How to check the battery of a laptop, smartphone or tablet

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you buy a device from your hands, do not forget about battery wear.

The capacity of any battery will decrease with use. The more times a battery is recharged, the less energy it can eventually hold.

Therefore, before buying a new device, you should always look not only at the original capacity (Design capacity) declared by the manufacturer, but also at its current value (Total capacity or Full charge capacity). The greater the difference between them, the more the battery is worn out and the more often it will have to be recharged.

The following tools will allow you to quickly check your battery. To prepare your device for testing, just charge it fully.

How to check the battery of a Windows laptop

Windows has a built-in battery diagnostic tool. To enable it, first type in the search in the system "Command line", right-click on the found utility and run it as administrator. Then enter the command in the window that appears

powercfg / batteryreport

and press Enter.

After a few seconds, Windows will save a battery report in a folder at C: Windowssystem32. Find a file called battery-report.html in it and open it using any browser. Then scroll down to the Installed batteries section - here you should see the Design capacity and Full charge capacity values.

If the report does not contain the information you need, you can view it using free third-party programs like BatteryInfoView and BatteryCare. The first one shows Design capacity and Full charge capacity right in the start menu, in the second it is enough to click on Detailed Information.

How to check your MacBook battery

One of the easiest ways to find out the battery status of your MacBook is with the free coconutBattery utility. All data required for verification, including Design capacity and Full charge capacity, are displayed immediately after its launch. Plus, the program can display similar information for iOS devices connected to the computer.

If you suddenly do not like coconutBattery for some reason, try one of the alternative programs.

How to check the battery of an Android device

All the information you need can be viewed in the free AccuBattery app. Indicators Design capacity (displayed as "Design capacity" in Russian) and Full charge capacity ("Calculated capacity") are available on the "Charge" and "Health" tabs.

I could not find another program on Google Play that displays similar data. Other popular apps in this category only show an approximate battery health in the form of a bad / average / good rating. Among them are "Battery" and Battery Life.

How to check iPhone or iPad battery

In iOS 11.3, Apple added a built-in feature that shows battery health. You can find the necessary information in the section "Settings" → "Battery" → "Battery status". Here you can see the "Maximum capacity" indicator, which displays the maximum value of the battery capacity relative to the new one in percentage.

If your iPhone or iPad is running an older version of the OS, you can view the original and current battery levels using your Mac and the macOS coconutBattery utility mentioned above. To do this, you need to install it on a Mac, connect an iOS device via a USB cable and click on the iOS Device tab in the program window.

If you are not satisfied with coconutBattery or you don't have a Mac at hand, use the alternative iBackupBot program, which is suitable for Windows and macOS.