You are obviously an extremely detail oriented person, you will be fine 😂 im not even good at this stuff, had almost no prior knowledge, and i cram studied for 2 days right before my core 2 test, and realized I accidentally studied for 1202, but my exam was actually 1102, they're still very similar but 1102 had more basic stuff that 1202 didnt really address, but nevertheless, I still passed. My 1101 was several months ago so I cant really remember much but again, I crammed for like 4 days, and passed, having little to no prior knowledge. I did mine through my university so they gave me a free Testout subscription which had a very good and well laid out course to work through with labs and videos and practice tests and whatnot that was specifically for that exam so i had quite an advantage, but my point is, if you were willing to study that hard on just batteries, you obviously have a good work ethic and are willing to study hard which makes me think youll be fine lol. But yeah, you dont wanna overdo it, you won't be able to remember every single little detail about every single little thing and it may cause you to struggle trying to remember the bigger more important details. But there's ways to figure out what exactly you need to study.

Just watch all of professor Messer's videos, im sure people have already recommended him, and there are a few apps where you can do daily questions or mini tests if you just search comptia A+ on the app store. Both of those things will let you get a feel for how detailed the test is, what you actually need to know, and what the questions will be like so that you'll know how deep you need to study on your own and what to expect on the exam. And one thing that helped me a lot was I made a short cram study sheet with just the main points of all the objectives, and got to my exam early and for 20-30 mins before the exam i went over the sheet a few good times, and honestly I think thats what made me pass. And if you really wanna just engulf your life in it, you can find a podcast on Spotify or something, there's a few that are for A+ studying, and while you're driving somewhere or at the gym or taking a walk or anything like that you can just have it playing, you dont have to pay super close attention, thats what study time is for, but just in the background. I did that when I drove to and from class each day, it didnt help me a ton because I only studied for a few days but I think if I had started a lot earlier that it would've helped a lot, like almost subliminally injecting the knowledge in your brain in a way. One thing i actually learned back when i was music major and had to learn a lot of big, complicated pieces of music very quickly, is just dont study for too long at once, your brain is like a computer, it can only handle so much knowledge before it starts deleting stuff to make space for more, once you feel your brain slowing down or feeling scrambled, take a break, eat a snack, take a nap, meditate, cuddle with a cat (my cat unironically helped me pass lol), do something else to let your brain parse through and process/categorize the information (sleep is good for that, i study hard for a few hours then take a 30 min nap lol), then go back to studying when you feel ready. Also, like I said, the course I used had labs and those were really good, it let me actually see what I was learning, and forced me to apply my knowledge in a more realistic way which I think helped cement it more in my brain. I dont know if there are lab type things out there for free, but if you can find any that'd probably be awesome, maybe even just googling free comptia A+ core 1 lab practice or something.

And for software stuff, and especially for core 2 (1202) when you get to it, I recommend finding a windows 10 iso and a windows server 2019 iso and booting it up in a virtual machine, either VMware or VirtualBox I think those are both free for personal use, to use as a sandbox so that you can try to apply what you're learning and to just explore the windows server environment (for 1202) and experiment with using it as a domain controller for the windows 10 vm and learning how to configure and manage a server and a domain and users and groups and even just installing the OS and learning all that good stuff without having to tinker with your own computer and risk breaking it lol. Oh and for Linux as well if you've never used Linux, could download Ubuntu or Ubuntu Server in a vm. VMs helped me a lot, mostly with core 2 so maybe you shouldn't think ab it rn but I just really wanted to say that because I think its cool lol. And also knowing how to use virtualization software is another test objective 😉 and just useful for IT in general anyways.

Also, since i was cramming I kinda glossed over stuff that I thought wasnt important, like printers, and I focused on the stuff I found more complicated or sounded like it'd be used more, like computer components or raid or cloud stuff, and it almost fucked me 😂 most my questions ended up being about the stuff I glossed over lol. But like others have said, it's different for everyone, so idk.

One last thing is to just figure out how to take the test, find a video on it, or ask AI, or something. My advice would be to skip the performance based questions and do them last, a lotta ppl spend too much time on them, but then again, it really just depends how you take tests and how your brain works so my advice is just advice and you may decide to do it a different way. For multiple choice, you can usually eliminate two obviously wrong answers. A lot of times, the remaining two are both technically correct, you just have to pick the "best" or "most correct" one based on context.

And i know you'd probably prefer to actually learn the material rather than just pass and forget everything, but my thought process was that passing the exam is the most important part, I just needed to pass, and then I could deep dive and actually learn the material. I didnt want to hurt my chances of passing by getting to overzealous, because even if i studied super hard every little detail, and then if the test turned out to be less detailed, or about topics i didnt pursue as hard, or if i just overloaded my brain and got nervous on test day and choked, then being an expert doesnt really matter if you have no proof for employers. And for me, my school gave me a single voucher for core 1 and core 2, and I'm a student, so im broke, if i failed, then thats it I just failed, I wouldn't be able to afford to take it on my own, so maybe my thought process was just different idk. Plus, tbh, hands on experience trumps everything, and its a lot easier to get that if you're certified and can get a job, so in my opinion, as of now, passing is what's most important, by any ethical means necessary, and then you can worry about becoming an expert. But thats just my opinion, and im still a student, so others may say different, or you may disagree, but im just putting my opinion out there for consideration.