The suggested estimated time on your laptop's battery indicator rarely aligns with what you actually get. Thankfully, if you want to get a clearer picture, you can create a battery report on Windows 11 (and previous versions) to learn all there is to know about it.
The battery indicator on the taskbar usually only gives you an estimated battery life based on what you're doing at that time on your laptop. Besides, it might not consider how worn out your battery is if you've had the laptop for a long time. You need to create a battery report that displays all the information about your laptop's battery. The report includes battery manufacturer, design capacity, historical usage data, and battery estimates.
Windows 11: Everything you need to know
Windows 11 is the latest and greatest operating system from Microsoft, and it packs a ton of changes. Here's what you need to know.
Creating a battery report on Windows 11
While it may sound a bit technical, creating a battery report is actually very easy and risk-free. Here's how it goes:
- Right-click the Start icon on your taskbar (or press Windows key + X) and then choose Terminal (Admin) from the list of options. If you've uninstalled Windows Terminal from your PC, this option will read Windows PowerShell (Admin).
- Accept the user account control (UAC) prompt, which will require administrator privileges.
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Copy the following text and then paste it into the Windows Terminal/PowerShell window
powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery_report.html"
- This will output the battery report as an HTML file in the root of your C: drive. You can export the file to any folder you want by changing the path specified at the end of the command.
- Hit Enter to generate and save the file.
That's all you need to know about creating the battery report, but then there's the matter of reading and understanding what it says.
What's in the battery report
There's quite a lot of information inside a Windows 11 battery report, so we'll try to help you make sense of everything that shows up here. To open the battery report, go to the folder you specified in the command above, and find the file called battery_report.html. Then, let's take a closer look.
The top of the report includes some general information about your laptop, including the version of Windows you're running and your firmware. This shouldn't be the most interesting part of the report, but what's next is a bit more interesting.
The first section is called Installed batteries, and it's a rundown of information about the battery inside your laptop. This includes the manufacturer, the chemistry - which will almost certainly be Lithium-ion (LIon) - design capacity, and full charge capacity.
There can be a slight discrepancy between these two capacity values, but the one that will matter the most is the full charge capacity since that's how much power the battery can actually hold.
Next, you'll see the recent battery usage information. The first table includes a list of recent power state changes over the last three days and the battery conditions at that time. Every time you unplug the laptop, put it to sleep, and so on, that's logged here.
Below that, there's a chart that specifically shows the power drain of the laptop over the past three days. Naturally, this will only include any information if you've used the laptop on battery power. This lets you see how quickly the battery discharged while you were unplugged from an outlet, so you can get an idea of how long your battery lasts.
The next two tables have even more historic data. The data in this chart will include information about battery usage since the last time you performed a clean install of Windows or since you bought it. \
The first table includes a summary of the time your laptop was used each week. This aggregates the active usage and connected standby times, both while on battery and while plugged into an outlet. The next table includes information about your laptop's battery capacity over time so you can see how much it might have worn out.
Finally, the section that might interest you the most is battery life estimates. The data in this table is also based on all your historical battery usage data, so you can see estimates for how long your battery might last based on your usage and battery capacity for both active usage and connected standby.
This also includes the estimated power consumption per 16 hours while using connected standby, so if you're taking the laptop out for a whole day, you can know whether it can stay charged when you're not actively using it.
For older dates, this information is aggregated by week, but the last seven days are shown individually. At the very end, you can also see an overall estimate based on all the battery drain cycles since you installed the operating system.
Diagnose your laptop's battery
Generating a battery report is the best way to learn everything there is to know about your laptop's power cell, and it might help you determine if you should replace it. If you are dealing with poor battery life on your Windows laptop, check our dedicated guide to extend battery life on Windows 11.