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Battery life 100% 90 Cycles

D

derek1984

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 5, 2008
726
108
Just curious, how many cycles does it usually take for most people to finally get under 100% battery life?

How many cycles is a battery on an early 2009 17 MBP supposed to last?

I've had my MBP for 8 months now. Is 90 cycles a lot for that timeframe?
 
90 cycles seem normal. That are 11 per month, and I currently use a white MB with 168 cycles in ca. 445 days.

The new, non-user-replaceable batteries are said to be lasting up to 1000 cycles.

enviro-battery20090608.png


Longer-lasting battery.

The removable batteries in most notebooks are designed to be replaced every year or two, which means lots of batteries are used up and discarded. But the battery in the new MacBook Pro lasts up to five years — or 1000 recharges. So it uses just one battery in the same time a typical notebook uses three.

from http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/environment.html
 
Hmmm. Okay, just wasn't sure where I stood with my battery and if that was normal or not. Thanks!
 
Charge Cycle. Using and recharging 100% of battery capacity equals one full charge cycle.

A charge cycle means using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge. For instance, you could listen to your iPod for a few hours one day, using half its power, and then recharge it fully. If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two, so you may take several days to complete a cycle. Each time you complete a charge cycle, it diminishes battery capacity slightly, but you can put notebook, iPod, and iPhone batteries through many charge cycles before they will only hold 80% of original battery capacity. As with other rechargeable batteries, you may eventually need to replace your battery.


from http://www.apple.com/batteries/
 
Nuck81 said:
what happens if you almost always keep it plugged in? Do the cycles still count?
Click to expand...

Cycles are when the battery goes 100% down to 0% during use. This can be a mix between 100-50% and back up to 100 and down to 50% to count as 1 cycle.

Keeping it plugged in doesn't harm the battery at all but it a good idea to use the battery at times so that it can continue to hold it's charge
 
My wife's Macbook has 101 cycles and is at 100% health. Actually, it shows a higher capacity NOW than when it was new.

My old PowerBook has 281 cycles and is at 84% health. Not too bad for a 5 year old machine...
 
Mine has 280 cycles, and has 64% health! Well, except that the battery dies once it drops below 40% full...

Which means my battery only has about 40% of the capacity it did new...

I need a new battery.
 
fun173 said:
i have 517 cycles and 100% health! :)
Click to expand...

I have an iBook G4 with a 100% healthy battery after 685 cycles according to iStat and coconut, but the minute I unplug it, it craves for some electrons out of the plug. So I thing the "health sensor" will get fracked up after a certain amount of cycles.


Erasmus said:
Mine has 280 cycles, and has 64% health! Well, except that the battery dies once it drops below 40% full...

Which means my battery only has about 40% of the capacity it did new...

I need a new battery.
Click to expand...

You might have a chance to get your battery replaced* if you still have Apple Care. Maybe you can give it a try.


* Apple warranties its batteries for not getting below 80% health before 300 cycles. But maybe that is only during the first year.
 
holy crap i must have a bad battery compared to you guys
i was just looking at istat and mine says 30 cycles .. 96% health .. wtf:mad:
 
unibody 13" 2.4 ghz

182 cycles 84% health on istat widget :(

Still last me through 6 hours of seminars at half brightness and just pages and mail open
 
jetjaguar said:
holy crap i must have a bad battery compared to you guys
i was just looking at istat and mine says 30 cycles .. 96% health .. wtf:mad:
Click to expand...

That's normal. Sometimes battery health cannot be read 100%, so it shows as something less than 100%.
It most probably changes between 96% and 100% due to you looking more.

But 96% is still very good. It's 12minutes out of 5 hours if one could see it that way.
 
js81 said:
My wife's Macbook has 101 cycles and is at 100% health. Actually, it shows a higher capacity NOW than when it was new.

My old PowerBook has 281 cycles and is at 84% health. Not too bad for a 5 year old machine...
Click to expand...

ditto! 101 cycles, original: 6500 mAh, as of now: 6580 mAh, highest I have seen: 6720 mAh
 
My health will sometimes show 95%, sometimes 98, sometimes 100. I'm at 4 months and have 21 cycles.
 
This is my second battery since 2007. 414 cycles, flickers between 97% and 100% health. What nobody has mentioned is the battery capacity, mine use to be around 5400mah, now its 5058mah. In other words I am starting to get a shorter battery life.

The first battery had 300 cycles to its name but once it hit the 300 number it would kill the laptop when away from a mains and so I got it replaced for free.
 
I've got 25 cycles on, and coconut battery shows me fluctuating between 99 and 100% health. And I've seen an increase from 5450mah to 5518mah since I bought it a month or two ago.
 
so the more cycles = less life in your battery? But apple recommends calibrating it monthly by cycling it? Also I read that if you constantly have the power plugged in, its not good for your battery since electrons are moving inside the battery. They recommend cycling it one or twice a week.

Is this true?
 
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