When I bought my new notebook I finally sighed with relief – the battery can be alive even after 7 hours of work. I have been waiting for the new device so I can travel, work far away from the city, and in the car. However, after several months of everyday work, I once decided to check how my battery is drained now. Even though the laptop did not have really noticeable battery issues, the battery life is now 16% lower prior to its maximum. 

To find out the wear and tear of a laptop battery, you can take it to a service (where it can be assessed using special equipment), and use several simple methods (we will consider them in this article).

How to check battery capacity via Command Prompt

As the first method, I decided to consider the option of determining the battery capacity through the command prompt (i.e. without using third-party programs).

1. Run the command prompt (in Windows 7 through the START menu, in Windows 8 or 10 you can use the Win + R key combination, then enter the cmd command and press Enter).

If you get a message that the execution requires administrator privileges, then you need to re-run the command as the administrator.

2. Enter the powercfg energy and press Enter.

Ideally, a message about the system operation should appear, and then after 60 seconds. generate a report.

3.  After the report is generated open the file. In my case, the system placed it at: “C: \ Windows \ System32 \ energy-report.html”.

4. Now go to this folder, where the report is, then copy it to the desktop and open it (in some cases, Windows blocks opening files from system folders, so I recommend copying this file to the desktop).
5.  Next, in the opened file, you need to find a line with information about the battery – Battery: Battery Information.

We are most interested in the last two lines.

Battery ID 32325SUNWODAR13B02W

Manufacturer SUNWODA

Serial Number 32325

Chemistry LION

Long Term 1

Sealed 0

Design Capacity 40128

Last Full Charge 33470

The Design Capacity is the base, initial capacity specified by the battery manufacturer. As the battery is used up, its real capacity will decrease (the calculated one will always be equal to this value).

Last Full Charge reflects the real capacity of the battery at the last moment of charging.

Thus, using the following formula: (Design Capacity – Last Full Charge) / Design Capacity = wear and tear percentage. Considering my numbers, (40128 – 33470) / 40128 = 0.16 = 16%

How to check battery capacity via Aida64 Engineer

This method is simpler (just press one button in the Aida64 Engineer), but it requires the installation of this program itself (besides, the full version is paid).

You can download it here: http://www.aida64.com/

Aida64 is one of the best utilities for determining the characteristics of a computer. You can find out almost everything about a PC (or laptop): what programs are installed, what is in the startup, what hardware is in the computer, how long has the BIOS been updated, the temperature of the devices, etc.

There is also one useful tab in this utility – Power Management. Here, you can find out the current state of the battery.

Pay attention first of all to indicators such as:

• Design Capacity;
• Fully Charged Capacity
• Wear level (ideally 0%).