Poor battery performancee in Acer Swift 5

Haley

I recently purchased an Acer Swift 5 and so far what's worrying me is the battery.
Full charge presents only a maximum of 3.5 hours.
I have so far only fully charged and discharged 2 cycles but I doubt the battery will last much longer after the 3rd charge.
Is something wrong with the battery? Or do I need to reboot the battery like some advice which I came across online?

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

billsey

There are a lot of factors that go into battery life, and the numbers that Windows reports are often not well calibrated. Which power profile are you using? High Performance will, of course, use a bunch more power than Energy Saver, and the battery will last a lot less in that mode. Which Swift 5 do you have? Have you tried a battery recalibration (full cycles, run on battery until it shuts down with low battery, charge fully before turning on, repeat a few times)? Depending on model you might have a battery reset pinhole, to reset the battery use a bent paperclip to press the switch through the hole, hold it down for 15-30 seconds with the laptop off and your power disconnected, wait 15-30 minutes before plugging power back in, then wait for a full charge before turning it back on.

Haley

billsey said:

There are a lot of factors that go into battery life, and the numbers that Windows reports are often not well calibrated. Which power profile are you using? High Performance will, of course, use a bunch more power than Energy Saver, and the battery will last a lot less in that mode. Which Swift 5 do you have? Have you tried a battery recalibration (full cycles, run on battery until it shuts down with low battery, charge fully before turning on, repeat a few times)? Depending on model you might have a battery reset pinhole, to reset the battery use a bent paperclip to press the switch through the hole, hold it down for 15-30 seconds with the laptop off and your power disconnected, wait 15-30 minutes before plugging power back in, then wait for a full charge before turning it back on.

Hi Billsey, thanks so much for your reply.
The profile I am using is currently on the extreme end of Energy Saver. I'm not too sure which Swift 5 do you mean but I bought my Swift 5 with i5 core just a week ago, so it's most likely the 2019 version?

And since the purchase last week, the laptop has only gone through 3 battery recalibrations.

For the battery recalibrations, I ran my laptop using its batteries till it shows low battery (usually around 20%). And then, I will usually turn off the laptop to start charging till it's full. Since the battery does not deplete till 0%, I am not sure whether this constitutes as a full cycle?

Would you suggest I go for a few more charging cycles before I head for the battery reset option?

Also, I'd like to ask your opinion as well in regards to the laptop temperature. I find that it's quite heated at the bottom of the laptop even after only a short use. Is it normal? Or should I get a fan cooler to reduce the heat?

Thanks so much for your help, Billsey.
Truly appreciate your help and advice!

billsey

To recalibrate fully you need to go all the way until it shuts off. Stopping the process at 20% just means it won't know the power characteristics of the battery below 20%. Shutdown usually is set to something like 3% or 5%... You can do the battery reset option at any time, it's usually the first step since it's so much faster than the calibration. I believe the battery reset resets the configuration on the battery itself, the calibration handles how Windows looks at the battery life.

Heat is a tough call because it depends so much on what's causing the heat and how hot it's actually getting. If the battery is off it might call for more charging current than it really needs, and that causes heat, but it's just as possible the heat is from the CPU and GPU cooling. You can run one of the temperature monitoring apps to see if the CPU is getting too hot (It should max out at around 90C, typical running might be 40-50C) or if it's the battery causing the heat. "Hot" for one person might be "warm" for another too...

Haley

billsey said:

To recalibrate fully you need to go all the way until it shuts off. Stopping the process at 20% just means it won't know the power characteristics of the battery below 20%. Shutdown usually is set to something like 3% or 5%... You can do the battery reset option at any time, it's usually the first step since it's so much faster than the calibration. I believe the battery reset resets the configuration on the battery itself, the calibration handles how Windows looks at the battery life.

Heat is a tough call because it depends so much on what's causing the heat and how hot it's actually getting. If the battery is off it might call for more charging current than it really needs, and that causes heat, but it's just as possible the heat is from the CPU and GPU cooling. You can run one of the temperature monitoring apps to see if the CPU is getting too hot (It should max out at around 90C, typical running might be 40-50C) or if it's the battery causing the heat. "Hot" for one person might be "warm" for another too...

Hi Billsey,
Just to share my laptop update with you a bit. I have opted to reset the battery first, then recalibrate the battery by making sure the laptop goes fully all the way until it shuts down.

Guess this sort of works because not only the battery's much better (on average around 7 to 8 hours), but the temperature is much much cooler too.
However the battery hours indication is a bit concerning because it shows let's say 3 hours this minute, and 7 hours the next.
Yet the battery percentage indication is consistent all this while, so I figured the battery is doing OK.

I have so far run 2 or 3 full recalibration cycles already, but I plan to do a couple more before I stop doing so.

Thanks again for your advice, Billsey. It really helped!

billsey

Please keep me informed as you do more calibration cycles. It will be interesting to see how many are "enough" in the real world.

Haley

billsey said:

Please keep me informed as you do more calibration cycles. It will be interesting to see how many are "enough" in the real world.

Hey Billsey, so I've done about 7 or 8 cycles so far and in my opinion, the battery is sort of calibrated around the 4th or 5th cycle post battery-reset.
I don't see any significant increases in the average battery hours shown after the 5th cycle. Having said that the battery hours shown are still fluctuating crazily in the sense that this minute I'm seeing 16 hours, and then 7 hours shown in the next. However, the average hours for a full charge is still about 7 - 8 hours. I haven't start using this laptop for a full day before yet, so I can't say if the average battery hours will still be 7 - 8 hours if used fully in a day.

billsey

Let it run with your normal usage for a while and then drop back in and tell us how it's doing.