Your USB Hub Might Be Hurting Your Laptop’s Battery
Summary
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The USB poles powered by bus draw a constant power, draining and degrading the battery of your laptop.
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Execute training, phones or high -power monitors through non -powerful centers risks overload, heat and damage.
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Use self-fueled concentrators, activate the battery and keep the load between 20% and 80% to extend the lifespan.
Laptop computers are quite essential as an in -the -go, but do not always come with all the USB ports you need. This is why USB hubs have become an essential solution for so many of us, transforming a single port into an order center for all our equipment. We connect our external hard drives, our keyboards, our mice and our card readers without reflection.
Although our laptops are designed for longer autonomy, their batteries have a finished lifespan. This USB hub of which you cannot work is an unnoticed drain which can considerably speed up the speed at which your battery dies. We tend to consider USB hubs as simple extensions, but the reality is that their constant need for energy could actually damage your laptop.
Bus powered hubs use the battery of your laptops
One of the most practical accessories you can get for your laptop is a bus -powered USB center. They are small and portable, and you do not have to transport a power adapter with them because they draw the power directly from your laptop. Unfortunately, this convenience can have a cost, because it can drain the battery of your laptop fairly quickly. As they do not have a clean power source, they must draw all the power of the USB port in which you connect them. This means that the entire hub, as well as everything you connect there, must share the limited power available from a single port of your laptop.
From now on, the quantity of power of a USB port of a laptop can produce is quite limited by the USB specifications themselves. A standard USB 2.0 port, for example, can only provide 2.5 watts power (500MA). While new ports like USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 can give you a little more to 4.5 watts (900MA), and USB-C can go up to 15 watts (3 amps), this total quantity of power must still be divided between everything you have connected.
As you connect it, even if you have nothing else connected to the center, your battery is starting to flow. The internal electronics and the internal control card of the HUB need a constant power to operate and be ready for you to connect a device. Some self-fueled USB-C hubs, for example, can book up to 2 watts for their internal components alone, even when nothing else is connected. This constant power print, just for the center itself, means that you use the life of your battery even in what seems to be an “inactive” state.
This continuous power request strengthens the internal equipment of your laptop to work harder. The power management and battery management systems must constantly provide energy to the bus center and to everything you connect to it. This increased voltage intensifies not only the battery workload, but also accelerates its discharge cycle. Although some of the best USB-C hubs are intelligent and may wait to provide energy until they detect a device, once a bus center is connected, this power supply is activated and remains on the way.
The result of all this continuous energy consumption is a significantly faster battery discharge. It may seem small, but it can have a drastic effect on your devices, and I know it because I used two USB hubs at a time, and I almost destroy the battery of my laptop.
The problem with high power devices
High power devices, by nature, require much more juice than a standard laptop USB can manage alone. While mouse or a keyboard sips a small amount of energy, generally less than 100 mm, these more demanding devices are completely thirsty. Think of the external hard drives that can draw 500 MP or more, or SSDs that can vacuum 900MA. You also have printers, external monitors, game controllers and webcams that all require an important power print.
Even something as simple as loading your phone or a tablet, and the USB center itself, can be a major power carrier. When you try to run these hungry devices via an unpeated USB hub, you essentially ask for problems. You must respect the limits of your ports.
I used to connect record players, monitors, phones, a laptop fan and drawing tablets on my laptop and MacBook without realizing how harmful it could be. Worse, I would let them connected overnight. These USB hubs seem not to ask for much, but when your laptop begins to use more juice faster than designed, you start to do real damage to the battery itself.
My MacBook only lasts two hours before needing a load now, and my laptop cannot light up and stay supplied without being plugged into a socket. This came after a very short period of time to abuse battery by plugging so many devices at the same time without realizing what I was doing to them.
One thing that I noticed frequently is that my devices stopped working, were constantly disconnected and were lagging behind. Fortunately, I had no problem where my external hard drive suddenly cut in mid-transfert because it did not get enough power, but it is a possibility when you push the limits.
Fortunately, there are laptops who will warn you with messages on the too current USB port drawing. In some cases, your computer can simply stop the port to avoid overload. However, before assuming that everything will be fine, keep in mind that I was lucky. The abuse of a USB hub could endanger your equipment. Overload of the port can cause overheating of the hub or the USB interface. This type of extreme heat is a huge safety problem, but this can also cause more serious damage.
Poorly fabricated or non-compliant hubs may even short-circuit power supplies or send a non-buffer 5V power to downstream ports, which can damage the USB port of your host PC or spoil your computer power management, driving to instability. Unstable power, sudden points or overvoltages can occur. Thus, although the unpeated hubs are practical, using them with high power devices is a massive risk for your performance and your material longevity.
Simple tips to save the life of your battery
If you want to keep your laptop battery in good health and make the last time longer on a single load, you will want to get involved with some key practices. The main thing to know is that most modern laptops use lithium-ion batteries, and they have an ideal place in charge. You should really try to keep your battery between 20% and 80%. Let it fall below 20%, or even worse, let it strike 0% all the time (which I did), will wear it faster and kill its capacity over time.
On the other hand, keeping your laptop connected all the time to 100% can also underline the chemicals of the battery, which leads to faster degradation. Fortunately, many new laptops have integrated battery conservation modes that automatically cap the load at around 80% to help you. For example, Macs have an “optimized battery load”, which learns your habits and will not charge 80% before it thinks that you will need it. If you will store your laptop for a while, make sure it contains juice, ideally between 40% and 60%, instead of being completely dead or completely full.
Beyond the way you load it, you can improve the lifespan of your battery by refining your power settings. The simplest and most efficient thing you can do is just activate the battery mode or other battery saving settings. The battery mode automatically adjusts things to balance performance and energy consumption. This generally means that it will decrease your screen, limit background activities and slow down your processor to reduce energy consumption. You can even define it to start automatically when your battery reaches a certain percentage.
If you have already wondered why your laptop battery seems to flow more quickly than a fleeing bucket, you now know that your USB hub could be the sly culprit. Although these little gadgets are super practical to connect all your things at a time, this convenience has a cost. It is a silent power drain that can really put a breach in the life of your battery.
No one asks you to get rid of the USB hub, and if you pay attention to bad habits, you won’t have to do so. By combining a choice of intelligent equipment with a little conscious use, you can get much more from the battery of your laptop without killing it.
