Windows Battery Report: The Complete Guide

Windows keeps a detailed record of your laptop battery and can export it as a readable report with one command. This guide shows how to create the report, what each section means, and which figures actually tell you something about battery health.

What the battery report contains

The report is an HTML page generated by the built-in powercfg tool. It includes:

The installed battery’s details: name, manufacturer, chemistry, design capacity, full-charge capacity, and cycle count
Power-state changes and battery drain over the last three days
Time spent on battery and on AC power, by day and by week
Full-charge capacity history since Windows was installed
Battery life estimates, then and now

It works on Windows 10 and Windows 11 laptops. Desktop PCs without a battery produce a report with no battery data.

How to generate the report

Right-click the Start button and open Terminal (or search for Command Prompt). Administrator rights are not needed.
Type the command below and press Enter:
```
powercfg /batteryreport
```

Windows replies with the file location, for example:

Battery life report saved to file path C:\Users\YourName\battery-report.html.

Open that file in any web browser.

Choose where to save it

The report is saved in the folder the terminal is currently in. If you opened an administrator terminal, that is often C:\Windows\System32. To save it somewhere easy to find, add an output path:
powercfg /batteryreport /output "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\battery-report.html"

Reading each section

Installed batteries

The most useful table in the report:

NAME / MANUFACTURER / SERIAL NUMBER: identify the battery pack; useful when ordering a replacement.
CHEMISTRY: usually shown as LIon or LiP (lithium-ion or lithium-polymer).
DESIGN CAPACITY: what the battery stored when new, in mWh.
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY: what it stores now, in mWh.
CYCLE COUNT: total charge cycles reported by the battery. A dash means your laptop does not report it.

Recent usage

Every change of power state over the last three days: active, connected standby, suspended, on AC or on battery, with the remaining capacity at each point. Use it to see whether the battery drains while the laptop is asleep.

Battery usage

A graph and table of battery drain periods over the last three days. A steep drop during a period when you were not using the laptop points to a background process or a sleep problem.

Usage history

How long the laptop ran on battery and on AC power per period since Windows was installed. It shows how you actually use the laptop, which helps decide whether a charge limit makes sense.

Battery capacity history

The most important section for health. It lists full-charge capacity next to design capacity for each period. A slow, steady decline is normal ageing; a sudden fall deserves attention. Small ups and downs between periods are normal, because the battery refines its own estimate.

Battery life estimates

Windows’ estimate of runtime at full charge, based on the drain it observed, both “at full charge” today and “at design capacity” (as if the battery were new). The gap between the two shows how much runtime you have lost to wear. The last line gives an estimate based on all drains since the OS was installed.

How to interpret the numbers

Calculate battery health

Battery health = (Full charge capacity ÷ Design capacity) × 100

Example: a design capacity of 50,000 mWh and a full-charge capacity of 42,000 mWh gives (42,000 ÷ 50,000) × 100 = 84%.

What the percentage means

90–100%: little wear.
80–89%: normal wear for a battery that has been in use for a while.
60–79%: significant wear; runtime is noticeably shorter. Consider replacement if you rely on battery power.
Below 60%: heavy wear; plan a replacement.

These bands are a planning aid, not a manufacturer threshold. A new battery can even read slightly above 100%, and swelling or sudden shutdowns need attention at any percentage. Our health vs capacity guide covers this in more depth.

Put the cycle count in context

Manufacturers rate laptop batteries for anywhere from about 300 to 1,000 cycles before capacity falls to roughly 80%. Low capacity with few cycles usually means heat, age, or long periods at full charge rather than heavy use. See battery cycles explained.

Related powercfg reports

Sleep study

powercfg /sleepstudy

On laptops that use Modern Standby, this shows how much battery was used during each sleep session and which components kept the system awake. It is the best tool for “my laptop drains while sleeping” problems.

Energy report

powercfg /energy

Watches the system for 60 seconds and lists power-efficiency problems, such as devices that do not enter low-power states. It must be run from an administrator terminal, with other apps closed.

Available sleep states

powercfg /a

Lists the sleep states your laptop supports, which helps when sleep or hibernate behaves unexpectedly.

Limitations

All values come from the battery’s own fuel gauge. The report cannot detect swelling or physical damage.
History starts when Windows was installed or last reset.
Some laptops do not report the cycle count or report a fixed value.
The report is a snapshot. Generate it again every month or two and compare.

If you prefer not to use the command line, Battery Health Checker reads the same values from Windows and shows them in one window.