Battery health down to 99% after 31 cycles - Why God, why?!

[SkyBell]

Just a law of diminishing returns and I use the little bugger on adapter 99% of the time. So should i wait it out a while longer?

That may be why it's doing that. It's not good to keep your laptop on the adaptor, you gotta drain the battery every once in a while.

 

[nsbio]

Now, THAT is something . Must be a Leopard-specific glitch.

 

[aquajet]

mine's going in for replacement. 23 claibrated cycles and at 71%. Not a good sign. But should I wait until the last minute to extend my chances of a proper resolution as far as possible? Still 5 months on original purchase warranty, no sign the battery will give out tomorrow. Just a law of diminishing returns and I use the little bugger on adapter 99% of the time. So should i wait it out a while longer?

I would contact Apple as soon as you can. Those numbers definitely qualify you for a replacement.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

58 Cycles
90% Heath

I think that's pretty crap IMHO, I really thought a 9 month old Macbook would be a little better than that....

 

[ZiggyPastorius]

What is a cycle? Sorry for being a noob, but I know nothing about batteries. I've had my Macbook less than a month and I have 36 cycles. Is that bad? What can I do to cut down on these? <.<

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Weird my iBook reaches 102% and its 3 years old
Bro, the battery won't always hit 100%, but that isn't to believe that it is losing charge already. It's not linear.

 

[KingYaba]

This isn't looking too good.

 

[spring]

Mine isn't doing to well.

With 16 Cycles, according to coconut battery, I am at 93%. According to iStat, I am down to 91%. My MBP is only 6 weeks old.

 

[silbeej]

Well i'm at 66% after 78 cycles, which i think is too bad, so i'm going to an apple store to get a new a battery, hopefully that is.

 

[Consultant]

Now, THAT is something . Must be a Leopard-specific glitch.

Yeah, as it mentioned several times,
*** Coconut Battery (v2.5) is not working properly in Leopard at this time ***

Top most number might not mean anything.
335 is your cycles. It might be transposed with 4400.

 

[motomac]

My sisters ol' Clamshell tangerine ibook's bettery went to crapp in a hand basket within 1 year of use. She always left it plugged in. Never used it off the adaptor. She didn't understand why, so I explained it to her (she is one of those that doesn't care how something works, just that it does work.) Now she has a mac mini so there is no more issue there...

Remember, Don't keep your MB/MBP plugged in all the time. That is the #1 killer of battery capacity. These newer batts need to be "exercised" every so often to keep the chemicals inside flowing properly. So use it while off the plug till it gets down pretty low. Then either plug it in and continue to use it, or shut it off and leave it uncharged overnight. Then plug it in the next day and continue about your business. Do this once every 2-3 weeks. You need to put a consious effort into maintaining your battery. YOU have to do your part! Of coarse, even if apple had clearly written instructions on how to keep your battery in tip top shape and included them in each box with the laptops, there would still be people complaining and say that their battery life has dropped significantly for "no particular reason", especially when they unknowingly actually caused it to happen. Sure there are real defective batteries out there, but just because your battery life says 91% after 45 cycles doesn't mean that its bad. It more than likely means you havent calibrated/cycled the battery properly. However, once the battery life has dropped past the PNR (Point of No Return)(around 60-65% approx for the 5500mAh MB batt), no amount of calibrating can bring it back to 100% again. So you have screwed yourself. A properly cycled MB battery should last around 1.5-2 years before dropping past the PNR. Those of you that still have thier original battery going strong after 2 years or so woo hoo! Good job!

There is no miracle battery out there that automaticly tells you to unplug and go wireless for a while and when the optimal time is to stop and charge it. If there was, i'm sure there would still be some on here (MR) that would complain and say they have a faulty battery when all it would take is a little effort to remedy the problem quickly and rather easily.

In the end, its a loose / loose situation. Batteries inevitably die. People inevitably get upset.

....so the cycle (pun intended) continues....

 

[kajitox]

Just putting this out there: I had about 70 cycles on my battery and it was at about 87% health according to iStat. I took it into my local Apple store and told them what it was about, told them about Apple's policy of 80% by 300 charges and how I obviously was going to be under that, and they gave me a new battery.

Word to the wise, don't abuse the system (karma will catch up on you), I just saw my battery go from 96% health to 87% in a matter of a couple of weeks and figured something was wrong.

This isn't looking too good.

Yeah, I would take that to the apple store and tell them about Apple's above policy so that they don't give you the normal "no no, it's fine" line that they have to give out once.

