Laptop battery health analysis tools

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Avatar for Farah
Written by
4 years ago

A laptop computer battery is an essential part of a laptop, but we are often less familiar with its health. A Windows laptop computer will not give you enough information about your computer's battery. On your computer screen, Windows displays only a small battery indicator along with the estimated time and remaining charge.

Over time, you will notice some errors in the battery and degradation of its performance. For example:

  • The battery stops charging.

  • The charge level indicator shows fluctuating readings.

  • An inaccurate estimate of how much time the battery will last until it runs out.

But there are solutions and ways to bypass this. Let us guide you through some battery diagnostic tools (third-party software) that allow you to check battery health in a laptop running Windows (Windows).

Why should you monitor laptop battery health?

The battery is a portable chemical device with limited resources. Due to the nature of batteries, they have a complex voltage response based on load, temperature, and lifespan. Battery health affects both the performance of the device and the operating time that the device operates without being connected to direct electrical current. So you should monitor battery health for the following reasons:

  • Knowing the starting point of a power management workflow when the laptop is under different workloads and in different environments.

  • The maximum rechargeable capacity of the battery changes over time, as a result, the charge indicator may show inconsistent readings. When this happens, you will know when to calibrate the battery.

  • Incorrect use of the battery may shorten its life. Battery health monitoring enables you to take corrective steps to increase battery longevity.

Terminology for batteries:

There are many special terms in the battery world that we should know before we start using battery analyzers, and these terms are:

  • Design Capacity: is the capacity of the battery when it is new from the factory.

  • Full Charge Capacity: This is the current battery capacity which decreases with time and battery consumption.

  • Cycle Count: is the number of recharging cycles that the battery has gone through, and the larger this number, the more that indicates the large number of times the battery has been charged and affects the "full charge capacity".

  • Battery Calibration: The calibration process occurs by applying 100% full charge to the battery, then discharging and charging again. Battery analyzers serve as a valuable tool for smart battery calibration. The analyzer fully charges the battery and then applies a controlled discharge that provides critical capacity readings for the chemical battery.

Let's dive right now into our laptop battery health analysis tools.

Get the battery report using the "POWERCFG" command:

The powercfg command is a hidden utility found in the Windows operating system. You can use this command to generate an accurate report on laptop battery history.

The report includes information about battery performance and allows you to note the decrease in battery capacity that inevitably occurs over time.

To generate a battery report: Open a command prompt (CMD) and type the following command: powercfg / batteryreport. This command saves the battery report in HTML format to the following directory:

C: \ Users \ Your_Username \ battery-report.html

Double-click the file to open it in your internet browser, then check the following details:

  • The difference between Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity. With the battery consuming over time, the "full charge capacity" will be low compared to the "design capacity" of the battery.

  • Find out how much battery capacity has been drained in the past few days under different power states. Also check the battery usage graph.

  • Note how FCC decreases gradually compared to DC power. Note any differences.

  • Compare battery life at "fully charged" (for now) versus "Design Capacity" (DC) (at the time the laptop was purchased from the factory).

  • Check battery usage and duration. And the time that your computer is running when it is plugged into the battery or when plugged into an electrical outlet.

With this method of testing laptop battery life, you can identify problems affecting battery life. If the report shows significant differences between "full charge capacity" (FCC) and "design capacity" (DC), you may want to get a new battery.

BatteryInfoView Application :

BatteryInfoView is a free application from NirSoft, known for creating various free tools, and this program is full of information about laptop batteries. This program contains two main components:

The first screen gives you complete battery information about FCC, Design Capacity (DC), Battery Health, number of charge / discharge cycles and more other information such as battery type, company, manufacturer, battery serial number and more. .

The second screen provides you with detailed analysis of the power state history, event time, "charge and discharge" values, and more. A new information line is added each time you put the computer into suspend or resume mode again.

This way, you can find out the discharge rate of the battery. You can also save this battery information to a text file in TXT or CSV format for reference in case you need it at a later time.

BatteryInfoView Pros:

  • View detailed battery information in one place.

  • You can check the log to monitor changes in battery capacity.

  • The program allows you to place its window on top of other applications permanently (Always on top) to monitor the battery permanently.

Downsides of BatteryInfoView:

  • Battery history cannot be filtered by time range.

  • The program doesn't show you any graphs to predict the level of battery life decreasing over time.

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Avatar for Farah
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4 years ago

Comments

I wouldn't.have known that this command existed.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

You know now. welcome.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Knowing the starting point of a power management workflow when the laptop is under different workloads and in different environments

$ 0.00
4 years ago

I am going to buy a laptop soon. Hope these informations will be very helpfull for me to keep my laptop's battery health better.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

I wish you luck too.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

I needed this information as i couldn't really understand why laptop battery life ends up inconsistent eventually

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Now you know. :)

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Yes i do. Any recommendations on new series to watch

$ 0.00
4 years ago

That's very important message for me. Becouse I'm going to buying a laptop as soon as possible. So your information will help me a lot.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thank you so much for this article. For people or adults who work with laptops or notebook, it's very important to sustain performance of its batteries.. That's done with charging till lower percentage of full batterie and charge on when batterie is so low - not to reach beneath 1% or to shut down..

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4 years ago

I wish All the Best

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4 years ago

wow such a unique article dear.. No one ever talk about laptop charger.. That's really nice of you

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4 years ago

you're welcome.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Interesting

$ 0.00
4 years ago