READ ALSO: Increase/extend the battery life of the laptop
Battery check in Windows 10
In Windows 10 it is possible to check the battery status and the duration estimate directly from the battery menu: then press the icon at the bottom right in the shape of the battery and check the value shown in the window.
This estimate changes automatically with the change in the conditions of use of the computer, the number of open programs, and connected peripherals, but it is already a good way to understand if the notebook allows covering the entire period that we will remain away from the electrical outlet. On modern laptops sold with Windows 10, we must always exceed 3 hours of use in all conditions, although it is not possible to predict the actual battery life in advance if we use heavy programs or if we often see videos on the Internet.
Windows 10 Advanced Battery Check
If we want to view the level of wear and residual charge of a laptop battery, we can rely on a special command, without downloading any program. To proceed we open the Command Prompt with administrator rights; if we have never opened the prompt we search cmd in the Start menu, press on it with the right mouse button, and run it as administrator. Once the window is open, type the following command:
powercfg /batteryreport /output “C:battery_report.html
Once finished, press the button Enter to confirm. Now let’s open the report.html file from disk C and find out all the technical details regarding the battery. Among the information you will be able to see the maximum capacity of the battery, the number of times it has been recharged, the consumption of the last few days, and the history of the use of the battery from the first time it was used.
From this report, we can also get useful information on battery health, with life estimates based on the use of the laptop.
Battery check programs
If we want to use a tool to scan the battery capacity we can rely on a program from Nirsoft, a famous development house that develops portable programs for the management of Windows hardware and software components. The tool to download to get advanced battery information is BatteryInfoView.
This little free program allows you to know if a battery is still good at extracting all the technical information regarding the battery of a notebook. With it, you can clearly see the time remaining until the battery runs out and understand if the battery condition is intact comparing the maximum charge values with which it was manufactured (Current Capacity) and the maximum charge currently reachable (Designed Capacity).
The program displays otherwise difficult to find information such as the battery name, manufacturer, the date of manufacture, and the serial number. Most importantly, it shows numbers and percentages about it the state of charge battery capacity, current capacity, its integrity, full charged capacity, voltage e the number of charge and discharge cycles. The estimated value of the time required to recharge the battery (Time for charging the battery). The name of the battery manufacturer can be very useful to order a new battery in case it needs to be changed since there are no identical standards for each model.
BatteryInfoView also comes with a mode that records battery status over time. By pressing F8 you can record the battery status every 30 seconds or at a different interval. A log file is then created which, if checked after some time, maybe 3 months, can be useful to check how many times the battery has been charged and to analyze the discharge speed of the laptop battery and check how fast it is. degrades. You can change the battery check frequency or return to the default mode with F7.
BatteryInfoView is a portable program that does not require installation and which works on all PCs with Windows installed (from Windows 7 to Windows 10). If we wish to use it in Italian just download the appropriate ZIP file and copy its contents in the same folder where the BatteryInfoView executable is present, so as to obtain it immediately in Italian at the next start.
BatteryMon
Another program to check the integrity of the battery and its status is BatteryMon.
This program shows the remaining autonomy and the charge and discharge curve in a very easy to interpret a graph, so you know immediately if the battery is in excellent condition or if it needs to be calibrated. On this last point, the application allows you to perform the calibration operation in a precise manner, so as to regenerate a battery with a few years on its shoulders and thus obtain a good percentage of autonomy lost due to a bad charge reading.
Notebook battery calibration
If the autonomy is not satisfactory or we notice that the laptop suddenly turns off with a good percentage of the remaining charge marked, we must immediately intervene with a calibration. The steps for a good battery calibration are as follows:
- We completely unload the laptop, then try to turn it back on at least 2 more times until it no longer shows signs of life.
- With the notebook completely discharged we use we put the battery under charge, without ever turning it on during the process.
- We wait at least 4 hours for the charging process, also ignoring the charge finished LED.
- After 4 hours of recharging, we turn on the laptop with the charger still inserted in the notebook, wait for Windows to start, and do nothing on the computer for at least 10 minutes.
- At the end of the 10 minutes, we remove the notebook socket and check the remaining autonomy or try one of the programs seen above to check if the battery is perfectly calibrated.
To learn more we can also read our guide How to calibrate the laptop battery.
Conclusions
With the right tools, we can check the battery status of the laptop and the estimated duration of the same, so as to know if it is necessary to replace it (where possible) or if we need to proceed with calibration. We remind you that after two years it is normal for the battery to no longer hold the charge as it was just purchased, we cannot do anything about it as it ages and gradually becomes less and less able to hold the residual charge.
Still, on the subject of autonomy and tricks to increase the duration, we invite you to continue reading in our articles to keep the temperature and energy consumed under control e power saving settings in Windows on laptops.