How to Check Battery Health and Capacity on Windows 11

In Summary

Windows laptops, while powerful, have processors with very high power requirements that drain your laptop’s battery.
Repeatedly charging and discharging a laptop’s battery over the years can degrade battery performance and shorten battery life.
The best solution to counter this would be to replace your laptop’s battery once it reaches a certain battery capacity.
To help you decide whether or not you should replace your laptop’s battery, we have created this detailed guide that explains how to check the battery’s health and capacity in Windows 11.

Lithium-ion batteries are one of humanity’s greatest inventions. They have already helped us develop portable electronic devices and electric vehicles and are on the verge of conquering the grid energy storage market.

But like all good things, lithium-ion batteries have their downsides. Lithium-ion batteries lose their charge capacity when they are repeatedly recharged. Apart from losing their charge, a weakened battery will also lead to poor power output or dangerous situations such as bloated/swollen batteries, especially when used in a device such as your smartphone or laptop, both of which generate heat and lack proper battery cooling solutions normally found in EV battery packs.

That’s why we have created this detailed guide explaining how to check the condition and capacity of your Windows 11 laptop’s battery using the built-in software tools to determine if it needs to be replaced.

Table of Contents

How to Generate Battery Health Report in Windows 11?

By default, Windows 11 allows you to generate battery health reports by typing specific code into the built-in command line applications, i.e., Command Prompt (CMD) or PowerShell. The following describes how you can use both CMD and PowerShell to generate a battery report in Windows 11 using the same code:

Press Windows key+R to open the Run dialog box.
In the Run dialog, type CMD or PowerShell, then click ok or press Enter.
In the Command Prompt or PowerShell window, type powercfg /batteryreport and press Enter.
Generating a Battery Health Report Using Command Prompt

OR

Generating a Battery Health Report Using PowerShell
As soon as you receive the message “Battery life report saved in the file path,” make a note of the file path/save location indicated next to it.

How to Find & Read a Battery Health Report?

Now that you have successfully created a battery health report by following the steps listed in the previous section, the next step is to find and read the battery health report to determine whether or not your laptop’s battery needs to be replaced.

To find the Battery Health report, go to the path we already mentioned, i.e., C:\Users\”Your Username,” and double-click the battery-report.html file to open it in your default web browser.

If you have the battery report file open in your web browser, you’ll notice that it’s divided into several sections with different information about your laptop’s battery. Here’s what it all means:

Installed Batteries: This section provides a general overview of the batteries installed in your laptop. It includes the manufacturer, serial number, chemistry/type of battery, capacity, and the number of charge cycles, i.e., the number of times the battery has been charged during its lifetime.
Recent Usage: This section shows when the computer was active, suspended, or connected to the charger in standby mode.
Battery usage: This section shows a chart representing the battery drain over the last three days.
Usage history: This section records how long the computer was running on battery power and when it was connected to a charger.
Battery capacity history: This section tracks and displays the battery’s charge capacity history.
Battery life estimates This section, as the name implies, gives an estimate of the expected life of the battery based on the current charge capacity and power consumption.

How to Determine if Your Laptop Needs a Battery Replacement?

Once you have run a battery health report, it’s fairly easy to determine if your laptop needs a new battery. Note that the “design capacity” and “full charge capacity” are both listed under the installed battery section of the battery health report.

If the difference between the two capacities isn’t very large, you shouldn’t worry about replacing the battery. However, if the total charge capacity drops significantly below the 50% mark, you’re out of luck and should replace your laptop’s battery sooner rather than later.

5 Tips to Preserve Battery Life in Windows 11

Now that you know how to generate and read a battery health report in Windows 11 let’s take a look at some helpful tips you can use to improve and maintain your laptop’s battery life in Windows 11.

1. Try Using a Different Power Plan:

Windows 11 and all Windows versions before it give you the option to choose between three power modes, including:

Best Performance: As the name implies, this power plan helps keep your PC fast and responsive by providing CPU and other components with more power without worrying about energy efficiency.
Balanced: The default power mode used by Windows provides a mix of battery power and performance with balanced power consumption.
Best Power Efficiency: The third and best of the three options, Best Power Efficiency mode provides longer battery life than your system’s default settings by reducing screen brightness and turning off background processes.

Choosing a power-saving plan according to your current workload can help conserve your laptop’s battery life. To change the power plan in Windows 11, go to Settings > System > Power & Battery, and select a power plan from the drop-down menu under Power Mode.

2. Adjust Sleep and Screen Turn-Off Time:

If you frequently leave your computer unattended, consider reducing the amount of time it hibernates, and the screen is off. This will help reduce the overall drain on your laptop’s battery.

To set the time for Sleep and screen off, open the settings > Power & Battery > Screen & sleep and select your preferred times from each drop-down menu.

3. Try Using Dynamic Refresh Rate on Laptops With High Refresh Rate Displays

Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) only applies to gaming laptops with high refresh rate screens. It allows your computer to dynamically adjust the refresh rate between 60 and 144 Hz depending on what is being displayed on the screen instead of continuously transmitting images at 144 Hz.

Even though this results in a degradation of image quality and overall responsiveness of a screen, it is very helpful in conserving your laptop’s battery life. To enable this, go to Settings > System > Advanced Display and select Dynamic under the refresh rate drop-down menu.

4. Try Using Dark Mode

Your screen consumes less energy than usual whenever you activate the dark mode. So, it would be helpful if you use the dark mode and dark theme to improve the battery life of your Windows 11.

You can enable dark mode on Windows by going to Settings > Personalization > Colors and then selecting Dark under Mode.

5. Unplug Unnecessary Devices:

Your screen consumes less energy than usual whenever you activate the dark mode. So, it would be helpful if you use the dark mode and dark theme to improve the battery life of your Windows 11.