A laptop or notebook computer tracks the number of times its battery has been discharged and charged. Each charge cycle is registered in a memory chip located inside the battery. This counter is helpful in understanding the battery health and its condition. We can find the battery cycle count on Windows very easily without using any special software – all it needs is a single command.
Here is how we can quickly check how many number of times the laptop battery has been charged and discharged on Windows:
- Press Win+R to open the Run dialog. Type cmd in the Run dialog and press Enter to open the Command Prompt (or Terminal).
- In the command prompt, give the command: powercfg /batteryreport.
- The above command will generate an HTML report file and display its full location. Usually this file is created in the user profile folder. Note down the full path of this HTML file which in our case is C:\Users\Silver\battery-report.html.
- Once again in the command prompt, give the command start C:\Users\Silver\battery-report.html in which you should replace the file name as noticed in the step 3. You can also give a generic command which would work for all the users: start %userprofile%\battery-report.html. This will open the HTML file in the default web browser. Of course, you can locate this file in the File Explorer and double-click on it to open it in a web browser.
- In the battery report, scroll down to the Installed Batteries section. Under the battery, you will find the Cycle Count property for each of the batteries.
If the battery cycle count is close to 500 then the battery capacity could deteriorate and the battery will start not holding the charge. At this point, you should be ready for replacing the battery at any time soon.
Finding the battery cycle count is very important when you are buying a new or used laptop. We can check whether that used laptop is going to need a new battery soon using these steps. And this method does not require any specials tools for confirm the battery cycle count.