While laptops are mostly preferred by professionals for their portability, battery life still remains one of the biggest concerns. There is no point in arguing that, there are various factors that contribute to the battery life on your laptop. Be it with heavy usage, or your hardware specification.
But in order to keep your battery life at maximum, it is very important to look into battery health. In case, you are going through severe battery drain, chances are your battery health has degraded. That is why we have curated this article on everything you need to know about checking battery health in Windows 11.
Also Read: 6 Ways to Turn Off Your Windows 11 PC
Introducing Battery Health in Windows 11
Battery health determines the overall longevity of your laptop’s battery. With periodic usage, your laptop battery goes through multiple charge cycles, diminishing the overall full charge capacity. In fact, you can find noticeable differences, from the time you bought your laptop. So, the introduction of battery health in Windows 11 allows users to see the percentage of original battery capacity left.
How to Check Laptop Battery Health in Windows 11
In order to check your battery health in Windows 11, make sure to follow the steps down below:
Step 1:
At first head over to the start menu and search for Command Prompt. At the right-side panel, select Run as administrator. Similarly, you can also use PowerShell in order to check laptop battery health.
Step 2:
At the Command Prompt window, type in the following command and hit enter. This, in turn, would generate the battery report for Windows 11.
powercfg/ batteryreport
Step 3:
Now navigate to the folder, C:\Windows\system32 and look for the file named, ‘battery-report.html.’ Being an HTML file extension, clicking on it will simply open on your default web browser in Windows 11. The battery health report consists of all the important details including installed batteries, their usage along with battery usage history, and more.
Step 4:
At the ‘Installed batteries’ section, you can actually find the original capacity of the battery your laptop came up with, along with the current charge capacity. So, if you calculate the difference, you can actually find out how much your battery life has depleted over time.
Step 5:
Scroll back a little further, and you can find detailed weekly reports of your battery charge capacity. In fact, this is one of the best ways in which you can keep track of your battery health based on usage.
Step 6:
Within the report, you can also find a detailed report on the battery life estimates based on its current capacity and original one. This way, you can get a clear estimate on how much battery life you should get as compared to what you are actually getting.
Step 7:
These reports are some of the best ways in which you can troubleshoot your battery-related problems. Scroll down even further, and you can find average battery life estimates since the time you have upgraded your laptop to Windows 11.
How to Improve Battery Life in Windows 11
Making a few tweaks to your operating system, you can actually end up saving a ton of juices. Some of the most effective tips to improve battery life in Windows 11 are:
1. Reduce Your Screen Brightness
One of the most obvious ways in which you can prolong your laptop battery life is by reducing screen brightness. Especially while movies or any video for that matter, your laptop operates at a higher brightness. So, make sure to set the brightness just about right, neither too bright nor too dim. In order to change your brightness, simply click on the icon cluster of Wi-Fi, speaker, and battery. Now, drag your mouse to change brightness accordingly.
Also Read: 7 Ways to Fix Windows 10 Brightness Slider Problem
2. Enable Battery Optimization for Playing Videos
Windows 11 actually comes with a separate battery optimization feature that you can toggle on to save your battery life while playing videos. In order to enable, follow through the steps down below:
Step 1: At first, head over to Settings. Go to Apps > Video Playback.
Step 2: Select Battery options > Optimize for battery life.
Step 3: Head over to HDR > Battery options > Optimize for battery life and select OK to save your changes.
3. Monitor Battery Usage Based on Apps
If your Windows 11 laptop is running out of battery more than usual, one of the installed applications could be the underlying reason. At first, navigate to Settings > System > Power & Battery. Here you will be presented with a list of all the applications and how much battery they are draining. Now, you can curate your app usage based on the statistics.
4. Enable Battery Saver
Enabling a battery saver is yet another intuitive way to save battery on your Windows 11 while limiting any unwanted activity. This includes turning off background applications as well as all the features that eat up your battery. In order to enable battery saver, follow the steps down below:
Step 1: At first, head over to Settings > System > Power & battery.
Step 2
Go to Turn battery saver on automatically at section and choose the battery level at which you want to turn on the feature. So, once the battery life falls a certain percentage, all background applications will freeze to save battery.
5. Change Image Refresh Rate on Low Battery
It is very easy to understand using a higher refresh rate directly affects battery consumption. So to change the image refresh rate, follow the steps:
Step 1: Simply head over to Settings > Display > Advanced display.
Step 2: Right at the Choose a refresh rate section, pick the rate you want to downgrade in.
Also Read: How to Enable Screensavers on Windows 11
The Bottom Line
So that was our curated guide on how to check laptop battery health in Windows 11. If you want to extend the longevity of your battery, make sure to go through the steps mentioned above. That being said, over time laptop batteries are sure to be subjected to wear. So, if your battery health has degraded drastically, our recommendation would be to opt for an authorized battery replacement.
