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Did my Y500 battery capacity degrade already?


octiceps

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I've had this particular Y500 for approximately 3 months now and noticed recently that my battery capacity is shown as only 66.320 Wh in ThrottleStop and HWiNFO64:

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The Y500 battery is listed as 6-cell 6700 mAh (72 Wh) capacity. I'm wondering if my battery capacity really degraded this quickly or if maybe the software readings are incorrect. HWiNFO64 has a reading for battery wear level but this still shows 0% like the day I got the machine. Can any other Y500 owners check what their stated battery capacity is in ThrottleStop or HWiNFO64?

This summer I've had the laptop plugged in and battery fully charged for about 95% of the time. I tried the "Optimized Battery Health" setting in Lenovo Energy Management which prevents the battery from charging past 60%. This supposedly helps reduce battery wear but I noticed a bug where it would automatically revert back to "Maximum Battery Life" whenever you shut down the machine and unplug the charger. It was a hassle to remember to change it every time I turned on the laptop so I stopped using it.

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I've had few IBM and Lenovo laptops and one thing they had in common was that their battery capacity degraded very quickly...

I use BatteryBar to measure the wear of battery and it doesn't look too bad with my Y580 as long as I use the "battery protection mode" you mentioned. I noticed the maximum capacity doesn't change as long as I don't do a full charge-discharge cycle.

As of now BatteryBar reports I have 57,1Wh left of 62,7Wh. I've had it for about 9 months.

The bug you're wrote about is not present in my Y580... or I've never encountered it as I almost never turn off my laptop. I just put it to sleep. This should also have some effect on battery wear but it seems it doesn't as much as making a full charge-discharge cycle.

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The bug you're wrote about is not present in my Y580... or I've never encountered it as I almost never turn off my laptop. I just put it to sleep. This should also have some effect on battery wear but it seems it doesn't as much as making a full charge-discharge cycle.

Yeah maybe Lenovo Energy Management on the Y580 doesn't have this bug, but it's definitely present and reproduceable here. Most likely it's because the battery settings in the program are software-controlled, not firmware-controlled, so they have no effect after the laptop is powered off and it automatically reverts to the battery's default behavior which is to charge to 100%. I was just curious if my battery really has lost capacity this quickly even though I haven't done a single full cycle yet, which AFAIK is the one thing that wears down the battery the most when done frequently.

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On a side note my battery died last week :/ Over discharge that lead to the protection mechanism to kick in and now the battery is unusable. I tried to revive it using the freezing method but that didn't help. I ordered a 12-cell 8800mAh, as it is thicker and it rises the laptop almost like a cooling pad. I couldn't find one before, but luckily now it's available. It's a Chinese no-name, so the results might not be to good, but hell, at least I'll have a battery and laptop lifted from the desk without using any extra items.

I think it happened because in power settings the computer was supposed to hibernate when the battery reaches critical level, but I have turned the hibernation off.

Well, word of advice: check in your power settings, that the computer is not set to "do nothing" when the battery reaches critical level or you might end up killing your battery :/

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On a side note my battery died last week :/ Over discharge that lead to the protection mechanism to kick in and now the battery is unusable. I tried to revive it using the freezing method but that didn't help. I ordered a 12-cell 8800mAh, as it is thicker and it rises the laptop almost like a cooling pad. I couldn't find one before, but luckily now it's available. It's a Chinese no-name, so the results might not be to good, but hell, at least I'll have a battery and laptop lifted from the desk without using any extra items.

I think it happened because in power settings the computer was supposed to hibernate when the battery reaches critical level, but I have turned the hibernation off.

Well, word of advice: check in your power settings, that the computer is not set to "do nothing" when the battery reaches critical level or you might end up killing your battery :/

Yeah I have Windows set to automatically hibernate the laptop when the battery reaches 5%. Like I said, I have yet to do a single full discharge on this thing.

I'd be careful with that Chinese no-name battery. I've read horror stories of ones overheating and exploding during strenuous or prolonged usage.

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I used to have the problem where the optimized battery health resets to maximum life. I did a reinstall of windows from a Windows 8 Home disc (due to adding an ssd) and it has not changed since. Maybe doing a clean reinstall (not recovery) would do the trick.

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I used to have the problem where the optimized battery health resets to maximum life. I did a reinstall of windows from a Windows 8 Home disc (due to adding an ssd) and it has not changed since. Maybe doing a clean reinstall (not recovery) would do the trick.

It's just a small bug, no way I'm going nuclear for this little thing.

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