Gaming laptops are mostly awesome these days — performance wise, that is. As an example, you can pick up a laptop like the Acer Nitro V 16 for less than $1,000 and know that it’s going to shred in most triple-A games. But as to battery life when you’re gaming unplugged — nope, laptops are still not that great.
Most gaming laptops will last for a pitiful four hours of play time — that’s barely long enough to finish a game of Starcraft 2. It’s a far cry from some productivity laptops that can stretch for more than 20 hours.
Correction: Four hours is likely all you’ll get if you throw caution to the wind and don’t apply a few smart power-saving tips. For up to several hours’ more battery life you can always do the following:
Turn off the keyboard backlighting and non-essential lighting
Whether it be per-key illumination, chiclet backlighting in your keyboard, or aesthetically pleasing RGB or LED accents elsewhere on your laptop, it’s all costing you unnecessary gaming time by draining your laptop’s power.
How much power you save when you switch them off depends on factors like the light’s brightness level, whether or not you have dynamic lighting effects active, and the type of keyboard your laptop has (mechanical keyboards drain more power than optical keyboards). But if you’re gaming during the day, you’re not going to miss these features anyway.
Unplug any unused peripherals
This is self-explanatory. It applies to any peripherals, like USB-hubs, external keyboards, and headsets. While you’re tightening the screws on power-draining peripherals, be sure to also switch off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi if you’re playing offline; these things are little-known battery guzzlers, too.
Lower your display’s brightness
Unless you’re playing darkly lit horror games you’ll have no trouble seeing your game on a display set as low as 50 percent brightness. Dropping your brightness level takes just seconds to do but this simple step can yield as much as 30 percent longer battery life.
Use your manufacturer’s battery optimization settings
Most gaming laptop manufacturers have battery optimization settings that when activated can do a lot to conserve your laptop’s battery power. These can usually be found in your manufacturer’s proprietary software app.
There is typically more than one key setting to tweak (you might even want to switch off a few settings), so you may need to research what to do for your specific laptop brand. In Asus’ Armory Crate app, one thing you’ll want to do is activate “Silent Mode.” This feature acts to conserve power by limiting the wattage available to your CPU and GPU and running the laptop’s fans only when they’re necessary.
