Terrible MacBook battery

sambobsessed · Mar 4, 2013

I purchased the 13-inch, Mid 2012 Macbook Pro last year on July 4th and when I first got it I was satisfied with the battery. Since then my battery has become worse and worse. I have timed it many times and I get roughly 2 minutes for every % on WiFi. I've taken many screen shots to monitor this and I can get maybe 3 and a half hours or less from 100%. I'm really disappointed with this and I want to get it fixed. I've been on the phone to apple about 5 times regarding this and they've asked me to reset my battery settings and all sorts of things which I didn't really understand in the first place and which also didn't really help. I'm only using 3GB of my 8GB memory when I lose this amount of battery. I've tested it where I just left my computer open on the lowest brightness and connected to wifi and it still lost 1% every 2 minutes. It sucks.

I was given the name of a authorized repair place and I'm planning on going there but i'm just wondering - as I've experienced with bad battery on my iphone before - is this just how apple products are? I hear a lot of people who have **** battery on there iPhones but not so much macbooks so i'm wondering who here gets there full 7 hours as described by apple? I'm using so little cpu yet losing so much battery?!

Another thing is that I've been told my battery can do 1,000 cycles and still be at 80% of its factory capacity. I've done 140 cycles and my battery's at 91% - (according to coconut battery and batteryhealth). This means if I were to do my full 1,000 cycles i would be below 50% capacity? Could it be I have a bad battery and need it replaced. I bought extended apple care and I believe it covers this?

HELP PLEASE!

robvas · Mar 4, 2013

What's using your CPU? Heavy usage by some program that's in the background will use all your battery, fast.

sambobsessed · Mar 4, 2013

robvas said:
What's using your CPU? Heavy usage by some program that's in the background will use all your battery, fast.

Above I said I barely use anything and I also said I tested it out leaving my computer doing nothing and having everything closed and it still lost the same amount

blueroom · Mar 4, 2013

It'll drop about 10% per year no matter what your charging habits are. You can buy a new battery for about $145 installed from Apple. But your battery is operating normally.

sambobsessed · Mar 4, 2013

blueroom said:
It'll drop about 10% per year no matter what your charging habits are. You can buy a new battery for about $145 installed from Apple. But your battery is operating normally.

No I am not going to pay $145 for a new battery. How in anyway is my battery operating normally if it loses 100% in 3 hours with the screen on its lowest brightness not doing ANYTHING. are you drunk??

Count Blah · Mar 4, 2013

I think what people are saying is that when it comes to battery life, hardware manufacturers lie.

Death
Taxes
Battery time fudging from computer manufacturers

Three constants in life.

nando4 · Mar 4, 2013

Are you using Windows or OS/X? If you're battery is at 91% capacity, then it's at 54.6Wh (60Wh when new). To get 7 hours of battery life when new would require the system to average 8.6W. Might be doable under OS/X but certainly not under Windows as I describe at: Can someone run 'powercfg /energy' to see if ur USB is not selective suspending?

You'll improve your battery life if disable the keyboard backlit, bluetooth and set screen brightness to low. In windows it's possible to do some other tweaks like enable AHCI Link power management.

David58117 · Mar 4, 2013

sambobsessed said:
Above I said I barely use anything and I also said I tested it out leaving my computer doing nothing and having everything closed and it still lost the same amount

But have you used activity monitor to be certain no background processes are running?

My first guess is sometime over the past year you've installed some app which included some background processes that are draining your battery..

Asuriyan · Mar 4, 2013

If the battery characteristics are within normal ranges (and they are), then this is almost certainly a software issue. Also note that the 91% that Coconut shows you is a) not 100% accurate and b) prone to fluctuating- it could jump +/-5% with a full charge cycle.

Until you've done a clean install of Lion/ML and tested it on a fresh OS, you shouldn't be worrying about hardware repairs.

SuperShredder · Mar 4, 2013

Apple will replaced your battery within one year of the date of purchase IF it fails their diagnostics at the Genius Bar. It has to actually fail. If in your case it does pass, then there is something software related causing your battery to drain quickly. As other members have said, this is likely the cause of your issue. I would back your computer up before bringing it to the Genius Bar, just in case.

