Mainstream laptops are slowly getting to the point where they can achieve all-day battery life, which is of course a relief for the consumer as it eliminates the need to search for a power outlet when out and about. For those that don’t have the luxury, keeping an eye on how your battery is used could be important to its longevity.
On Windows 10, finding out the battery status of your device is as simple as clicking on the battery icon on the taskbar, but what if you wanted more detailed information about your battery, such as a history of power state changes over time, detailed depletion rates and estimates, determining power hungry applications, or even finding out the battery make and exact capacity figures? There are several ways you can go about obtaining this info.
For the average user, most of the info they’ll need will come from the battery icon on the taskbar, and the battery overview in Settings. To get to the battery overview, simply launch Settings, System, Battery Saver, then Battery use.
Here, users are presented with a list of apps that use the most amount of battery, likely as a result of the user spending a lot of time using them. However, errant apps can sometimes drain resources even when not in use, and this is where you can deduce which apps are doing so.
For users that need even more information about the battery, they’ll need to go into the command prompt to generate a Battery Report. Here’s how to do that.
Step 1: Hit the Start button, type ‘cmd’, right click Command Prompt, and launch it as an administrator.
Step 2: Copy then paste the following: powercfg /batteryreport /output “C:\\Users\\%username%\\Desktop\\BatteryReport.html”
Step 3: Hit enter to execute the command and the Battery Report file should now be waiting for you on the Desktop.
As you’ll see, the Battery Report is rather comprehensive, and should provide you with the intricate battery details you’re looking for.
Do you keep a close eye on the health of your battery, and what do you do to prolong it? Let us know in the comments section below.
Further reading: Battery Report, Windows 10
