Monitor your laptop’s battery health status by generating a full runtime report in Windows. This will allow you to compare its initial load capacity with its actual load capacity to determine if it needs to be replaced.
Do you feel like you have to plug in your laptop more and more often? Your machine’s battery may be at the end of its life. To verify this, Windows has a very practical function to generate a complete autonomy report. The manipulation requires using the Windows Command Prompt, but it is not overwhelming. It is very easy to perform and therefore should not frighten you.
There you will find very precise information on the state of your battery, and in particular will be able to compare the initial capacity of your PC battery, when it was new, with its current maximum remaining capacity. After several years of use and several hundred charge cycles, the batteries do eventually deteriorate.
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Thanks to the report generated by Windows, you will be able to know after a quick calculation the remaining charge capacity of your PC battery.
Beyond 1000 charge cycles, there is a high risk that the maximum charge capacity of the battery will collapse. Manufacturers often consider that below 80% of its initial capacity, a battery must be replaced.
Here is how to generate a battery life report in just a few clicks, on Windows 10 as on Windows 11, to find out if you need to have your laptop’s battery changed.
1. Open Command Prompt
Start by opening Windows Command Prompt. To do this, use the Windows keyboard shortcut + R then, in the Run window that opens, type cmd and click OK.
2. Generate the autonomy report
In the Command Prompt window, which opened, type the following command and validate by pressing the Enter key on the keyboard:
powercfg / batteryreport
Command Prompt should display the message Battery life report saved in C: Users PCName battery-report.html.
It is in this directory C: Users NomDuPC that your autonomy report named battery-report.html is stored.
3. Open the autonomy report
Open Windows File Explorer and select This PC in the left column. Then double-click on Local Disk (C :), enter the Users directory and open the folder corresponding to the name of your Windows session.
You should find the file there battery-report.html containing all the data relating to your computer’s battery. Double-click on it to open it in your usual web browser.
4. Check the maximum load capacity
To find out if your PC battery needs to be replaced, you need to compare the initial charge capacity of the battery, expressed here in mWh, that is, its capacity when new, with its maximum charge capacity. .
These data are in principle grouped together at the top of the report, in the Installed batteries section. Line Design Capacity thus displays the initial battery capacity, while the line Full Charge Capacity indicates its actual load capacity.
On our machine, a Dell XPS 13, the battery had an initial capacity of 51,999 mWh. After several years of use, its actual capacity is only 30,149 mWh.
If you do a quick math, our laptop’s battery is only 58% of its original capacity, almost half as much as when the computer was new. It is therefore time to warm up the credit card and consider its replacement in order to hope to offer our PC its autonomy of yesteryear.