Does Fast Charging ACTUALLY Ruin Your Battery?

You're becoming more of a truth seeker and journalist than before, you're adding a lot of value as you evolve beyond just reviewing tech to actually help us understand how it works. Thank you Marques.

As a retired engineer who specialized in battery technology, I'm here to say you've done a perfect job explaining battery charging.

Many years ago I was a programmer writing software for a battery development lab. One of the biggest things that we were working on was the most effective way to charge particular types of batteries. We had engineers, chemists, physicists, and, of course, programmers involved. An astounding amount of science for a simple process.

I love that your videos dont have background music ... & you speak to the audience at a natural pace. Also appreciate your effort to learn the stuff before conveying it to us, thanks bro! :D P.S. Love the humility in your speech, never change!

I just want removable batteries to make its comeback.

Ok, fast charging allow you to charge FAST between 20% to 80% (in 10 minutes with a 120W fast charger). This interval is perfect to preserve battery life and doesn't create much heat. I have a 120W fast charging phone and after one and a half year, I lost ~4% of battery capacity (I use Accubattery to estimate the battery degradation). Basically my battery life hasn't really decreased and I don't have to wait for an hour to use my phone again.

Love your videos, keep up the good work. I know it's a lot of hard work getting out good quality videos 👍

don't activate french audio on this video, it's a nightmare ...

Man I miss the days of user swappable batteries. You never had to worry about running out of juice. You just carried extra batteries with you and in just a few seconds you were back to 100%.

Linus did some experimenting on this a while back, IIRC he found that it's less about how fast the battery is charged, and more about the range. Fully charging and discharging battery puts a lot of stress on it. Doing so repeatedly degrades the battery. Doing so repeatedly while also at high temperature, really degrades the battery.

Awesome video. I appreciate the research you did for this. Thanks ! 👍

MAD RESPECT!!! This guy had a really good question, then did the research behind the answer. True hero!

This has got to be my all time favorite MKBHD video! It's literally everything you need to know about your phone battery.

Hey Marques! I worked in the battery industry for 7 1/2 years. I can tell you that if you are very worried about battery health, long term, use the slowest charger you can and don’t use your phone while charging. Charging solutions are improving but lithium batteries have not changed much. I use the 5 watt charger still on a timed plug overnight. My iPhone 13 Pro’s battery health is at 99% still, I have had it since launch. I actually tested this theory with my iPhone 12, I used the 20 watt charger instead and sometimes wireless charging, both of which cause more heat. I saw much more battery degradation in the same time period. I am super interested in what some of these companies have done the last several years and ultimately I think some developing technologies that are on the horizon will solve this issue entirely. Update: I think a lot of you missed that I prefaced my comment with “if you are very worried about battery health”. One more tip, if you have a device you plan on keeping for years and don’t always need the full battery life then you don’t need to charge it to 100%. For example, I have an iPad I use mostly at home. I will often charge it to 70% or 80% then stop. I usually only charge it 100% when I am taking it on the road with me. Follow these steps and you can expect your device to have 95-100% battery health for a much longer time since much of heat and battery degradation occurs at the end of the charge in that 90-100% range.

Thanks for the clear explanation man! This was exactly what I was lookin for

This is something I always wondered about, thanks for a very informative video

It's mostly all about heat. If less heat is produced and more the heat is spread out, the battery doesn't suffer as much from charging and doesn't wear as much. I don't know what is the exact sweet temperature to achieve 80+ watt charging at, with the least possible wear, but it is hard to maintain as the battery wants to warm up as it charges. Good to also mention that the battery degradation isn't linear to the charge cycles, but it starts off with a large wear amount per charge when it's new, heading to a more mild wear amount. For example, the first 150 charge cycles (lets say degradation from 100% to 97%) could degrade your battery as much as the next 300 cycles would (from 97% degradation to only 94%, instead of 91%).

I'd certainly take a thicker phone if it meant improved durability, sd card slot, and room for a larger, and/or user swapable battery.

Awesome video bro. Brilliantly researched and presented. I work with all different types of batteries for work and I agree with everything you said. 👍🏼

A year later and people like me still search for this exact video. Thanks again Marques <3