Also, running applications like Coconut Battery and constantly looking at the battery health percentage will drive you absolutely nuts. That number will fluctuate.

Apple officially considers the cycle life of a battery in your computer to be 1000 cycles total. After this point it is considered consumed and they will replace it for $129 in the US. It can consume before 1000 cycles depending on usage patterns. Even if you have AppleCare, the battery is only covered during the first year.

This article has the battery cycle counts for all Apple portables.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1519

Hope this helps.
Best of luck in fixing your issue!

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

so if it's a software related issue what do i do to fix this?

robvas · Mar 6, 2013

sambobsessed said:
so if it's a software related issue what do i do to fix this?

But have you used activity monitor to be certain no background processes are running?

^^^

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

well i checked but didnt really know what i was looking for, what am i looking for?

blueroom · Mar 6, 2013

The top items using the most CPU time.

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

well right now im losing 1% every 2 minutes and my highest cpu usage is 9%

----------

but it just showed 34% from google chrome for like 2 seconds and dissapeared again? :S

cshel24 · Mar 6, 2013

I got a new MacBook Pro the day the came out in June, under normal use the battery will last about 4 hours. I could probably turn down the brightness and stuff to stretch it out further. I don't guess 4 hours is great battery life, but it is not bad for any given laptop.

GGJstudios · Mar 6, 2013

sambobsessed said:
well i checked but didnt really know what i was looking for, what am i looking for?

Follow every step of the following instructions precisely. Do not skip any steps.

Launch Activity Monitor
Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
Click on the "% CPU" column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
(If that column isn't visible, right-click on the column headings and check it, NOT "CPU Time")
Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
Post your screenshots.

SammyDFG · Mar 6, 2013

i have the same problem on my MBPr
94% battery life with 103 cycles

doesn't last longer than 1 hour

CPU processes look fine, nothing more than 5% on any one process
total usage 2% when browsing

Something is wrong.

GGJstudios · Mar 6, 2013

SammyDFG said:
i have the same problem on my MBPr
94% battery life with 103 cycles

doesn't last longer than 1 hour

CPU processes look fine, nothing more than 5% on any one process
total usage 2% when browsing

Something is wrong.

Follow the instructions in my post just before yours.

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

GGJstudios said:
Follow the instructions in my post just before yours.

im doing it now but it keeps changing?

GGJstudios · Mar 6, 2013

sambobsessed said:
im doing it now but it keeps changing?

That's OK... just take the screen shots anyway.

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

here you go

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

every few seconds google chrome would pop up with 30%? but dissapear real quickly - there was also alot more of that stuff to scroll down but i figured u said u just needed 2 but if u need more screenshots of the other stuff just tell me

GGJstudios · Mar 6, 2013

sambobsessed said:
here you go

There's nothing there that indicates high resource demands.

sambobsessed said:
every few seconds google chrome would pop up with 30%? but dissapear real quickly - there was also alot more of that stuff to scroll down but i figured u said u just needed 2 but if u need more screenshots of the other stuff just tell me

Depending on the content of sites you're visiting, it can place high demands on your system, increasing power demands.

Be aware that just as you noticed the contents of your Activity Monitor window are constantly changing, so are your power requirements. As your workload changes from moment to moment, so does the draw on your battery. That's why your battery readings of time remaining on a charge is a constantly-changing estimate. Apple advertises "up to 7 hours", but that doesn't mean you should expect 7 hours in normal use.

sambobsessed · Mar 6, 2013

yes i understand - i would be fine if i got 6 hours or even 5 hours but i dont get near that i get 3 hours max

Terrible MacBook battery

macrumors member

macrumors 68040

macrumors member

macrumors 603

macrumors member

macrumors 68040

macrumors regular

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502a

macrumors newbie

macrumors member

macrumors 68040

macrumors member

macrumors 603

macrumors member

macrumors member

macrumors Westmere

macrumors member

macrumors Westmere

macrumors member

macrumors Westmere

macrumors member

Attachments

macrumors member

macrumors Westmere

macrumors member

Our Staff