In all last versions of Microsoft Windows, starting from Windows 8, you can use a built-in power management tool to learn more about your laptop battery information and power usage behavior over time. The report is called Battery Report.
1 What information is in the battery report?
The generated battery report will have the following information about your system’s battery:
Computer and OS information
Installed batteries – show information about each currently installed battery.
Recent usage – show power states over the last three days.
Battery usage – shows how the battery drains over the last three days.
Usage history – shows the history of system usage on AC and battery.
Battery capacity history – show the history of the total charge capacity compared to the design capacity.
Battery life estimates – shows the estimated battery life based on observed drains.
2 How to access the battery report
To generate and access the battery report for your Surface device, do the following:
- Right-click on the Start menu
- Select Command Prompt
- Type the following command “powercfg /batteryreport” and hit Enter key. It will generate the battery life report and save it to your current location with a file named battery-report.html.
- Now you can browse and open the report in the command output above.
The report has all the essential information about the current device’s battery status. Sometimes, you might need to do a complete recharge cycle multiple times to get more accurate information. This method is applied to all Surface devices, including Surface with Windows RT, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
3 FAQs
Check the following frequently asked questions that might answer questions you have.
What is the difference between “DESIGN CAPACITY” and “FULL CHARGE CAPACITY”?
The DESIGN CAPACITY is the total energy storage measured in milli-watt-hours (WH) that the battery was designed to have by the manufacturer. You can find the table of battery design capacities for all Surface devices here.
The FULL CHARGE CAPACITY is the energy storage reported by the battery’s built-in control circuit inside your Surface. The battery is a consumable component that will lose its compacity over time. So it is normal to see the current capacity is less than the designed capacity.
COMMENTS
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We appreciate hearing your thoughts, questions, and ideas about “How to access the Surface’s battery report”.
It doesnt show any battery and also can not be started without plugging the adapter. Can u suggest something
If it doesn’t show any battery then that tells me your battery is either completely dead or a connector is loose inside from the battery to the MB. I would go with the former if the case as never been opened.
Cant click on it to open from that location, has to be copied and pasted into your browser then it comes up. Wish I knew how to understand what it says to determine how much life it has. I have a SP3 that is 5 years old and has started acting up. Shutting down randomly and the only way I get it to reboot it to torque/twist the tablet while holding down the power button. Going to buy the new 7 today, not happy about it 🙁 It’s been fine for the last 2 days but worried when it will act up again
Hello everyone!
I have a Surface Pro 5 and a few months after charging the battery, the battery takes a long time to start discharging. It keeps a few hours at 100% and only then unloads. Does anyone know how to solve?
I have been having this issue since day one with mine now about 18 months old. have you found any solutions? only thing i can have to fix it is to hold power and volume down but that is not very practical, it is happening more and more often now with my surface as it ages
My battery is going from fully charged to dead, when unplugged, in less than 15 minutes. When i ran the powercfg /batteryreport its showing my batter with more than 100% charged battery capacity at times. It just died in under 15 minutes and went from 107% capacity to 0%. Does this mean battery need replaced or could something else be the issue?
Load Windows updates and firmware updates. Factory reset your Surface and see if it happens. If it does your tablet is messed up.
Thanks and very interesting.
My Nov 19 battery in Surface Laptop 3 has done 108 charge cycles – how deep does the discharge need to be to count as one Cycle?
And capacity is reported as 42010 out of 45800 mWh. Drop of 8.3% in 10 months.
Is this acceptable?
Searching for the Microsoft battery warranty – does anyone happen to know it??
which battery is battery 1 and which is battery 2?