The reason a battery dies quickly is typically the battery itself, as laptop batteries will only last an amount of charge cycles. This means that if you’ve already tried lowering the brightness of your display, disabling your Wi-Fi connection, limit your video watching, and closing apps, and your laptop can’t still hold its charge, it might be just the time to replace the battery. On Windows 10, you can quickly find out if it’s time to replace your battery by generating a battery report. In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to use the powercfg command-line tool to generate a report to find out if it’s time to replace your laptop’s battery.

How to generate a battery report on Windows 10

The battery report that Windows 10 generates has a lot of information, including basic battery information like make and model. Battery capacity history that shows how the battery depleted over time. And battery life estimates, which tells you how long your battery will last in its current condition. After running the command you’ll also get a message indicating the location of the report. However, the most important data is the “design capacity” and “full charge capacity”.

When to replace your laptop’s battery

The “design capacity” tells you how much charge it could hold when the battery is brand-new. In contrast, “full charge capacity” shows how much charge the battery can hold in its current stage. For example, my report shows that my laptop’s battery capacity was design to hold 91,000 mWh, but now after a few years the full charge capacity is 67,170 mWh. This means that the battery can still hold up to 73% of its original capacity when fully change, which suggests the battery is still in good condition. However, if the full charge capacity is significantly lower, it might just be time to replace the battery. Replacing your laptop’s battery isn’t very difficult, but it’ll depended upon the type of laptop you have. On many laptops, you can simply use a button to pop the battery out and insert the new one. However, on ultrathin laptops, such as the Dell XPS 13, Lenovo Yoga 910, Asus ZenBook 3, and others, the battery comes built-in, and it’s not simple to replace it. You should always contact your manufacturer, as your device may still under warranty, and they might able to replace it at no extra cost. If your device isn’t under warranty, but they can offer a good deal, you should consider it. If you’re planning to replace your laptop’s battery yourself, make sure to replace it with a genuine battery replacement. All content on this site is provided with no warranties, express or implied. Use any information at your own risk. Always backup of your device and files before making any changes. Privacy policy info.