Battery conditioning/calibration for new ultrabook -

[Saito S]

So, I just ordered an Acer Aspire S7. It will arrive tomorrow.

While I'm decently knowledgeable about desktop hardware, laptops are a different story. The only one I've had in the last several years was a pretty low-powered netbook. While looking up info for the new one, I've seen it recommended (by Acer themselves, in the support documentation for the S7, but also elsewhere) to "calibrate" the battery when I first get the laptop. The process recommended seems to be: Before even turning the computer on for the first time, charge the battery to 100%, then run it down all the way, then recharge. Rinse and repeat, 2-3 times.

But my question is: run it down ALL the way? Or... most of the way? I've seen some conflicting information. Acer's support doc recommends running it down until the "low battery" warning appears, then recharging. This article recommends running it ALL the way down, i.e. until the computer just dies and turns off. And over here, we have a recommendation to set the computer to sleep or hibernate at 5% battery, so that instead of just draining completely and dying, it will shut itself down before that happens.

Soo... which is best? I've also read that in general, for li-ion batteries, running it down all the way, as in completely down to absolutely no battery, is just a bad idea in general. So I'm wondering which of those three slightly different methods is the best way to go for the initial calibration?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[corkyg]

The specific answer is most likely in the User Guide/Manual that should come with the Aspire.

 

[Saito S]

The specific answer is most likely in the User Guide/Manual that should come with the Aspire.

Thanks for the reply.

This is pretty much what I did; I went with what the Acer user guide recommended, which was draining it until the low battery warning went up, then plugging it back in.

However, the recharge seems REALLY slow. Should it really take over an hour and a half to go from about 10% to 50%? That feels mighty slow to me...

 

[paperwastage]

were you using the laptop when charging?

(can't find the exact specs) either a 4680mAh or 4160mAh battery, ~35-40Wh

charger is a 65W adapter, should take you maybe an hour to two to charge it?

EDIT: 2.5 hour charge time sounds right...

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/05/acer-aspire-s7-review-s7-391-6413/

Charging the battery of the Aspire S7 won’t take long as we noted we were able to recharge it from 0% – 100% in approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes. This is certainly a good thing when you consider the battery life isn’t the best we’ve seen in an ultrabook, so at least you’ll be able to get it charged back up to 100% in no time.:

 

[Saito S]

^ For whatever difference it might make, that link is referring to the S7-391, whereas I got the S7-392. A Haswell CPU makes for better battery life, but I don't know if that would affect the recharge time or not. The charging I referenced the other night (from 10% to 50% in about an hour and a half) was with the lid closed.

In any case, earlier this evening (before midnight - happy new year, Anandtech people!), I drained it down to 10% again, closed the lid, and plugged it in, only this time, I made note of what time it was, so I could see exactly how long it took. Going from 10% to 100% took three hours and forty-two minutes. That was with the lid closed the ENTIRE time (I didn't lift it until I saw that the charging indicator light was telling me the battery was fully charged).

That definitely seems excessively long to me. And, sadly, it's not the only issue; I have kind of a laundry list of problems with the S7, as well, some of which might simply be defects in the unit I got, but some of which are basically design flaws that would be present in ANY Aspire S7. I'll stick with it for a few more days, but I have a feeling I'm going to end up returning it and giving something else a shot.

 

[corkyg]

3+ hours does not seem excessively long for a Zero to full recharge. How many cells is your battery? Longer battery life sometimes equates to longer charge time.

 

[Saito S]

3+ hours does not seem excessively long for a Zero to full recharge. How many cells is your battery? Longer battery life sometimes equates to longer charge time.

It's a 4-cell battery, and you may very well be right. It occurs to me that I was sitting and waiting and timing it, because I wanted to gauge how long my new computer was taking to charge. Prior to this, I've never really paid attention to preciesly how long it took to charge a mobile device. So if that kind of time is normal, I may have just never noticed it before, because I simply wasn't looking for it before. And as for actual battery life, it's been getting 6-8 hours when mostly doing "normal" tasks, which is certainly adequate.

That said, I'm not keeping it anyway. There are just too many minor-to-moderate bothersome issues for a laptop at this kind of price range. Later this month I'll be sending the S7 back to Amazon, and will give the HP Spectre 13t a try.

Thanks for the replies!