Having a wireless device on the PC is something very normal today, especially when we talk about the mouse or headphones. These devices, of course, need to charge their battery , and it is quite easy that, when we finish using them, we leave them connected and forget about them for a while. Does doing this damage the battery or nothing happens?
The battery of wireless devices and their autonomy is an issue that worries everyone, since if care is not taken, over time the battery lasts less and less until a time comes when we are forced to replace the battery with a new one or even to dispose of the device with a new one. Battery care for a wireless PC device is exactly the same as for any other battery-powered device, such as a laptop or smartphone.
What happens when you charge the battery of your wireless device?
If we extrapolate wireless devices to the environment of laptops, the old recommendation was to remove the battery when we were using it with the power connector on, but this is complicated when we talk about a mouse or wireless headphones, since the “grace “is to use them without a cable and only connect them when you need to charge your battery .
However, it is common, and especially in headphones, to leave them connected for a long time, until we use them again. And, unlike laptops, these devices do not charge their battery by connecting them to the current but, as a general rule, they do so from a USB port on the PC. And here lies the main difference, especially due to the fact that it is also very common to leave devices connected with the PC turned off.
When you charge the battery of a laptop, the power supply has a control that detects when the battery is already charged and cuts the power, so that in a laptop there is absolutely nothing to have it always connected. However, a wireless device does not have a power supply as such … does it?
While it is connected, the USB port of your PC will be supplying it with the 5V of energy that it is capable of transmitting (the amperage depends on the port, normally it is capable of delivering between 0.5 and 0.9 Amps), recharging its battery . Obviously there is no power supply that controls the load, but equally all modern wireless devices incorporate a control chip in their own electronics to control this and, like the power supply of a laptop, cut the load when the battery is full .
For this reason, and regardless of whether you connect your wireless device to a USB port on your PC, to a hub of ports with external power or even if you use the mobile charger to charge its battery, absolutely nothing happens to leave it connected for as long as be. Of course, when the power is cut, the battery will gradually discharge gradually, and depending on the programming of the chip, reaching a certain level (normally between 95% and 98%) will recharge the battery up to reach 100% again, and that is not entirely good for its useful life.
Therefore, the answer to the question is that it is okay to leave your wireless device connected overnight or even several days, but it is not good either because if we leave it so long that the battery drains and jumps again charging, we will “consume” charge cycles little by little, reducing the useful life of the battery.
Of course, this “standard” is valid for devices of a certain quality, because when it comes to mice or OEM headphones of dubious reputation, it is possible that they do not have the chip that controls the battery charge and that, therefore, Therefore, they are not able to cut the load when it is full, an overload could occur with its disastrous consequences. It is not normal, but when it comes to very low quality devices it is a possibility that we cannot ignore.
Where is it better to charge your device?
Generally, and unless you configure it to the contrary in the BIOS of your PC (in fact, some BIOSes do not allow disabling this), the USB ports of the motherboard will continue to supply power even if you turn off the PC, as long as of course it is still plugged into the outlet and you have not turned off the power supply from its switch (this is, all told, the normal situation since hardly anyone bothers to turn off the source or unplug the PC when it is turned off).
This means that if you connect your wireless device to one of the rear ports of your motherboard and turn off the PC, its battery will continue to charge , something that is ideal for recharging your mouse or headphones at night, with the PC off when you are not. using, and thus find them full of energy for the next day. The same happens if you use a USB port hub , either one that has external power (that is, with its own plug) or if you have it connected to one of these rear ports on the motherboard.
The thing changes with the front ports of the box; in this case, the connector is internal and whether it continues to provide power with the PC turned off or not depends on the motherboard itself. Personally, we have not found a setting for this in the BIOS or anywhere else in any motherboard manufacturer, and with some models it works and with others it does not. Be that as it may, the normal thing in this case is that when the PC is turned off the front ports stop supplying power and, therefore, it is not advisable to use these to charge the battery of our wireless peripherals (at least not with the PC turned off, Well, when it is on, they are used for it).
