I'm finding I'm ending the day with 60-70% battery. (Which I'm delighted with.) Is it better for the watch to recharge it every night, or should I leave it and only recharge every other night? I don't understand how modern batteries work.
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $25/year with no ads, private forums, and more!
Should I recharge every night?
- Thread starter profmatt
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No don't. It will explode if you do.
Comment
I am also going to sleep with 60%+ but always charge it. Better more battery life then less I always say 
Comment
It's been really nice as a silent, vibrating alarm (once you get over having something on your wrist while sleeping if that bothers you). So I keep it on charge for a bit before going to bed then throw it on while I sleep. I turn off activate on wrist raise and put it in airplane mode to reserve battery. Wake up, throw it on the charger and get ready for work. By the time I'm ready it's almost always on full charge
Comment
Watch is in the charger. 
I'm what people call "weird" and only charge my Apple products when they reach 20% battery. Then again I get two to two and a half days of battery life of my Apple Watch
Comment
I charge mine every other night. Like you, I'm usually left with between 60-70% battery on my first day, so I would put mine into power reserve, and turn it off the next morning. I've actually gone through 3 days without charging but at that point, it was pushing it to almost dead by the end of the night.
Comment
Actually every time you charge it shortens the batteries life span. Most batteries have a 3000 charge lifespan.
IF you don't mind at one point in the second day possibly going into reserve mode then, no, don't charge every night.
I'm a bit heavier user so I'm usually 30-40% at the end of the day. I need to charge nightly.
Comment
you can correct me if i am wrong here, but if on day 1 your watch is at 50%, and you charge it up, and at day 2 it is again at 50% and u recharge it, doesnt that only count as 1 charge cycle?
Comment
Sorry, I was on the move when I replied. It's 2 days but I didn't elaborate so I was misleading.
Given you turn it off while sleeping or power reserve it will be 2 days, as in daylight hours. 8am-10pm Monday and the same on Tuesday let's say. Again, you may run out near the end of the 2nd day or if your avg use goes up.
In short if your use permits and you can charge every other night vs every night it's better on the battery. My wife does this. (She uses power reserve and doesn't shut it off over night (as she just felt the need to correct me...) )
Comment
Why do the same questions always come up in regards to battery life and health whether it's an iPhone, MacBook, iPod......and now watch.
Keep it on the charger whenever you can and take it off whenever you need to use it. Basically don't waste any brain power into over complicating that simple concept.
Besides, I highly doubt the health of your battery will be an issue for at least a few years and by then technological advances and improvements will make you want to upgrade to whatever is newer and better anyway.
Keep it on the charger whenever you can and take it off whenever you need to use it. Basically don't waste any brain power into over complicating that simple concept.
Besides, I highly doubt the health of your battery will be an issue for at least a few years and by then technological advances and improvements will make you want to upgrade to whatever is newer and better anyway.
Comment
Since when? I don't charge my iPad or iPhone every night and never have.
Comment
Since the invention of lithium-ion batteries. It's not optimal for their health to allow them to drop below a certain level.
Comment
Yes, go ahead and charge it every night. Doesn't hurt and it's always good to have a full charge in case you need it.
Comment
Really? I wish my iPhone could last more than a day. iPad I charge maybe weekly. Watch & phone nightly.
Comment
Im in the same boat, i consider myself a heavy user purely on a fitness basis. I find that after about 1hour - 1hour 30mins of exercise be it football, cardio, weight lifting. Usually depletes my battery by 50%, this is purely down to the HR sensors being on overdrive whilst working out. So yes, a charge every night is important to me and 3000 charge cycles? that'll be close to 7years. I doubt ill have my AW for longer than 2years.
Comment
So at 3,000 charges, it's no big deal to charge nightly, none of us will have this 1st gen watch hat far down the road, after 5 years (365x5=1,825 charges) sooooo I'm not worried about 3,000 charges considering I charge it once a day
Comment
Charge my iPhone and Watch nightly out of habit. I usually plug my iPhone and Watch in around 60% at the end of the day, could probably go 2 days, but rather start the day off at 100% than risk it. iPad gets a charge once every 6-8 days.
Comment
If you want to learn how to best look after your battery in ANY device you own, look here and have a read.... http://batteryuniversity.com/
90% of people on here speculate, guess or go off of something they read in a manual that one time 5 years ago. Go have a read of that website if you want proper, acurate information.
Classic example is mikezmac. He is recommending you discharge as much as possible (over 2 days for example) then recharge only once every other day. This is WORSE for the battery than going lots of partial recharge cycles from say 60% up to 100% each night.
Look at table 2 here.... http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
When going through 100% depth discharge cycles you will usually only get about 300-500 cycles out of a Li-Ion battery. However, in comparison when going through 50% depth discharge cycles you get about 1,200-1,500 charge cycles!
To see what the definition of a discharge cycle is, look here... http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/discharge_methods
You will see that simply charging from 60% - 100% does not tend to constitute as 1 cycle. Apple themselves say that if you charge 40% on day 1, then 50% on day 2 and 10% on day 3 that counts as 1 single discharge cycle. Now obviously that is not the whole story, but it is much more accurate than what some people said above, where it was implied that simply charging from 60% to 100% was counted as a discharge cycle, its not, plain and simple.
Temperature when charging also comes into play, there is so much that comes into consideration when chargin batteries.
However to answer your question, yes, it is better to charge from 60%-100% each night, instead of letting it run down to 10% and charging back to 100% every other day.
90% of people on here speculate, guess or go off of something they read in a manual that one time 5 years ago. Go have a read of that website if you want proper, acurate information.
Classic example is mikezmac. He is recommending you discharge as much as possible (over 2 days for example) then recharge only once every other day. This is WORSE for the battery than going lots of partial recharge cycles from say 60% up to 100% each night.
Look at table 2 here.... http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
When going through 100% depth discharge cycles you will usually only get about 300-500 cycles out of a Li-Ion battery. However, in comparison when going through 50% depth discharge cycles you get about 1,200-1,500 charge cycles!
To see what the definition of a discharge cycle is, look here... http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/discharge_methods
You will see that simply charging from 60% - 100% does not tend to constitute as 1 cycle. Apple themselves say that if you charge 40% on day 1, then 50% on day 2 and 10% on day 3 that counts as 1 single discharge cycle. Now obviously that is not the whole story, but it is much more accurate than what some people said above, where it was implied that simply charging from 60% to 100% was counted as a discharge cycle, its not, plain and simple.
Temperature when charging also comes into play, there is so much that comes into consideration when chargin batteries.
However to answer your question, yes, it is better to charge from 60%-100% each night, instead of letting it run down to 10% and charging back to 100% every other day.
Comment
