Charging

[JoshB]

Okay I've always been a person who likes to run a battery out then charge it fully in a perfect world I would do it but obviously I have things to do and have to cut charging short sometimes is this going to affect the life of my battery??
I have an istick 30w by the way
Cheers JoshB

 

[KenD]

Li-ion batteries don't have a memory effect so recharging them before they're empty isn't a problem. In fact, they'll have a longer life if you don't fully discharge them.

 

[Rickajho]

Hi

A lot of people carry over thinking about NiMh and even NiCd batteries to lithium and they are very different. An APV like you have should never allow a battery to "run out" - it shuts the thing down when the battery reaches a specific low voltage. It does that on purpose because running LiOn batteries below their low limit voltage actually damages the battery. So when your istick shuts down they battery isn't actually fully depleted - it is turning off before it gets anywhere near that point. People using mechanicals have to pay attention to how low they are running their batteries because they have no electronics monitoring the battery voltage for them.

The other thing that people tend to carry over was the old NiCd "memory effect" issue. Lithium batteries don't suffer to any significant degree from the memory effect. In other words, you won't shorten the overall run times of your istick by charging it if the battery is only partially depleted.