Having a Wireless device on the PC it is something very normal today, especially when we talk about the mouse or headphones. These devices, of course, need charge your battery, and it is quite easy that, when we finish using them, let’s leave them connected and let’s forget about them for a while. Does doing this damage the battery or nothing happens? Coming up next, we tell you.
The wireless device battery and its autonomy is an issue that worries everyone, since if you are not careful, over time the battery lasts less and less until there comes a time when we are forced to replace the battery with a new or even to dispose of the device for a new one. The battery care for a wireless PC device they are exactly the same as for any other battery-operated 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 laptop environment, the old recommendation was 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 necessary. 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 a laptop battery, the power supply has a control that detects when the battery is already charged and cuts the power, so there is absolutely nothing wrong with a laptop because it is 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 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 off the charge when the battery is full.
For this reason, and regardless of whether you connect your wireless device to a PC USB port, to an externally powered port hub or even if you use the mobile charger to charge its battery, absolutely nothing happens for leaving it connected for as long as it is. 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 until it reaches 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 for 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, and 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 motherboard USB ports They will continue to supply power even if you turn off the PC, as long as it is clearly still plugged into the power outlet and you have not turned off the power supply from its switch (this is, all said, the normal situation since almost nobody bothers to turn off source or unplug the PC when turning it off).
This means that if you connect your wireless device to one of the rear ports of your motherboard and turn off the PC, your battery will continue to charge, something that is ideal to recharge your mouse or headphones at night, with the PC off when you are not using it, and thus find them full of power for the next day. The same happens if you use a USB ports 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.
Things change with front ports from 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 elsewhere 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 do serve for it).
The post Is it bad to leave a wireless device connected to a turned off PC? appeared first on HardZone.
