Here's how to check laptop battery health in Windows 10 using a secret tool
It's useful to know how to check laptop battery health in Windows 10. Battery life is one of the key metrics we look at when recommending laptops, and for good reason: a laptop isn't much good if it can't last long enough to meet the demands of your daily life.
That's why it's important to know not just how long your battery can last before it needs a recharge, but how healthy it is — an old, ailing battery won't last as long as it did when it was new, and in some cases it can get so worn out that it makes sense to replace it.
Windows laptops have a useful but unheralded feature that can help you diagnose the health of your battery. It's called the Battery Report tool, and in this article we're going to show you how to use it to get the most out of your laptop.
How to check laptop battery health: Run Battery Report
The Battery Report tool is hidden just below the surface of Windows 10, but it's easy to use once you know where to look. The trick is to use the Windows command prompt — here's how:
1. Open the Start menu by clicking it (or by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard) and launch the Command Prompt.
The easiest way to do that is to just start typing "Command Prompt" into the search box — it should appear near the top of your search results pretty quickly.
If that doesn't work, you can manually scroll down the Start Menu's app list and find Command Prompt under the Windows System section. Click the Command Prompt app to launch it.
2. Once you have the Command Prompt open you should see a black window with white text spelling out a command line — likely starting with C: and ending with your Windows user name.
Now it's time to get to work: type powercfg /batteryreport (make sure there's a space between the two terms) and press Enter.
3. Assuming everything went smoothly, you should see a message in the Command Prompt informing you that a battery report has been saved to your user folder. Great work!
4. Now you need to find that report and read it. The fastest way is to open File Explorer (if you can't find it, type "File Explorer" in the Start Menu search box) and navigate to the folder where the Command Prompt told you your battery report was saved.
By default this is your user folder (C:\Users\[yourusernamehere]\), but if you can't find the battery report there you can also try searching for it on your hard drive. Just open the Start Menu again and type battery report to start a search.
If it doesn't show up right away, wait a few minutes (Windows sometimes takes time to register new files and index them for search purposes) then try your search again.
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