Here's how to check your Windows laptop's battery health and capacity

Laptops, like most lithium ion battery powered tech, tend to lose the ability to charge to full capacity. These problems can we dealt with by either improving battery life by optimising your battery usage or getting a new battery altogether.

While battery health is easily accessible on Apple's software, access on Windows is a little bit of work.

When the capacity is lower than optimal, laptops and/other electronic devices don't charge at design capacity internally while showing a 100% prompt in the software. Despite full charge in numbers, the battery will drain faster than expected.


Here's how you can check your laptop's battery capacity:

• Run the Command Prompt on your Windows machine, making sure to run it as an administrator.
• Once Command Prompt is open, type 'powercfg/batteryreport' and hit Enter.
• The battery report will be saved in the drive on the laptop, with the URL displayed on the prompt screen.
• Use this URL or look for the battery report file in the system's C drive.
• Open the file and look for 'DESIGN CAPACITY' and 'FULL CHARGE CAPACITY'
• The difference between these numbers will help you figure out the drop in capacity.

If your battery's capacity has dropped below 50%, the battery might have to be replaced.