The 6 best ways to examine the health of laptop batteries

The laptop battery is an important piece of hardware, yet we are often less aware of its protection. Not enough details will be supplied to you by your Windows laptop. On the top, with the remaining time and percentage, it only displays a small battery indicator. 

You'll notice a couple of battery errors creeping in overtime. The battery is stopping the load. The predictor of charge level displays fluctuating readings. A faulty estimate of the discharge is also common. Yet workarounds and solutions are available.

Let's lead you through some battery diagnostic tools from third parties that allow you to test Windows battery safety.

Why do you need to monitor battery health

A battery is a resource-limited portable chemical unit. It has a complicated response of voltage to the load, temperature, and its own age due to its design. The battery's health affects both the performance of the device and run time. For these reasons you should monitor the health of the battery:

• Get a starting point under various workloads and setting for a power management workflow.
• A battery's maximum capacity changes over time. As a result, you might get inconsistent readings from the charging indicator. You'll know when to calibrate the battery when that happens.
• The battery's incorrect use can shorten its lifetime. Battery health monitoring allows you to take corrective action to maximize durability.

The powercfg command is a Windows secret device. To produce an accurate report of your battery history, you can use it.

This includes information on your battery life and helps you to track the inevitable decline in battery power over time.

Open Command Prompt and type powercfg / batteryreport to produce a battery report. This request saves a battery report in HTML format to

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

To open it in your browser, double-click the link. Check the details below:

• The gap between the capacity for design and the capacity for full charge. You'll expect full load capacity to be reduced. The maximum charging power will be smaller than the design capacity as the batteries wear over time.
• See how much battery capacity has drained in various power states over the last few days. Test the consumption graph of the battery as well.
• Observe how the capacity of Full Charge slowly decreases compared to the capacity of Design. Remember any differences
• Compare battery life from the time you bought the laptop at Full Charge vs Design Capacity.
• Review the use and length of the battery. And when the device was running on the battery or plugging into the power outlet.

You will find problems that affect your battery life with this form of laptop battery life check. You may want to get a new battery if the report shows drastic differences.

BatteryInfoView is a free app that fills the battery of your laptop with information. There are two main components of the tool.

The first screen provides you with complete information on Built Power, Maximum Charged Capacity, Battery Health, Charging / Discharge Cycles, and more.

The second screen shows you comprehensive power status log review, event date, charging/discharge values, and more. When the computer is stopped or resumed, a new log line will be inserted.

You will find out how easily the battery gets discharged in this way. It is also possible to export the battery information for comparison to a TXT or CSV file.

Advantages:

• View specific details about the battery in a single place
• You can review the log to see changes in the power of the battery.
• This helps you to position the window above other applications to control the battery.

Disadvantages:

• With a date range, it can not filter the battery log.
• To estimate the wear level of the battery over time, it does not give you any graph.

Download BatteryInfoView for free

BatteryMon is an easy-to-use app that shows a graph of its findings in real-time to monitor the laptop battery charge level.

On the horizontal X-axis, the vertical Y-axis indicates the percentage charge level (0-100 percent) and sampling time. In the configuration screen, you can change the sampling time interval.

The black line shows the current level of charge. The blue line indicates the line of trend dependent on the data samples extrapolated.

And the red line shows a comparison with the span of its life. The red line will deviate more than average for a contrast of short duration. You also get minute details about the rate of discharge.

When you continue to use the device, the discharge rate will become more reliable, and with various workloads, you can understand how battery health deteriorates.

Advantages:

• This analyzes the performance of the battery with a graph in real-time.
• You can adjust battery level, voltage, and temperature alerts.
• Charging / discharging data, battery time remaining, total time, and more.
• Record the output of the battery for later reference.
• Compare and calculate current capacity with previously collected data.

Disadvantages:

• To newbies, the app is confusing.
• The graph can be overwhelming (to make it easier to adjust the sample time in the configuration screen).

Download BatteryMon for free

BatteryCat is a simple tool for testing battery charging, power, and cycles of charging. The main window has three sections — the current charging status relative to current capacity, power status detail, charging cycles, and maximum charging capacity relative to the original design capacity. 

Clicking on the File menu opens the History window next to the main window. Together with the date, you can save the recent capacity values. The data on the history lives in

C:\User\Your_Username\batterycat\batterycat.csv

Copy the data into a spreadsheet app with this data log and monitor the health of the battery. BatteryCat reads battery data every 10 seconds by chance. This period can be adjusted in the Options tab.

Advantages:

• The app provides you with all the information about the battery in one location.
• Without any knowledge, it is easy to use and extrapolate results.

Disadvantages: 

• There is no filter option for separating data in different time or workload ranges.
• The app is running GTK on Windows. You can encounter tiny, blurred fonts as a result.

Smarter Battery is the only application that provides you with a full set of tools to track battery safety, perform calibration operations, and store battery performance data for reference.

This tells you the history of the charging/discharge cycle battery capacity, measures the wear level and the count of the discharge cycle.

Throughout battery or AC power mode, the Battery Information page provides you with information about full battery life vis-à-vis design capacity, discharge time, cycle count, wear level, and power status.

The Capacity page will help you understand battery capacity evolution. The Y-axis shows the percentage of power, and the X-axis shows the data drawn at that interval of time.

The Calibration page shows the entire battery life image such as wear level, use period, discharge cycles and more.

The app also provides you with the possibility to save the battery data depending on the page you accessed. You can save information about the battery, capacity, data on calibration, and more.

Advantages:

• You can track up to four batteries at a time, including battery packs.
• To adjust the time span, you can zoom in / out and use the arrow buttons to move in time.
• To speed up the calibration process, it can simulate the discharge mechanism.
• In case of need, there is a green mode feature to save battery power.
• You can set low/critical battery alarms and force standby / hibernate when the power of the battery is low.

Disadvantages:

• It has too many scattered options all over the page
• The built-in power management settings can get confused sometimes and can clash.

Download Smarter Battery (Free Trial, $14)

BatteryCare is a simple tool for optimizing your laptop battery's performance and usage. You can monitor the load/discharge cycles with its built-in algorithm.

When a certain number of discharge cycles are completed by your battery, it suggests you calibrate the battery.

And when you complete the process, it reminds you of the last calibration date, how many calibration operations you have done, and more.

The app's main window displays accurate battery details such as Built Capacity, Full Charge Capacity, Tension, Wear Rate, and Maximum Discharge Cycles.

It also controls the CPU, temperature of the hard drive, and warns you when a certain temperature is reached.

Advantages:

• Low battery warning and critical notification.
• Based on your power status, it can turn to a power plan.
• The power plan synchronizes seamlessly with Windows system events.

Disadvantages:

• It only presents a list of information about the battery and optimizes battery usage.
• No other information is available event reports, logs, load/discharge process records, and more.
• Junk applications are bundled to the installer.

Download BatteryCare for free

How to extend the life of your battery

Monitoring your device's battery safety isn't a simple task. Too many variables and considerations are to be taken into account. You can at least track your health with these devices and take corrective action to extend battery life.

At the same time, by knowing the technology that goes into a battery, you also need to expand your knowledge.