Q&A – How long should a notebook battery last?

I’ve had a number of notebook computers over the years and the one thing I always found I was losing was battery life.

Eventually, the battery would stop taking a charge and instead of the two or three hours I’d used to get, the battery life just started falling away to barely more than 20 minutes.

So that raises the question – how long should a notebook battery last? Not just how many hours but how many recharge cycles?

Today’s notebook batteries are virtually all built on Lithium-ion chemistry. Unliek older Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries, Li-ion packs do not suffer from “memory effect”, which occurred if you didn’t fully discharge the battery before charging it back up again.

The one drawback is that while NiMH cells would generally give you up to 1000 charge cycles, Li-ion generally only give you 500. Once you get towards that 500 mark, the cell’s ability to hold a charge deteriorates. The question is just how long it takes you to rack up 500 charge cycles. If you’re charging it three times a week, you’re looking at roughly three years.

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