Every battery loses the ability to hold charges over time. For your laptop, the battery’s performance can affect how you get things done; that’s why it is important to monitor your laptop battery’s health. In this post, we show you multiple ways to check a laptop’s battery health in Windows.
Content
- View Battery Consumption Patterns in Windows Settings
- Use Battery Report Command Prompt Command
- Look For Battery and Power Errors in the Event Viewer
- Use a Third-Party Battery Health Checker App
View Battery Consumption Patterns in Windows Settings
Knowing your battery usage pattern is a good start to learning about its health, especially if you are experiencing battery drain issues. In Windows Settings, you can view exactly how your battery is being consumed to see the draining speed and detect anything unusual.
Go to System -> Power & battery in Windows Settings and open the Battery usage section.
Here you’ll find your battery charge and discharge cycles over a period of time. By default, it shows battery levels for the last 24 hours, but you can select a 7-day period as well. If you notice faster draining than expected or unexpected drops, it could indicate battery health issues.
More importantly, this section shows battery usage per app, telling you exactly which program is consuming the battery and how much. If a program is excessively draining your battery, particularly when running in the background, it might be the culprit rather than your battery’s health.
Use Battery Report Command Prompt Command
You can use the Battery Report Command Prompt command to generate a complete battery usage report over time. Here’s how:
Note: keep in mind that if you have recently installed Windows, the battery report might not have enough information to show you. If that’s your case, try to generate a battery report once you’ve gone through a few more power cycles so the report may have sufficient data.
Search “cmd” in Windows search and open the Command Prompt. Type the following command and press Enter.
powercfg /batteryreport
When your laptop is done with the report, it will indicate where the battery report has been saved. You can manually move to the specified location, or press the Win + R keys and copy/paste the location in the Run dialog to open the report in your browser.
You’ll find a lot of information in the report, but you only need to look at Recent usage, Battery capacity history, and Battery life estimates sections.
- Recent usage: here you can see battery cycles in the last 3 days showing both percentages and capacity in milliwatt-hours (mWh). Ensure that your battery is reaching maximum capacity consistently when at 100%.
- Battery capacity history: this section shows battery design capacity and full charge capacity over a long period of time. Make sure the full charge capacity matches the design capacity in all readings.
- Battery life estimates: it shows battery estimate times over a time period along with design capacity estimates. Again, you need to ensure both full charge and design capacity match for a healthy battery. There is also a handy section with an estimated decrease in design capacity since the OS was installed.
Using all this information, you can easily see degradation in the battery capacity and any unusual drains.
Look For Battery and Power Errors in the Event Viewer
Degradation isn’t the only health problem batteries can face. Problems like not being able to handle heavy loads or miscommunication with OS are common as well. You can use the Windows Event Viewer tool to view all power and battery-related errors that could indicate battery health issues. Here’s how:
- Search for “event viewer” in Windows Search and open the Event Viewer.
- Under Windows Logs, right-click on System and select Filter Current Log.
- Select Critical in the Event level section, and select the following sources in the Event sources section:
- ACPI
- Battery
- Kernel-Power
- Power-Troubleshooter
- When you are done, click on OK and all your logs will be filtered by these events. If you notice too many warnings and critical errors from any of these sources, it could mean a problem with the battery. For example, too many Kernal-Power errors with event ID 41 could mean the battery is causing the laptop to shut down abruptly.
You can look at the error’s details to learn what caused the error.
Use a Third-Party Battery Health Checker App
If you prefer to have all the information in one place, you can also use a third-party battery health checker app that will automatically tell you about your battery health condition. We recommend the free BatteryInfoView utility as it’s easy to use and provides all critical battery health information.
Launch the app and check the Battery Health section first. It will show you the current battery health in percentage. You can then look at capacity, battery temperature, charge/discharge rate, and battery time as per current activity to see if there is anything unusual.
You should also view the app with both AC power connected and disconnected as it shows different information based on power status. For example, it can tell you the charging speed in mWh to give you an idea of how fast your battery can charge.
These methods should give you everything you need to monitor your laptop’s battery health. If your battery drain remains high, but these methods show it’s in good condition, consider optimizing your laptop to extend battery life.
Image credit: Freepik. All screenshots by Karrar Haider.
Karrar Haider –
Staff Writer
Karrar is drenched in technology and always fiddles with new tech opportunities. He has a bad habit of calling technology “Killer”, and doesn’t feel bad about spending too much time in front of the PC. If he is not writing about technology, you will find him spending quality time with his little family.
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