2012 MBP 15" - Battery or charge issue, suggestions please

[Philly]

Hi,

We have a 2012 MBP that we have had for years, runs very well with 2 SSD's and 16GB RAM. It is usually used in clamshell mode but goes on the occasional trip as well. A few days ago it started behaving oddly on the battery power. It will shut down as if it has no power, when still showing battery charge remaining. It might shut down at 40%. When it's restarted, it might show zero.

Last night I let it run down (as far as I could tell) and left it over night. I disconected the battery today and held the power button down for 10 seconds as per the SMC reset instructions from Apple. After putting it back together and opening the laptop, it booted up without pressing the power, which apparently is normal. Battery was showing something like 50%. I let it charge up to 100% then took it off the power. Within a fe minutes it changed to 73%. I've tried to fully charge/discharge it throughout the day but it's still behaving the same way, so I thought it was worth asking on here. As far as I'm aware there is no real way to be sure that the SMC reset worked, right?

Battery health is showing as good in the system report. I don't want to throw £100 at a new battery if thats not the problem. The battery is not swollen and the laptop does not overheat.

Thanks for any help!

 

[natj910]

Could be a collapsed cell or similar. While most devices are good at detecting battery health (and this goes for everything, not just Macs), some dead battery conditions might not show in software diagnostics.

Remember the battery is 9 years old, it's had a damn good run to make it this far!

 

[Philly]

Could be a collapsed cell or similar. While most devices are good at detecting battery health (and this goes for everything, not just Macs), some dead battery conditions might not show in software diagnostics.

Remember the battery is 9 years old, it's had a damn good run to make it this far!

Yeah, I'm not ruling the battery out, I just didn't want to buy one without trying other options first. Ive read other threads where people have installed a new battery and the problem has persisted.

The laptop with the issue is my Dad's. I've got the same model laptop myself. Battery health on mine shows as 'replace soon', but apart from that it runs perfectly well. I'm wondering if it's worth swapping the batteries and seeing what happens.

 

[parlem]

Have you tried using Coconut Battery to establish the health of your battery? I am very suprised that you've never changed the battery before in a 9-year-old MBP. I own a 2012 model too and it's had 2 changes already, although I realise yours is usually hooked to an external monitor.

 

[Philly]

Have you tried using Coconut Battery to establish the health of your battery? I am very suprised that you've never changed the battery before in a 9-year-old MBP. I own a 2012 model too and it's had 2 changes already, although I realise yours is usually hooked to an external monitor.

Haven’t tried Coconut yet as I believed it would just show the same information as is available in system report, albeit in a nice GUI. I’ll take a look though...

We have two 2012 MBP’s in the family and both are using the original batteries. Until this issue they have been absolutely fine.

 

[Philly]

Not many responses to this issue but it is an old model. An update in any case... I took a battery from another 2012 model and switched them over, and the issue went with the battery, so I'm fairly sure thats the issue. At least it's not something on the logic board.

System report, and CoconutBattery both state that the health is ok but as @natj910 suggested it may be an issue that software won't show.