Some Chromebooks, such as my Acer C7 have small batteries that won’t get you through a whole day of work. There’s a number of tips and tricks that the Auschrome team would like to share to make the most of the valuable battery life you have in order to maximise the life of your Chromebook during the day. Some may seem to be complete common sense, but it will be news to some users and others just need a reminder on how to maximize battery life of their devices.
Screen Brightness
Like with any battery powered device, your Chromebook’s battery will react to the brightness of your screen quite notably. The brighter your screen, the lower the battery life and conversely if you’re able to run your screen quite dim you’ll find the battery life improves significantly as you dim the screen.
To give a clear indicator of this, in the testing I did on Google’s loan unit I got just shy of 5 hours of work time when the screen was towards its lowest brightness setting and the work was mainly text input.
To show the extreme opposite of the scale, I also managed to run the battery to dead flat in under 80 minutes when running Youtube videos full screen at full brightness.
Use standby mode or shutdown when not in use for long periods
If you’re not going to be using your Chromebook for more than a few minutes, close the lid and put it in standby. This has a two fold effect. 1. It shuts down the cpu and all background functions and 2. it shuts off the screen. The combination of these two factors will result in saving around 85% of the battery that your device would otherwise have used simply sitting idle on your desk.
If you’re packing up for the day and heading home, shut your Chromebook down. That will reduce your battery use to near nothing and means that while it won’t be on all day, you may be able to get that illusive full day of use out of a Chromebook.
Minimize running apps
A number of extensions and apps that run inside Chrome OS require processing power and often transfer data to maintain it’s function which requires further battery. Anything that you don’t need to be running that can be shut down, do so! By shutting them down when not in use, you’re further extending the battery life of your device.
So there’s three good suggestions on improving your battery life on your Chromebook. Hopefully there’s some useful tips and tricks there to improve your experience.
Do you have any tips to help improve battery on a Chromebook? Let us know in the comments below
