When your laptop slows down out of nowhere, it’s natural to blame startup applications, low system resources, a faulty storage drive, or failing hardware. But this is not always the case. There is another element that is often overlooked: the battery. And it’s just as critical to system performance as the other pieces of the puzzle.
Modern laptops are designed to balance performance and battery life, but sometimes the default settings lean more toward power savings. As a result, your laptop may seem slower. The good news is that fixing this problem doesn’t take much time or effort. To get started, you can adjust the power mode and optimize the power settings. This alone is sufficient in many cases. Battery condition and the charger you use are also important considerations. Your job is to make sure everything is in order.
As surprising as it may seem, sometimes even a slight decrease in CPU speed can make your laptop run faster. This is because when your laptop is running at maximum loads and the temperature rises, the system will automatically slow it down to avoid damage to internal components. This is called thermal throttling. And by reducing the CPU speed, you can effectively reduce the risk of thermal throttling.
Optimize power settings for performance
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The idea here is to ensure that the laptop is optimized for performance and not power savings. By default, Windows chooses Balanced power mode, which adjusts performance based on workloads. This means that when working on a resource-intensive task, the system increases the CPU clock speed and then reduces it during light workloads to maximize power savings. The time it takes for your system to adjust clock speeds is significant, and if there is even a slight delay, your laptop will feel slower. To resolve this issue, open Windows Settings, go to the System tab, then in Power & battery, expand Power mode and select Best performance for Plugged in and On battery.
The next step to consider is limiting the processor speed. It works well on older laptops with Intel processors. The idea behind performance capping is to keep temperatures below normal operating levels, which will prevent thermal throttling from triggering. To do this, open Windows Control Panel, go to System and Security, then Power Options, click Change plan settings next to the active power plan, and then click Change advanced power settings. Here, double-click on CPU Power Management, then expand Maximum CPU State and set On Battery and Plugged in to 99%.
You can also increase the minimum CPU state to 10%. This increases the minimum clock speed of the processor and, therefore, reduces the time it takes for the laptop to transition from a power-saving state to a high-performance state. If things don’t work, you can always go back to the default settings by clicking the Restore Plan Defaults button. Keep in mind that any changes to settings to aid performance will likely drain your battery faster when your laptop is unplugged.
Make sure your laptop has enough power
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On the hardware side, a few battery and charging issues can cause slowdowns, even on a relatively new laptop. First, keep your laptop plugged in for the best performance. When on battery, the system slows down or does not activate all components to save power and extend battery life. The difference is most noticeable during resource-intensive tasks, like playing modern games or rendering a video.
Second, make sure you’re using the charger that came with your laptop or a manufacturer-certified charger. Using a charger with a lower power rating than your laptop is designed for may impact system speed. In effect, the system will be forced to adjust the power supplied to the integrated components, including those directly responsible for performance. Apart from that, it can slow down the charging rate of your laptop. Using an uncertified charger is a common mistake that can damage your laptop battery.
Finally, check the battery status. For example, if the battery is severely degraded and cannot provide the required power, the system will limit performance. Likewise, if the battery overheats while charging, thermal throttling kicks in. To check this, run the powercfg /batteryreport command to generate a battery report. The report will tell you the health status of the battery and compare the current capacity to the original out-of-the-box capacity. A temporary solution if your battery is overheating or degraded is to use your laptop without a battery, if possible. Remember that a slow laptop is not necessarily a sign of RAM, drive, or processor failure. It could also be coming from your battery, and that’s usually something much easier to repair.
