Is it advisable to play games with laptop pluged in?

[PrinceBrown7]

I always play computer games on my laptop without disconnecting the charger. is this act going have any effect on my battery life?

 

[Golfdriver97]

Well, it could put a lot of extra heat to the battery from both a drain and a charge simultaneously. It may even depend on how demanding the game is. On a newer game that is visually demanding, it could actually not charge the battery.

Overall, I wouldn't suggest it.

 

[Andrea Mangano]

Well, it could put a lot of extra heat to the battery from both a drain and a charge simultaneously. It may even depend on how demanding the game is. On a newer game that is visually demanding, it could actually not charge the battery.

Overall, I wouldn't suggest it.

I'm on the opposite side.
If you have your battery at 100% there's no charging, just the maintaining charge and the power comes directly from the PSU.
On the other side playing almost on battery put it on very high stress and high current discharge rate which could shorten a lot the lifespan of batteries or kill the battery.
For high energy draw tasks PSU is the best option when you have AC available.
Charge the battery to 100% when you have to play games. When it's at 100% you can play games.
Some fans (cooling pad could be ok) can be useful to keep chassis temp lower, to limit any battery wear caused by the heat generated by the system.
To limit battery wear,which comes naturally because li ion battery have natural wear even with no use, try to do some discharge cycles sometimes, one time at week or month.
You don't need to fully discharge it (it's another source of stress and wear), 40-50% it's ok.
These information I'm giving can be found in the web, on the battery university website and they are proved to be real, based on my real personal experience on many devices in the past decade.

EDIT: I forgot to mention one thing: if you have removable battery in your laptop removing it is a better choice.
Being a Surface Book owner I've take for granted the battery wasn't removable.
In my case I charge the battery to 100% and then play with AC PSU plugged.
In case of removable battery simply take it off.

Of course these are just suggestion for a improved lifespan of battery, it shoudn't be a "OCD like" behaviour.

 

[Ryujingt3]

I'm on the opposite side.
If you have your battery at 100% there's no charging, just the maintaining charge and the power comes directly from the PSU.
On the other side playing almost on battery put it on very high stress and high current discharge rate which could shorten a lot the lifespan of batteries or kill the battery.
For high energy draw tasks PSU is the best option when you have AC available.
Charge the battery to 100% when you have to play games. When it's at 100% you can play games.
Some fans (cooling pad could be ok) can be useful to keep chassis temp lower, to limit any battery wear caused by the heat generated by the system.
To limit battery wear,which comes naturally because li ion battery have natural wear even with no use, try to do some discharge cycles sometimes, one time at week or month.
You don't need to fully discharge it (it's another source of stress and wear), 40-50% it's ok.
These information I'm giving can be found in the web, on the battery university website and they are proved to be real, based on my real personal experience on many devices in the past decade.

I agree with you on this. I always use my laptop with power plugged in most of the time (but I discharge it at times too). However, from the perspective of a gamer, playing without the battery plugged in can be annoying if you are in the middle of the game and the computer hibernates because the battery is too low.

 

[xandros9]

It'll be fine. Will there be an effect? Probably. Will it ultimately matter? Not really.

I'd remove the battery if it had the option and you were super worried (and it was going to spend a lot of gaming time plugged in) but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it. All batteries will eventually wear out.

 

[WandowsTan]

I'm a Windows 10 user who happens to own an MSI gaming laptop and i see that on the battery notification, it's mentioned as "not charging" and sometimes this shows up even at 93% or 95% as well at 100% and i think this is an indication of how Windows is handling its power usage and switching from battery to direct power use instead of consuming the battery power so the battery isn't under heavy load when plugged-in and being used when it has switched to direct power since at this point the battery isn't the power source nor is it being used.

While I do think that it would have adverse effects on the battery 'IF you were to play performance demanding games while you were on battery power instead of being plugged-in which would cause the battery to heat up due to being used heavily, however this also is less likely to occur since most high end laptops don't exactly have more than 2-3 hours of battery life in gaming hours to be specific as modern games consume a lot of power in a short duration, but if you play on your laptop through battery power until its almost drained and plug it in back to the power before it hibernates or turns off because you want to continue playing, now this may actually have adverse effects cause your battery may stay in a heavy usage situation for hours more than expected or may not be able to cool down properly which might cause damage to the battery over time.

 

[Devhux]

I just don't get the people who insist on keeping their battery between 40-80% (like mentioned in the article on the main page about this). Sacrificing battery runtime to preserve overall battery longevity seems a bit bizarre, since even in a couple years the odds of losing 60% charge capacity is slim even if you do frequently top or drain then charge.

Yes, you will lose some overall capacity, but enough to offset the limited life you're forcing yourself with by sticking to 40-80%? Not likely.....

 

[Adarsh Revankar]

I'm using a laptop with 1050Ti and it requires to be connected to power source while playing graphically intensive games, using graphically intensive work.
I dont think that, we should keep on battery while using graphics card.
Once I encountered problem that while using my laptop, friend turned off the power. So game was losing its frame rate due to insufficient power supply,
From the above scenario, battery is not sufficient to provide the voltage necessary for the GPU, FAN to work. So my suggestion is to connect to power source while you do a lot of GPU intensive work.
For casual work keep your battery at optimum state (30-85%)

 

[drswoboda]

hey Wandows Tan, i also have an MSI laptop. i believe that the MSI software is designed to not charge back to the same levels on each charge, to help battery longevity. when it says not charging, it isn't.

MSI also has a special program called MSI Battery Calibration to help keep the battery in a good state. run that program every couple months.

for this discussion, MSI latop is designed to run plugged in. heat would be the only concern, but the cooling in my GT73evr is extremely good and i have no worries running it plugged in while gaming.

 

[jazman_777]

I just don't get the people who insist on keeping their battery between 40-80% (like mentioned in the article on the main page about this). Sacrificing battery runtime to preserve overall battery longevity seems a bit bizarre, since even in a couple years the odds of losing 60% charge capacity is slim even if you do frequently top or drain then charge.

Yes, you will lose some overall capacity, but enough to offset the limited life you're forcing yourself with by sticking to 40-80%? Not likely.....

If he lost 60% of battery capacity somehow, he'd have only 40% left, which is what he's limiting himself to voluntarily. It's an incomprehensible battery obsession.