As portable productivity machines, one of the key advantages of a laptop is its battery life. While the exact battery life will depend on various factors, including the laptop’s specifications and your usage patterns, battery health plays a vital role in the overall battery life of the laptop. If you have recently noticed that your laptop’s battery is not lasting as long as it used to, chances are, your laptop’s battery health has degraded. So today, we will take a look at the steps for how to check your laptop battery’s health in Windows 11.
Check Laptop Battery Health in Windows 11 (2021)
Apart from the official method to check laptop battery health in Windows 11, we have included a ton more resources in this article. You will find a third-party battery health checker app, steps to monitor usage, and some handy tips to improve battery life on your Windows 11 laptop here. So without wasting any time, let’s jump right in.
What is Battery Health in Windows 11?
Battery health is a measure of your laptop battery’s longevity. As the battery goes through multiple charge cycles over several months, its overall full charge capacity starts to go down. Over time, the current battery capacity deviates noticeably from the original capacity that you got when you first purchased the laptop. Here, battery health represents the percentage of original battery capacity left in your laptop.
Check Laptop Battery Health in Windows 11
1. Open the Start menu and search Command Prompt. From the right-side panel, click on Run as administrator. You could also use PowerShell to check your laptop’s battery health.
2. When the Command Prompt window opens, paste the following command and hit Enter. It will then generate a battery report of your Windows 11 laptop.
powercfg /batteryreport
3. Now, navigate to C:\Windows\system32 and look for the ‘battery-report.html’ file. Clicking on the HTML file will open the report in your default browser on Windows 11. This battery report will have several details about your laptop’s battery, including installed batteries, recent usage, battery capacity history, and more.
4. Under the ‘Installed batteries’ section, you will find the original design capacity and the current full charge capacity. In this case, the total capacity has dropped from 51,300 mWh to 43,069 mWh. Calculating the difference, the battery health of this Windows 11 laptop is currently at 84 percent.
5. You also get a detailed weekly battery capacity history in the report. This way, you can keep track of how the battery on your laptop has degraded over months of usage.
6. The report also highlights battery life estimates at the current state and original capacity. It will give you an idea of the battery life you should be getting as opposed to the battery life you are currently getting from the laptop.
7. Moreover, if you scroll down, you will see the battery life estimate since you installed Microsoft’s latest desktop OS – the time when you upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11. In this case, the laptop should have lasted 4:50:47 (4 hours and 50 minutes) at design capacity but is only managing to pull off a relatively lower 4:04:08 (4 hours and 4 minutes) battery life in its current state.
Check Battery Health using Third-Party Apps
Another way of checking your laptop’s battery health is with a third-party app. While there are several battery health checker apps available in the market, the one app that’s free and straightforward is called BatteryInfoView.
BatteryInfoView highlights key details about your Windows 11 laptop’s battery, including power state, current capacity, designed capacity, battery health, and voltage, to name a few. You even get the option to export these battery stats as a text file, CSV file, or HTML document. So, go ahead and download this third-party battery health checker app from the link below.
Download BatteryInfoView (Free)
Monitor Battery Usage Per App in Windows 11
If you are facing a battery drain issue on your Windows 11 laptop, one of your installed apps could be the reason. Fortunately, you can check the battery usage per app from Windows 11 Settings and weed out the culprit.
To do that, navigate to Settings -> System -> Power & Battery and you will see the list of apps that are draining your battery. Here, you can view apps that are currently in use, apps running in the background, and sort apps based on the overall usage. For more detailed instructions, go through our article on checking the screen on time in Windows 11.
Tips to Improve Battery Life in Windows 11
One easy method to improve battery life in Windows 11 laptops is to change the power settings. Laptops typically offer a performance mode, balanced mode, and power-saving mode. While you can push your laptop to the limits for resource-intensive tasks in performance mode, it will affect the battery life.
Hence, it’s recommended to use the laptop in Balanced mode to get ample performance without hurting the battery life. You can, of course, change power mode settings in Windows 11 based on your use case. You will find detailed instructions to do that in our linked article. And for more such tips, go through our article on improving battery life in Windows laptops.
Check Battery Health of Windows 11 Laptop and Replace Battery if Needed
So that brings us to the end of our guide to check your Windows 11 laptop’s battery health. It’s important to emphasize the need to replace the laptop battery once the original one wears out to increase your battery life and prevent potential accidents. While you are replacing the battery, it’s recommended to get an authorized battery replacement. If you are planning to replace the battery yourself, make sure you find a compatible battery that works with the hardware specs of your Windows 11 laptop.
