As you probably know, rechargeable batteries are consumables. While the battery in your laptop is expected to last for years, its performance will degrade over time as you use it. This means that even with a 100% charge, the battery won't last as long as new after two years.
To quantify how much you're wearing on your device's battery, you can check its battery cycle count. Take a look at how to run a battery cycle count on your Windows laptop to keep an eye on its health.
What is battery cycle count?
A battery cycle simply means that the battery is completely drained from 100% to 0%. This doesn't have to happen at the same time. For example, if your laptop battery drains from 100% to 50%, you charge it to 100%, then drop it to 50%, and that counts as one cycle.
So the battery cycle count is the number of times your battery goes through a cycle. The fewer cycles a laptop battery has, the "healthier" it is. A healthy battery will be closer to its factory capacity than a heavily used battery.
Fortunately, Windows gives you an easy way to check your laptop's battery cycle count. Whether you want to know how much your battery has used over the years, or want to check out a used machine before you buy it, you can run a quick command to find this information.
The number of cycles it takes for the battery to "drain" depends on the specific battery in your laptop. Most batteries can run at least 500 cycles. By comparison, Apple rates its modern MacBook models to last 1,000 cycles. After these points, the battery should still work, but with much less power.
How to Check the Battery Cycle Count on Windows 11
On a Windows laptop, you can check your computer's battery cycle count with a quick Command Prompt command. To open Command Prompt, right-click the Start button (or press Win+X) and select Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell from the menu that appears.
When you see the command prompt, type the following laptop battery check command:
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powercfg /batteryreport |
Next, go to your user folder in a file explorer application or the Windows\System32 directory on your C drive and look for battery-report.html there, which will also appear in the command prompt window:
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C:\Users\[your username]\battery-report.html |
or
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C:Windows\System32\battery-report.html |
Double-click the file and it should open in your default browser. At the top, you'll see some basic information like your computer name and when the report was run. Scroll down to find the installed battery section and you will see the design capacity and full charge capacity.
Design capacity is the initial maximum charge of the battery, while full charge capacity is what the laptop battery can now hold. If these two numbers are very close, your battery is healthy. But if the full charge capacity is much lower than the design capacity, then your battery's health has declined significantly.
Cycle Count shows how many times the battery has been charged. With more cycles, your maximum capacity may be lower than original.
Below that, you'll see some information about recent battery usage, which can be helpful if you need to troubleshoot a specific issue. For more information, check out some Windows applications for analyzing laptop battery life.
No cycle count in Windows battery report?
When you generate a battery report in Windows, it may not actually include the cycle count. You can see this in the image above, it just shows a dash instead of the correct number.
If this happens to you, first make sure you have updated all of your computer's drivers. This problem occurs when Windows cannot properly connect with your computer hardware, which means current drivers are important.
Pay special attention to battery drivers as well as chipset drivers. After installing any available updates, restart your computer and try running the battery report again. If this fails, it's a good idea to update your UEFI/BIOS as well.
If updating your drivers and BIOS doesn't help, your next step is to try installing computer management software provided by your laptop manufacturer. For example, on Lenovo machines, you can install Lenovo Vantage.
In addition to handy features like updating drivers, these apps can also display system information. Look for the System Health, Battery Management, Hardware Details, or similar sections. This should contain information about your battery; hopefully it also includes the correct battery cycle count.
Understanding Laptop Battery Cycle Counts
Now you know how to check the cycle count of your laptop battery to see if it is healthy. Don't worry too much about battery cycling; using a battery is a natural part of owning a laptop. In many cases, you can replace the battery with a reasonable charge and it will still work after a certain number of cycles. You just need to charge more often.
In the meantime, taking basic battery-saving measures like reducing brightness will help reduce the amount of power your laptop draws, slowing down the number of battery cycles you experience over time. Caring for your battery like this is smart, especially if it's not removable.