping it permanently charged at 100% is very harmful. Over time, this will increase its internal resistance and reduce its capacity. It is advised when removing the battery for storage to keep it between 30% and 40% of its capacity, as this allows it to be preserved best.
- Regularly perform charging cycles: If you seldom use your laptop's battery, it is important to regularly perform cycles (discharge => charge). At a minimum, do this once a month.
Consult this guide for more information on "How to maintain the lifespan of your Asus battery?"
What to do with your old battery?
A laptop battery contains lithium components that are very harmful to the planet, so it is imperative to recycle it so that it can be processed and possibly reused to manufacture a new battery. For information on what to do with your used battery or batteries, click here!
To do this, simply drop it off in a battery collection bin, which you can find in all major retail stores.
How to optimize your battery's autonomy?
The last element of this article, important if you want to maximize the autonomy of your new battery. Here is a chart that illustrates the consumption of the different components of a laptop and how much they affect the battery's autonomy.
As you can see, among all the components of a laptop, the most energy-consuming is the screen. If you want to achieve the best autonomy for your laptop, you should keep the brightness low.
For the rest of the elements that are less energy-consuming, the Windows 10 operating system manages energy optimization very well and should ensure good autonomy provided you activate the "energy saver" mode.