I recently got a high-powered HP ZBook G3 laptop at work to write programs for a new robot we purchased. This laptop is beefy. It has a 17-inch screen and feels like it weighs 20 pounds. It’s basically a desktop but slightly more portable. HP even calls it a mobile workstation instead of a laptop. You would think this massive laptop would have room for a huge battery. Unfortunately, the battery life is pretty atrocious. I get around 4-5 hours on a full battery at 50% brightness. Out of the box, I had some issues with my laptop always being dead when I opened up to use it. It turns out that my battery settings were set to never go to sleep when the laptop was closed by default. The screen whether it be brightness or resolution is always the biggest culprit when it comes to battery drain. One way to improve your battery life is to optimize your power and sleep settings.
How to change your sleep and display settings
- Click on Settings
- Click on System
- Click on Power & sleep
- You can alter your settings on this page, but for more customizability click on additional power setting
- Click on Change when the computer sleeps
You can customize your settings for when your computer is on battery or plugged into the charger. I usually like to set my plugged in settings for a longer time because you don’t have to worry about battery drain because it is already being charged. You can also adjust the brightness of the display when you are either in battery mode or plugged in mode.
Choose what closing the lid does
You can control what your computer does when the lid of your laptop is closed. This is still in the Power & sleep section. Once you click on “choose what closing the lid does”, you can set your computer to go to sleep, hibernate, shut down, or do nothing. You can set what you want for either battery mode or plugged in mode. If you’re using an external monitor, I would consider changing your plugged in mode to “do nothing”. This will allow you to keep your laptop closed so you can work exclusively on your external monitor without having your laptop shut off when the lid is closed. This was set on “do nothing” as default on my battery mode which was always causing my computer to die when it was in my backpack. If you’re experiencing a dead computer everytime you open the lid, I would look into changing this setting.