5 Ways To Check Your Laptop’s Battery Health

5 ways to check your laptop's battery health

Are you wondering how to check the health of your laptop battery? Or are you not sure what the signs of a worn-out battery are? Knowing how to take care of your laptop battery will help it last longer.

Your laptop battery is important. You rely on it to keep your computer running, whether you’re working on a presentation or catching up on emails. So it’s important to make sure your battery is healthy and performing at its best.

Firstly – Is Your Battery Working as it should?

1. Observe the battery percentage closely and notice when it drops quickly after a full charge.

2. Look at the laptop’s technical specifications to see if they now match those of your computer’s original specifications before you bought the laptop with its battery pack or those recommended by your laptop manufacturer. If not, then it is time for a new battery pack!

3. After use, let your laptop run until your laptop automatically turns off due to low battery power. Then remove all external devices connected to the computer (external hard disk drive, USB flash drive, mouse or another pointing device, keyboard, USB wireless mouse, or another pointing device).

a. Plug in the AC power supply to recharge the battery.

b. Then turn on your laptop and let it run until your laptop automatically shuts down due to low battery power again.

c. With no external devices attached, remove all AC power supplies (via the use of a surge protector/UPS device if any are running) and fully charge the battery while turned off.

d. Turn on your computer without connecting to AC power cords after charging for one hour while turning off.

How to check your laptop’s battery health?

1. Windows PowerCFG Battery Report

Powercfg is a command-line tool that can be run in Windows 11/10.

To check your laptop’s battery health using the powercfg command, follow these steps:

Open Command Prompt with ‘ Run As Administrator ‘. Type powercfg -batteryreport and hit enter.

You can also save it as a text file by changing the ‘Save As Type’ to All Files (*.*), giving it any name you want, and hitting enter after clicking ‘ Save ‘. Then open this saved text file to view all of the battery’s information.

a. Check if the status listed under “State says “Optimal” or not.” is “Optimal” or not.

b. Optimization status means that your laptop’s battery has been given an ideal cycle count and will remain in its top condition until it reaches the maximum threshold. In other words, your battery health is optimal. You can also see this detailed information from within the Battery Report from Step 1c.

c. OPTIMAL: The highest a healthy battery should ever get is 100% full while plugged in before dropping down to ~95%. If it never gets over 100%, there might be a problem with one of your laptop’s components draining voltage when you don’t need it to, such as a software issue.

Note: It might be hard to tell if your battery is in its optimal condition if you never let your laptop run off the battery and always keep it plugged in.

Note: 100% full while plugged in should be considered as a general reference and not an absolute answer because batteries lose charge over time even when they’re not being used. The actual voltage might fluctuate between 95-100%.

d. NORMAL: If your laptop’s battery dropped below 80% after installation, this means that it has been cycled more than 4 times already and will be at risk of losing total capacity until you get your new or existing battery replaced.

e. DECLINING: Your laptop’s battery drops below 60% and keeps dropping whenever you use it (charging/discharging); this is considered as the battery aging indication.

f. BAD: This is NOT NORMAL if your laptop’s battery drops below 50% more than 5 times now; this means that you should replace it soon or look into getting a new one before doing anything else to prolong its life.

2. BatteryMon

i. Download and install BatteryMon on your PC (Windows 7 or above).

ii. Once done with the installation, plug-in your laptop into AC power before launching the program. For non-AC power laptops, unplug them first then plug-in to AC power after running this program. Keep in mind that if you’re using a laptop equipped with an external docking station/port replicator, please detach it first whenever necessary – having both plugged in at the same time could cause a short circuit.

iii. Once your laptop is plugged in, hit the ‘Refresh’ button to update information from your laptop battery controller chip then hit ‘Test battery’.

iv. The test results will be displayed on a new window along with the estimated remaining hours left before it is fully discharged which you can find under the Remaining capacity bar chart and Estimated discharge time chart.

3. HWMonitor

One of the most precise apps to monitor a laptop’s temperature, voltage, and battery health is HWMonitor. It displays information about the laptop’s hardware components on its main window.

Once you installed the app, run it and wait for its sensors to detect all necessary data like temperature, voltage, and wattage to start checking your battery health condition. Hit the ‘F10’ key or ‘Update Status’ button on top of the app first before hitting ‘Test battery’.

The test results will be displayed at the bottom part of the app window along with temperature charts if it detects any abnormal temperature levels detected by its sensors like Lithium-Ion protection circuit that should not exceed 100°C.

4. BatteryCare

A comprehensive battery-monitoring app with customizable alarms and detailed information on your laptop.

It also allows you to control the settings of your laptop’s battery.

5. BatteryBar

This is a simple Windows tray icon that shows:-

i. Current battery capacity as a percentage and as an icon with an indication for charging mode

ii. Remaining estimated time till next recharge based on current power consumption and/or rate of discharge

iii. Estimated time from now till running on fumes with both time remaining and estimated power left.

iv. A charge indicator with color codes for different levels of battery life. Just download it from their site, run the installer then choose a hotkey to run the app. The app will start running then integrate itself into the system tray. Right-click on its icon anytime for more options like calibrating the battery.

v. A power consumption pie chart indicating how much power each of your hardware components is consuming.

vi. A general system health indicator with estimated time left for running on battery power.

vii. The option to enable or disable all notifications, sound alarms, or window pop-ups when the laptop’s Battery Health drops below a certain level.

viii. Current battery capacity as a percentage and as an icon with an indication for charging mode: This built-in feature allows you to check the current Battery health by seeing its charge rating in Windows itself. You can right-click on the desktop and select ‘Battery Status’. Here it will show you the current rating of your laptop’s battery and what it implies about your laptop’s battery health.

Get in touch with us for laptop battery replacements.

Author:
I am a computer engineer holding a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, complemented by a Master's in Business Administration from University of Strathclyde, Scotland. I currently work as a Senior IT Consultant in Melbourne, Australia. With over 15 years of...