In-warranty battery degradation: the silent leak in your hardware budget

A real-world example: good laptop, bad battery

Take a Windows workstation like the Dell Precision 5550/5560/5570. These laptops are devices, that are widely used in enterprises specially by teams that require high performance machines like designers, engineers, developers, data scientists, and other power users.

Now imagine looking at its telemetry in a DEX/endpoint analytics console and seeing something like this:

• Device age: 2 years 3 months
• Battery health: 52%
• Warranty: still has 6 months remaining
• No system crashes or hard resets in the last 7 days
• Overall device experience score dragged down mainly by device performance and responsiveness

From the OS and hardware point of view, the laptop is stable. It is not crashing, it is not throwing errors, and nothing “looks” broken. But the battery is already at ~50% of its original capacity and the user is probably:

• Carrying the charger everywhere
• Avoiding working on battery during calls
• Complaining that the laptop being slow and old

In many organizations, this is exactly the point when users start asking for a full device refresh instead of “just a battery replacement”. If IT doesn’t have good telemetry, the path of least resistance is often to approve the refresh. But look carefully:

• The device is still under warranty
• The battery has clearly degraded
• A warranty replacement battery is far cheaper than a full new laptop

If your DEX / endpoint data can bring up battery health + warranty status on the same screen, IT can act in time: open a support case with Dell, get the battery replaced under warranty, and keep the laptop in service for another 1–2 years.

How to check battery health locally (Windows)

Even without centralized tooling, a user can quickly check whether their battery is in trouble using the built-in Windows battery report.

• Press Windows + X and select Terminal (or Command Prompt).
• Paste this command and press Enter: cmd /c "powercfg /batteryreport && battery-report.html"
• Windows will generate a report. Open battery-report.html in your browser.
• In the report, look for: a) DESIGN CAPACITY – what the battery was rated for when new. b) FULL CHARGE CAPACITY – what it can hold now

A simple rule of thumb: If Full Charge Capacity has dropped below ~66% of Design Capacity, the battery is significantly worn and will benefit from replacement. For example, let's take a Precision 5550 case: Design capacity: 54,891 mWh and Full charge capacity: 28,380 mWh. That’s ~48% of its original capacity—well into “this device will not work as intended” territory. In that situation, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask IT (or the vendor) for a replacement, especially if the device is still within battery warranty.

How to check battery health enterprise-wide at scale

Now to do this very same thing on scale, we would need a centralized tool or solution. This is exactly where a DEX solution or an endpoint management solution that can detect device performance metrics would come in handy. With our DEX capabilities, we automatically surface Battery Health. Our battery health is calculated using the following formula: (Current Full Charge Capacity ÷ Original Design Capacity) × 100. So according to the above example: There is about ~52% remaining capacity, which means ~48% degradation from the original design capacity

Recommended Battery Health Ranges (Enterprise Rule-of-Thumb)

Enterprises can set up and track alerts when battery health goes below 70%. If the devices fall under warranty, battery can be replaced at zero additional cost. Using our DEX capabilities, admins can set up the threshold for battery health.

Devices are monitored based on the threshold and insights pointing to battery degradation are surfaced, across the enterprise.

Detailed insights on the model affected, power plan used on these devices are displayed so that admins can troubleshoot effectively.

We also readily show all the devices across the network that have battery degradation. Hence, a single alert will surface the problem that hundreds or thousands of users across the enterprise might be having.

Why warranty timing matters so much

For Dell laptops, the standard battery warranty is typically 1 year, even if the system itself has a 3–5 year warranty. Many enterprises purchase extended or ProSupport-style coverage that may offer better terms or onsite replacement, but batteries remain a consumable part with more limited coverage. This is why timing is everything:

• If you detect serious battery wear inside the battery warranty window, you can claim a replacement.
• If you detect it after that window, the cost is on you—even if the laptop is still under main system warranty.

This is where DEX-driven monitoring helps. You are not depending on users to complain at the right time. Instead, IT can:

• Track battery health percentage for all laptops.
• Combine it with the time left in battery warranty.
• Automatically flag cases like: Battery health < 60% AND warranty remaining > 1 month.

