For any gamer who wants to be able to play without having to plug their laptop into a power source, gaming laptop battery life is usually an issue. This is especially true for frequent travelers like college students and gamers. A gaming laptop with long battery life, in an ideal world, would allow you to take notes in class while also playing multiplayer games with your friends like Warzone.
Due to the power consumption of high-performance components such as the GPU, CPU, and high-speed fans, gaming laptops have poor battery life. As a result, they deplete the battery far more quickly than standard laptops like the best laptops for accounting. Gaming laptops and regular laptops may appear identical at first glance, but they are not made the same way on the inside.
Gaming laptops are designed for high performance because gamers’ needs differ significantly from those of regular users. Gaming laptop hardware is typically more power-hungry than standard laptop hardware. Furthermore, gaming laptops offer extra functions that are uncommon in regular laptops, contributing to poor battery life.
Reasons: Why Do Gaming Laptops Have Bad Battery Life
Graphics Card (Dedicated)
In most laptops, the CPU has an integrated graphics card that performs the same functions as a video card. It’s ideal for managing graphics like photographs and movies, general words processing, and internet browsing. Compared to standalone graphics cards, integrated graphics cards are less expensive, produce less heat, and use less power.
This extends the battery life of standard laptops. The only disadvantage is that integrated graphics cards struggle with graphically demanding jobs like gaming and professional graphic creation on Adobe Creative Cloud. Gaming laptops, on the other hand, contain a specialized graphics card in addition to an integrated graphics processor.
In today’s graphically demanding games, such as Far Cry 5 and Metro Exodus, the specialized graphics card is used to handle vibrant visuals and intricate textures. With a dedicated graphics card, you get substantially smoother gameplay with no lags, stutters, or frame rate drops.
The graphic processing capacity of specialized graphics cards also allows for VR (Virtual Reality) and 4K gaming. Dedicated graphics cards have some disadvantages, despite enhancing graphic processing performance. They’re not only more expensive than integrated graphics cards but they’re also known for draining batteries and producing a lot of heat.
High-Speed Processors
Low-performance CPUs, such as Intel’s U(ultra-low power) and Y(extremely low power) series, are found in most laptops. The Intel Core i5-6300U and Intel Core i7-3689Y processors are two examples. The focus of these processors is on power efficiency rather than performance. Normal laptops’ battery life is substantially extended by these processors. But they are inefficient at handling CPU-intensive tasks and multitasking, and these laptops are under $800 usually. They are only suitable for routine chores and the execution of light applications.
Processors like the Intel Core i7-4700HQ and Intel Core i9-9980HK are power-hungry in gaming laptops. On the flip side, this means more power is used, more heat is generated, and the battery life suffers as a result. These CPUs also feature additional cores (6 to 8), making them suitable for multitasking and gaming.
You can, for example, game and stream with the OBS streaming platform at the same time without having any negative impacts such as lag. Processors with more cores require more electricity to run than those with fewer cores. Gaming laptops’ battery life suffers as a result of this.
Several High-Rate Fans
All inside components, including the best motherboard, heat pipes, RAM, and so on, must fit into a very tiny chassis in laptops. Because so many components are crammed into such a small space, airflow is severely restricted, making it difficult for heat generated by the CPU and GPU to escape. Normal laptop fans spin slowly, and in most cases, just one fan is required because the CPU generates the majority of the heat.
A single fan that spins slowly and seldom consumes little power, extending the battery life of common laptops. It’s a different story with gaming laptops. To avoid thermal throttling, fans must exhaust the heat generated by both the CPU and GPU. Thermal throttling affects performance, which might lead to a poor gaming experience overall. Gaming laptop manufacturers attach two or more fast-spinning fans to boost internal ventilation and performance.
Heat is generated continually when gaming or performing CPU and GPU heavy tasks, therefore these fans must spin rapidly and nonstop to keep the interior cool. When a battery has to power two or more fans that spin quickly and frequently, the battery life is significantly diminished.
Backlit RGB Lighting
Many gamers prefer to play in low light or the dark. Gaming laptops have illuminated or backlit RGB keyboards, which are rare on traditional laptops, to make life easier. They make it simple to place your fingertips on the correct keys and reduce the chances of pressing the erroneous ones. Even while backlit keyboards do not consume a lot of power, they still need to be powered, which reduces battery life.
Louder Speakers
Beautiful sound quality is equally as vital as great graphics when it comes to immersing yourself in a game. High-quality speakers enable you to hear all of the sound effects that game creators use to make games more interesting and enjoyable to play.
The speakers on most computers are of mediocre quality and aren’t often extremely loud. While such speakers are suitable for general use, they are not suitable for gaming. Gamers want speakers that can deliver a wide range of clean base tones and frequencies at a higher volume.
As a result, gaming laptops like the best laptops for Sims 4 are likely to have larger, louder speakers with higher sound quality. Louder speakers also help to disguise fan noise, which can be irritating if it becomes too loud. Louder speakers use more power, reducing battery life. While gaming laptop speakers have improved, they still fall short of a dedicated surround sound system or a competent pair of gaming headphones in terms of sound quality.
Conclusion
Gaming laptops are manufactured for extreme gaming performance and portability. As a result, gaming laptops have powerful components that put a lot of strain on your laptop battery. The graphics card, high-speed processor, high-speed fans, backlit lighting, etc are one or many reasons why do gaming laptops have bad battery life.
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