One of the essential elements in a laptop – and the one that should receive the most care – is its battery. Knowing its status at all times will prevent you from having surprises in the future. In the following article you will find the step by step that you must follow to know in detail everything related to the battery of your computer, whether it is Windows or Mac.
With the following steps you will be able to know exactly the capacity of the battery installed in your device, as well as obtain an exhaustive analysis of its charging times and the current status of your laptop battery.
Although this seems very technical, you will not need prior knowledge to be able to find out the health status of your device's battery. And by the way, be able to assess whether it is better to replace it with a new one or, directly, change the computer for a new one. But before deciding on this last option, review some tips to prolong the life of your computer's battery.
Steps to check the battery of your Windows laptop
The following steps are for you to check the battery status of your Windows computer. With the following guide you will be able to obtain a complete report on the status of your battery. So have paper and pencil nearby to write down some results.
-The first thing you should do is open the Windows command console. Of course, you will first have to request to open a console as administrator. To do this, in the Microsoft system search box you must type 'Console'. And next to the result that is offered to you, the 'Open as administrator' option will appear. Click on this option
-Now it is time for you to request the battery report from the system. To do this, type the following command in the console: 'powercfg/batteryreport' and press the ENTER key. You will see that the result that is returned is an address where the complete report has been saved in HTML format. Before closing the command console, write down the exact address/location where it was saved
-Next, open Windows file explorer and go to the exact address you have signed up for and scroll through the folder until you find the generated file. Its name should be 'battery-report' with an HTML extension. Double click on the file and you will be prompted to choose a program to open it. By default, the first option will be your default browser. So you just have to accept and wait for a new screen to appear.
-In front of you you will have the complete report that has been generated. Don't be scared because you will only need the information that appears in the first section and the second. In the first of them you only need the figure that indicates the maximum power of the battery, which will be expressed in milliwatt-hours (mWh). In the second section you can check the last charge cycles that the battery has received and if, reaching one hundred percent, the milliwatt-hours it achieves are equal to those indicated in the first section. Now, you must keep in mind that as the years go by and the battery receives full charge cycles, it will degrade and its capacity will decrease.
Steps to check the battery of your Mac laptop
On the other hand, if your work equipment is a MacBook model –Apple laptops–, the steps you must follow to check the health of its battery are as follows. Of course, before starting you should know what the charging cycles of a battery consist of, since Apple relies on this information to offer you information on the health of your MacBook laptop.
A charge cycle consists of using one hundred percent of the energy offered by a battery; That is to say: completely discharge a battery and fill it – charge it – completely again. Likewise, a charging cycle can be completed in several days. For example: you use 50 percent of the battery and charge it fully, you will have used half a cycle. If you do the same thing the next day, you will get a complete charge cycle and that is what your MacBook's counter will show you. As? Following the following steps:
-Press the 'Option' key and at the same time click with the mouse on the apple logo of your MacBook – in the top bar on the far left -. Now select the 'System Information' option
-In the list shown below, choose the 'Hardware' option and then 'Power'
-The information that is detailed to you is related to the use of your battery and its status. In the 'Battery information' section you will find different parameters. What you will be interested in knowing is the exact number of charging cycles and the conditions of its health status. If the second option shows you anything other than 'Normal', your battery is not working correctly and you should contact the company's technical service to discuss the situation.
Likewise, as the latest information, Apple has published a complete list of the maximum charge cycles that MacBook laptop batteries can withstand before the user begins to notice a drop in performance. The most modern models usually support up to a maximum of 1,000 charges, while older models will be between 300 and 500 charge cycles.
