Does it take more electricity to have my laptop plugged in and at 100% all the time or plugging it in when the battery gets low and waiting for it to charge back to 100%?

Question

Does it take more electricity to have my laptop plugged in and at 100% all the time or plugging it in when the battery gets low and waiting for it to charge back to 100%?

In: Technology

Answer 1

If we assume the laptop performance is the same on battery and mains (ie the computer doesn’t run slower to save battery)

Then running it plugged in will save energy. That’s because the charging process of the battery isn’t 100% efficient.

So if you put 100w of power into the system, the battery may only store 50w of it with the remainder lost as heat.