A Better Battery Meter for Windows

When using a laptop, one of the most important thing to keep track of is the battery life. If your laptop runs out of battery, then I’m sure you’ll know of the consequences! Netbook users might not have as much to fear as other regular notebook users since the battery life for those devices is for the most part, spectacular. However, regular laptop users usually have a much shorter battery life and we need an easy way to keep track of it. Sadly, Windows have never made this task easy. Whenever your laptop is running on battery alone, Windows will nicely display a battery icon in your notification area but that icon doesn’t tell you much. Also, one of the most irritating aspect of that icon is that the only way you can tell how much longer you have left before your battery runs out of juice is by you having to hover your mouse over it each and every time. No longer shall we put up with that blasphemy!

BatteryBar by Osiris Development have been around for some time now so this is nothing new. However, if you find yourself in most situations using your laptop without it being plugged in, then it will do you good to learn about BatteryBar. Fortunately, there’s not much to learn about besides the fact that it provides you with a much better battery meter when compared with the Windows default. Also, it claims to better estimate your remaining battery life than Windows can because it keeps historical data of your battery. With BatteryBar, the more you use it, the more accurate it is at its estimations.
There is a professional version of BatteryBar and interestingly, it’s one of those software’s where you the user get to choose the price to pay for it! As of this writing, you can decide to pay anywhere from a minimum of $4 to a maximum of $10 for the professional version of BatteryBar. The free version is perfect if you don’t need any of the extra bells and whistles like critical battery notification and theme customizations. Here is a chart depicting the differences between the free and pro versions of Battery Bar while more details can be found here:

BatteryBar Free Version

BatteryBar can be downloaded from here. The nice folks from Osiris Development decided to give you a taste of what BatteryBar Pro can offer you by giving you a free 30-day trial! To activate the trial, simply right click on the BatteryBar meter after installation and select Activate 30-day Trial from the menu option:

Installation of BatteryBar is a breeze. However, I decided to opt out of some options such as the Floating Toolbar along with language translations.

Immediately after installation, you will now see a new battery meter next by your notification area. One of the best things about using BatteryBar is that the meter will be there displaying your battery life for as long as you keep it there. No need to hover your mouse to another icon. In the picture below, the battery meter is displaying the time remaining until my laptop goes dead.

Simply clicking on it once will change that display to a percentage remaining instead.

Another cool feature of BatteryBar is that it gives you a lot more information about your battery charge than Windows ever would. Hover your mouse over to the BatteryBar meter and a nice little information graph presents itself to you. Here, you can see the capacity, the charge rate, and the battery wear for your laptop battery. Most users would find this information useless but it’s there nonetheless should you need it.

As for the free version, that’s pretty much it. Once you unlock professional mode, you get a whole lot more.

BatteryBar Pro

By upgrading to the professional edition, the core features of BatteryBar remain the same in that its job is to provide for an accurate measurement of your laptop’s battery life and performance. However, in the professional edition, you get a ton of more options to play with. The new Preferences menu option is where the majority of the options are set. There are six different tabs each with their own unique group of options.

First up is the General tab. Not much going on here.

In the Display tab, things get a bit more interesting as we now can customize the look of the BatteryBar meter. We can change things like the font, theme and even add two additional information type to display on the BatteryBar icon.

Options in the Notification tab allows you to configure when and how BatteryBar should alert you. The three different alert types are critical battery warning, low battery warning, and when your battery has finished charging. You are allowed to use the default sounds provided by BatteryBar or choose your own.

With the Warning Levels tab, you define what you believe should be the low and critical warning level. The default leaves low battery level at 30% while critical battery level is at 15%. If you don’t like to work with percentages, then you can simply specify the warning levels as minutes remaining instead.

If I were to spend money on BatteryBar, it would be due to the options defined in the Power Savings tab. In the free version, you are not allowed to use BatteryBar to switch power schemes. Well, that feature is unlocked once you go pro. This allows BatteryBar to take over Windows built-in power managing duties. Of course, you are still able to switch power schemes using Windows even with the free version of BatteryBar installed but the professional version makes it much more easier to do so as the feature is now accessible within the program. However, to configure the advanced options of the power schemes, you still need to rely on Windows.

To remove the default battery icon in Windows should you use BatteryBar as a complete replacement, right click on it and select Turn System Icons On or Off. Under Behaviors drop-down menu for the Power icon, select Off and then hit OK.

Last but not least, the Tools tab allow you to perform various tasks such as reset everything to default, restore battery profiles, submit feedback, etc.

In the End…

I simply love BatteryBar! What else can I say? Just the fact alone that it shows you your battery level without having you to do a thing is a beauty in of itself. I really can’t imagine why Windows doesn’t give us this option by default. Sure it’s nice to have a battery icon to represent battery life but it’s not detailed enough. BatteryBar easily remedies this problem. The free version does its job really well but if you need even more, then you need to try the professional version. What’s better than having a free 30 day trial?

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)