The Ultimate Breakdown of Windows 10’S Battery Diagnostic Feature and Its Benefits

What to Know

• To generate a report, pressWin +X and selectWindows PowerShell (Admin) >Yes .
• Enter powercfg /batteryreport /output “C:\battery-report.html” into PowerShell and pressEnter .
• Open the exported file from the C drive to view the battery report.

This article explains how to generate a Windows 10 battery report. The report includes information about the general health of the battery, usage history, battery life estimates, and other statistics.

How to Generate a Battery Report in Windows 10

The battery on your laptop or tablet is one of its most critical pieces ofhardware . Over time, a battery’s life span shortens, and its ability to hold a charge decreases. If you suspect your battery’s performance is fading, follow these steps to create a battery report:

1. PressWin +X , then selectWindows PowerShell (Admin) . SelectYes when the User Account Control box appears.
2. Enter this command into PowerShell, then pressEnter :
   powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery-report.html"
   Feel free to change the path (in quotes) to wherever you want to save the report. In our example, it will be exported to theC drive .
3. After you run the battery report command, you’ll see a message indicating where the file was saved. Take note of the location.
4. Use Windows Explorer to find the file, then double-click or double-tap it to open the report in your web browser. In our example, since the battery report was saved in theroot of the C drive, we can type this into the browser’s URL bar to open the report:
   file:///C:/battery-report.html

How to Get Your Windows 11 Battery Report

How to Read the Battery Report in Windows 10

With the battery report generated and open, let’s walk through each section to learn more about the battery’s performance and estimated life expectancy.

The first section, directly underBattery report , lists some primary system information such as your computer’s name, BIOS version, OS build, and the date the report was created.

The second section, belowInstalled batteries , lists key information about your laptop or tablet batteries, such as name, manufacturer, serial number, chemistry, and design capacity.

Recent Usage

This section overviews when your device was running on battery or connected to AC power. Recent usage covers power states for three days and includes start time, state (active/suspended), source (battery/AC), and remaining capacity.

Battery Usage

This area lists any battery drains over the last three days. If your system ran for extended periods on battery alone, this section would break it down by start time or duration, as well as by energy drained.

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Usage History

Here, you’ll see a complete history (including duration) of each time your device was running on battery or AC power. Reviewing your usage history is a great way to see how often and for how long you run your device on battery power.

Battery Capacity History

In this section of the report, you see the full charge capacity compared to your battery’s design capacity for each period. Watching your full charge capacity is another helpful way to monitor the overall health and performance of your battery over time.

Battery Life Estimates

The final section of the report displays battery life estimates at full charge, compared to the designed capacity. This gives you a clear outlook of how well your battery’s life is holding up over time. At the very bottom of the report is an estimated battery lifetime value based on observed drains since the last OS installation.

How Long Does a Laptop Battery Last?

FAQ

• Where does Windows save my battery report to?
  Your battery report will be saved to a folder on your PC, which you’ll see in the PowerShell window when you attempt to save a new report. You can also manually change the destination folder when running the command, to make the HTML file easier to find.
• What does “charge cycle” or “cycle count” mean in my Windows battery report?
  Cycle counts and charge cycles refer to the number of times your battery used up 100 percent (cumulative) of its charge. This applies to both draining the battery to 0 percent and recharging it, as well as incremental drains. For example, using 30 percent of the battery, recharging to 100 percent, then using 70 percent counts as one cycle.
• How do I recalibrate a new battery in Windows?
  Once you’ve installed a new battery, charge it to 100 percent, let it run down to zero, and then recharge it back to 100 percent. This will allow Windows to better keep track of the new battery’s capacity (and other stats).

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