If you are a laptop owner (Dell, Lenovo, HP, Sony, Acer, Toshiba whatever), normally you must be wondering when should you get a backup battery or when should you replace your battery. At the same time, you don’t want to waste your money when your old battery is still working fine.
Knowing Lap battery replacement time, will help you to avoid possible problems such as sudden power failures that will affect on your hardware such as hard disk .. (Sudden power failures can cause harddisk bad sectors and may lead to data losses )
Nirsoft BatteryInfoView (Freeware) provides you a great way to check laptop battery health and general idea of battery replacement time.
In general Laptop Batteries rundown easily and will not be able to hold its original capacity when it has completed, (1) More than 300 Charge Cycles, and/or (2) Over 18 Months of Use.
But certainly, you may not want to count charge cycles or keep eye on your old invoices to track your age of the battery to know Lap battery replacement time.
So here’s the deal.. We will use Batteryinfoview and check the battery wear level instead..
(Batteryinfoview has much more information regarding your laptop battery such as Battery Name , Manufacture Name , Serial Number , Manufacture Date, Power State, Current Capacity (in %), Current Capacity Value, Full Charged Capacity , Designed Capacity, Battery Wear Level, Voltage, Charge/Discharge Rate, Chemistry, Low Battery Capacity, Number of charge/discharge cycles, Remaining battery time for the current activity (Estimated), Full battery time for the current activity (Estimated), Remaining time for charging the battery (Estimated), Total time for charging the battery (Estimated) )
But to know Lap battery replacement time, we will be using battery wear level…
What is battery wear level ?
Its a measure of battery health .. The definition of battery wear level in nirsoft.net has been given as “The wear level of the battery, in %
The wear level of a new battery should be around 100%, and it gradually decreases. This value is calculated according to the ‘Designed Capacity’ and ‘Full Charged Capacity’ values.” source
How to check the battery wear level using batteryinfoview ?
Download it from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/battery_information_view.html or use direct link http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/batteryinfoview.zip
You will have to extract it and double click BatteryInfoView.exe
BatteryInfoView.exe
Running Batteryinfoview
What is the best battery wear level to get a replacement battery ?
It is recommended to get laptop replacement battery when the wear level threshold is within the range of 30-45% (And battery replacement can be done when battery wear level reaches 20-29% of battery wear level )
How about the Windows alert “Consider replacing your battery” and what is the relation “Consider replacing your battery” alert and batteryinfoview battery wear level ?
Normally windows will also give you an alert such as “consider replacing your battery” if you click on the red cross over battery icon in the taskbar..
Taskbar battery icon redcross
And if you run Batteryinfoview, when you see“consider replacing your battery” it should be within the range of 25-45%
Consider replacing your battery
What else I can do to make sure the battery status/health?
Most of the laptop manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo, HP, Sony, Acer, Toshiba will provide you extra diagnostic tools and you can go to the respective laptop manufacturer’s site and download these diagnostic tools.
Additionally, you can use Batteryinfoview in Battery Log mode (When the Batteryinfoview is opened you can switch to Battery Log mode by pressing F8 key in your keyboard). The advantage of Battery Log mode of Batteryinfoview is that you can visualize the battery drainage over time.
Batteryinfoview Advanced Mood
What type of Laptop replacement battery is good ?
Generally, if you can get original replacement from laptop manufacturer, that would be the best. Most of the time you can get one to one replacement free, if the battery is dead/faulty, while the comprehensive warranty is not over.. (Yet its a rare case ) . If the laptop battery is beyond that warranty period, you will have to buy a genuine battery from the manufacturer.. But what happens of the manufacture is not providing/selling parts separately ? Then you will have to find a reliable local retailer and go for a OEM replacement …