Those are your high-priority, high-ROI cases. Every one of those is a potential free replacement instead of an out-of-pocket cost. With our DEX capabilities, admins can also set up thresholds for warranty based alerts.

Alerts are generated based on the thresholds set. These alerts clearly let admins know how many devices in the company has warranty expiring soon.

Detailed insights into the model of the machine and trends over time is also displayed

Fleet impact: why IT should care

At a single-device scale, a battery replacement vs. a full refresh might save a few hundred dollars. But at fleet scale, the math changes quickly. Imagine:

• <2,000 laptops in your estate.
• 15–20% of them experiencing premature battery wear inside warranty.
• Replacement battery cost covered by vendor vs. a new $1,500+ laptop.

Even if you save only 150 refreshes a year, that’s easily $220K+ in avoided hardware cost. That's not all you save if you factor in:

• Lower e-waste
• Less time spent imaging and onboarding new devices
• Less disruption for users

Battery telemetry is low-hanging fruit that many IT teams simply don’t track well today.

Turning battery health into a DEX signal

From a Digital Employee Experience standpoint, battery health is more than just a hardware metric. It directly affects:

• Workstyle (can I actually work unplugged?)
• Reliability (will my laptop die in the middle of a call?)
• Perception (“this laptop is old and slow”)

In a good DEX setup, you’d want to treat battery health as a first-class experience signal, alongside:

• Boot time
• App crash frequency
• System crashes/hard resets
• Device age
• Warranty status



That allows you to do things like:

• Flag “at-risk” devices where battery health is low but warranty is still active.
• Correlate user complaints (“my laptop keeps dying or is slow”) with hard telemetry.
• Separate performance complaints caused by hardware limits from those caused by software configuration.
• Decide whether the right action is: Battery replacement, OS or app cleanup, or Hardware refresh.

How to prioritize Battery Health using multiple signals

Battery health alone does not tell the full story. To correctly decide whether a device needs a battery replacement, a device upgrade, or user behavior changes, IT teams must look at battery health in combination with usage and performance signals. Below are four practical use cases that show how different battery-related parameters should be interpreted together.

Creating automated workflows to solve battery related issues in the organization

Automated workflows play a crucial role in proactively addressing battery-related issues before they impact employee productivity. By continuously monitoring battery health, device age, and warranty status, IT teams can automatically identify batteries that are degrading abnormally or approaching critical thresholds. These workflows can trigger actions such as notifying IT, raising service requests, or initiating vendor warranty claims while coverage is still active. In some cases, remediation workflows can also recommend usage optimizations or power settings to extend battery life. By standardizing how battery issues are detected and handled, organizations can reduce manual effort, prevent avoidable device replacements, and ensure consistent, data-driven decisions across the endpoint fleet.

We provide a workflow builder that enables IT teams to design end-to-end detection-to-remediation workflows tailored to their environment. Using real-time device telemetry as triggers, teams can define conditions and automated actions to handle issues such as battery degradation, performance drops, or recurring system faults. This allows organizations to move from simply detecting problems to resolving them at scale—automatically raising alerts, notifying users, initiating remediation steps, or creating service requests when intervention is required. By codifying these workflows, IT teams can ensure consistent, repeatable responses to common issues while significantly reducing manual effort and support overhead.

Takeaway for the IT team

For IT & ITOps teams:

• Treat battery health + warranty as part of your DEX and endpoint monitoring strategy.
• Automate alerts for in-warranty, high-degradation batteries.
• Use this data to argue for data-driven refresh policies instead of perception-driven ones.
• Combine other device parameters and battery parameters to generate insights and create alerts and workflows to prioritize and solve battery related issues that hurt end-users.

In-warranty battery degradation is one of those rare IT opportunities where good telemetry, a bit of automation, and a simple policy can translate directly into hard dollar savings—while simultaneously making life better for your users. That’s exactly the kind of win DEX should be delivering.

Meet the author

Karthika Surendran

Karthika is a Product Marketing Analyst at ManageEngine, working on Unified Endpoint Management and Security. She focuses on the evolving intersection of endpoint performance, user experience, and proactive IT. With years of experience shaping product narratives, she transforms technical insights into clear, actionable content that helps IT leaders elevate productivity, reduce digital friction, and build smarter, experience-driven workplaces.