How to reduce laptop battery drain?

Below is a simple list of tips and tweaks to reduce laptop power drain to extend its battery life.

1. Adjust Windows Power settings
Navigate to Start > Settings > System > Power and Sleep. Use smaller time increments for turning off screen and sleep when on battery power. Under "Additional power settings", turn down brightness, turn on selective suspend for USB/PCI, adjust video playback to power saving mode, adjust wireless to power saving mode when on battery. Reduce the idle delay time when the computer goes to sleep and turns off hard drives. SSDs are much more power-efficient, so are modern mobile CPUs.

2. Turn off background apps and processes
Check your system tray (icons next to clock in lower-right corner) for running programs, and turn off everything that is not necessary to start with Windows.
Start the Windows Task Manager, and navigate to the "Startup" tab. Disable any startup items that are not necessary.

3. Anti-Virus and Anti-malware
Many anti-virus and anti-malware apps are huge resource hogs, as they have to read all files and access memory to prevent virus infection. It may be prudent to use the default Microsoft anti-virus and firewall software, as it is easier on system resources when not actively scanning. Many recent versions of anti-malware products (Malwarebytes, CCleaner, etc.) are also including background processes to monitor browser cookies, etc. Those can be huge resource hogs, turn off if you have confidence in your browsing habits and only run those programs on demand to conserve resources.

4. Chrome browser
- close unused tabs, as they continue to hog resources.
- turn off/uninstall unnecessary extensions
Under "settings", turn off all the following:
- Settings > System > turn off "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed."
- Settings > System and Security > turn off "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly."
- Settings > System and Security > turn off "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs..."
- Settings > System and Security > turn off "Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors."

5. Monitor CPU/RAM resource usage
To see a list of running "tasks", right-click the "Task View" icon (next to search/Cortana in Windows 10) > choose "Task Manager" > look at the "Processes" tab > sort by CPU%, or Memory%. This will give you an idea which processes consume the most system resources and cause higher battery drain at the moment, turn off unnecessary tasks as feasible.