The Windows operating system has many useful reports and configuration screens that you can take advantage of. One of my favourite reports to generate is the Windows Battery Report.
The report will give you a complete analysis of your laptop’s battery. It will help you see the size of your laptop battery, the health of the battery and how many hours of usage you’re actually getting in practice. This is particularly useful as laptops rarely live up to the estimated battery life that is quoted on sales pages.
I have published a detailed tutorial on my Tech YouTube channel that shows the exact steps you need to follow in order to check the health of your laptop’s battery. You can see this video below.
Keep reading on if you prefer to read the necessary steps, rather than watch the video above. By the end of the article, you will know how to analyse the health of your laptop battery and see exactly how many hours of battery you are getting.
How to Check the Health of Your Laptop Battery Using the Windows Battery Report
A Windows Battery Report can be created with a simple command in Windows PowerShell.
To open Windows PowerShell, all you have to do is search for PowerShell in the Windows search bar. You can then run the application as an administrator.
If you prefer, you can open Windows PowerShell by right-clicking the Windows icon which is displayed in the Windows Taskbar.
To generate a battery report, all you have to do is enter this command in Windows PowerShell:
powercfg /batteryreportIt will look like this:
Once you have created the battery report, you will be advised that the report has been saved to C:\WINDOWS\system32\battery-report.html.
A number of parameters and options are available for the powercfg batteryreport command. One of the most useful is output. This allows you to change the name of the battery report and where it is saved.
For example, you can save the battery report to the root of your C drive with this command:
powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery-report.html"PowerShell will confirm that the report has been saved.
That’s all you have to do to generate the Windows Battery Report.
The Windows Battery Report
The Windows Battery Report shows a huge amount of useful information.
At the start of the report, you can see information such as the name of your computer, the current bios and OS build and the time and date the report was generated. Underneath, you can see the original design capacity of your laptop battery and its current full charge capacity.
Recent usage shows how you have charged your laptop over the last few days, whilst battery drain can be viewed in the battery usage section.
As Windows tracks all the times you charge and discharge your battery, the size of the Windows Battery Report grows over time. It has detailed tables that show usage history, battery capacity history and battery life estimates.
All of these tables help paint a picture of the life of your laptop battery over time.
At the bottom of the report, you can view the current estimate of your laptop’s battery life.
I encourage you to generate the Window Battery Report on your own laptop. This will help you appreciate the wealth of information the report shows.
Using HWinfo to Analyse Your Battery
HWiNFO is a fantastic diagnostic application that can be downloaded free of charge. It works with all versions of Windows including legacy systems that run on DOS.
HWiNFO analyses every aspect of your computer. This includes the CPU, motherboard, memory, graphics, storage and ports.
The battery information panel gives you a useful overview of your battery such as its original design capacity, current full charge capacity and wear level.
The system summary box gives a good overview of your desktop computer or laptop.
My favourite feature of HWiNFO is the sensors box. This gives you live feedback on your CPU clocks, CPU and GPU temperatures, memory, storage and more.
It’s a fantastic tool for troubleshooting thermal throttling and other performance issues, but it can also help you analyse your battery as it shows how it is currently discharging.
I recommend downloading HWiNFO if you want to analyse and troubleshoot your Windows computer.
Final Thoughts
I hope you have found this tutorial about laptop battery health useful. I recommend checking the health of your laptop battery frequently to help you see what its current capacity is and how the battery is being discharged. This will help show when the battery should be replaced.
Good luck.
Kevin
Featured Image: Pixabay