Smarter Battery

Smarter Battery 4.0 analyzes and displays your battery's wear level, discharge cycle, and other important parameters, constantly updating its predictions of how much charge remains and sounding alarms at critical points. Its attractive interface includes a Calibration feature for new batteries, as well as Fast Discharge and Green modes. Smarter Battery 4.0 supports up to four batteries and is free to try with a 10-use, 15-minute limit.

Pros

Power plans: The Battery menu accesses and configures power plans.

Gadgets: Optional 2D and 3D gadgets display battery charge continuously on the desktop.

Capacity Evolution: Smarter Battery's Capacity Evolution page displays an easy to understand graph of your battery's life; you can save graphs as JPEGs, too.

Calibration: Continuous smart monitoring of your original battery helps you calibrate replacement batteries to last as long as possible. For best results, keep Smarter Battery running.

Cons

Trial limits: The 10-use, 15-minute trial limit might dissuade some users or mask Smarter Battery's virtues. On the other hand, its $14 price is much less than the cost of a new battery.

Bottom Line

Smarter Battery 4.0 is among the top battery monitors we've tried. Yes, comparable free tools are available. But Smarter Battery is so affordable (and your laptop's battery so critical) that it really must be compared to freeware battery tools -- a comparison it is likely to win.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Smarter Battery 4.0.