When you have wireless peripherals that carry a battery (since some, generally low-end, have normal batteries) it is very important to preserve the health of your battery to maximize its useful life, so here are some tips for the battery to your peripherals last you in good condition as long as possible.
As an element of wear, it is inevitable that, over time, the battery of wireless peripherals will last less and less and the autonomy will be reduced. However, if you follow a series of good practices, you can mitigate this wear and tear so that the battery lasts in good condition for as long as possible, so let’s see what you can do about it.
How to maximize the battery life of your peripherals
As we have said before, it is inevitable that the battery of wireless peripherals will last less and less time, but it will depend on you whether the battery begins to suffer after six months or two years of use. So let’s see what good practices you should keep in mind if you want the battery life to be prolonged for as long as possible.
Never let your peripherals battery drain completely
Batteries are generally made of lithium ion. Inside, a chemical reaction occurs that moves lithium ions from the negative to the positive electrode through an electrolyte, generating the energy that the devices need to function. This chemical reaction produces some wear, and if it is completely emptied, a much higher level of wear is generated. For this reason, you should never let your devices’ batteries drop so low that they turn off.
Speaking in ideal conditions, you should charge the device battery when it is still 20-25% charged, and you should never let it discharge below 10%.
Don’t leave your peripheral for long without charging the battery
Even when you don’t use the device for a while, the battery gradually loses charge. Surely it has happened to you that you have stored a device for months in a drawer and when you wanted to turn it on you have found it without a battery, precisely for this reason. As we have explained before this is bad for the health of the battery and you should prevent it from happening.
For this reason, the recommendation is that even if you haven’t used one of your peripherals (wireless headphones for example) for a while, plug them into the power once in a while to fully charge their battery. The good practice here is to charge them at least once a month.
Do not leave peripherals permanently connected
It is also common to leave the wireless peripherals permanently connected to the current and only disconnect them when you are going to use them, to leave them connected again when finished. All modern peripherals have intelligent security systems that, when the battery reaches 100% charge, the power is cut and it stops “wasting”. The problem comes from the previous point, and that is that little by little the battery is discharging even if you do not use it, so every so often a charging cycle will occur again if it is permanently connected, causing wear.
Ideally, it is good practice to keep the peripheral charging until the battery is 100% full, and then disconnect it. The time it takes to charge depends on the peripheral, its battery capacity and the current supplied, but for example Corsair Virtuoso Wireless SE takes 2-3 hours to fully charge its battery, so the recommendation is that when Let’s finish using these headphones, put them to charge 2-3 hours and then disconnect them.
In general terms, with these three good practices you will ensure that the battery of your wireless peripherals lasts in good condition for much longer. To give a real example, a SteelSeries Sensei Wireless mouse purchased in May 2016 and whose battery life was initially 16 hours, to this day (more than 4 years later) continues to last around 11 hours without problems.