 

[119576]

What is a cycle? Sorry for being a noob, but I know nothing about batteries. I've had my Macbook less than a month and I have 36 cycles. Is that bad? What can I do to cut down on these? <.<

When you run the battery down to 0 and then recharge it, this is a cycle.

It also sums up other amounts aswell; for instance: If you deplete your battery 50% and then recharge to 100, it is not a cycle, but if you deplete it to 50% again afterwards and recharge, that counts 1 cycle.

 

[Yesterday]

this is kinda strange...according to coconut battery and istat, my current battery capacity is greater than the original capacity with a health of 100% after 61 cycles.

 

[Neutral Gamer]

this is kinda strange...according to coconut battery and istat, my current battery capacity is greater than the original capacity with a health of 100% after 61 cycles.

Welcome to the club my friend!

There seems to be quite a few people who have batteries with HIGHER capacities than they started with. Keeping those electrons moving and calibrating to ensure an accurate reading no doubt help.

Whatever you're doing, keep on doing it I say!

P.S. What are you doing? How often do you keep it plugged in / when do you decide to charge etc.

 

[rapps]

Just putting this out there: I had about 70 cycles on my battery and it was at about 87% health according to iStat. I took it into my local Apple store and told them what it was about, told them about Apple's policy of 80% by 300 charges and how I obviously was going to be under that, and they gave me a new battery.

Word to the wise, don't abuse the system (karma will catch up on you), I just saw my battery go from 96% health to 87% in a matter of a couple of weeks and figured something was wrong.



Yeah, I would take that to the apple store and tell them about Apple's above policy so that they don't give you the normal "no no, it's fine" line that they have to give out once.

I'm having issues as well. My macbook pro is 14 months old and under applecare. The battery was fine for about 10 months and then it made a nose dive. I'm under 300 charges (236) and system profiler says that I'm at 3105/5500. That would put me around 55%. Is there someplace that I could point, in order to show the genius the <300, <80% policy? After going through the appointment making, waiting, and seeing them I'd like to have as much ammo as possible to get a new battery. Also...I updated my battery firmware, so they can't use that against me. Any other advice?

 

[zblaxberg]

I knew this day would come eventually, but I still felt like I'd been punched in the stomach when I saw the health no longer at the 100% I was accustomed to in iStat.

Why God, why?!

Death is the only option for me now that my MBP is no longer perfect. I feel dirty using it - despite the 1% drop it's only half the laptop it used to be in my opinion! Time to buy a new one me thinks ...

Seriously though, is this normal? I've had it for 3 months now; is this what you'd expect to happen after that amount of time? Should I use it more on the battery to prevent it falling to 98% as quick?

Also, can I expect the drops to be linear or should I brace myself for one day seeing the battery health fall several percent at once?

just buy a new battery, not a whole new mbp

 

[Neutral Gamer]

just buy a new battery, not a whole new mbp

Mate, I assume you just read my first post and then decided to add your reply. Did you read any of the other posts in this thread? I know it's a long thread so I wouldn't be surprised if you decided not to. However, if you had you would've realised that:

1. I was being sarcastic - there's no way I would get a new MBP just cos I lost 1% of battery health. Didn't the fact that I was saying "felt like I'd been punched in the stomach", "Why God, why?!", "Death is the only option for me" and "I feel dirty using it" give it away?

2. After calibrating my battery and downloading some battery monitor software I actually found that my battery health was HIGHER than the original capacity! So I actually got it completely wrong in the first place!

In all fairness, this thread was started 3 weeks ago and then died down, like most threads do, less than a week later. Only because people have recently started to add to it has it become active again and it's understandable that people may think it's a new thread and that this is a recent problem I'm complaining about.

 

[userjet2005]

Just as an encouragement: My MB battery is at 296 cycles and is at 95% health according to Coconut or 98% according to iStat.

I still want to find out the best way to keep MB batteries in tip top shape. Everyone has their opinion, but it would seem as if some research center could do a study on it.

 

[paola105]

Here's mine. I tried calibrating but it doesn't seem to work.

 

[Yesterday]

my bad it's at 60 cycles. i use it a lot during my classes, so it gets drained to around 30% charge frequently before recharging. on days that i don't take it to class, i just leave it plugged in. i don't really do anything special to it...just normal use. however when i first got the battery, it was completely drained to where the battery charge status light wouldn't blink. perhaps that has a lot to do with the battery capacity but i heard doing that can damage li-ion batteries.

 

[Swift Sketcher]

Ok, so to ensure a long life for my battery, I should charge it fully, and use it without the adapter until it shuts down, then repeat? All the time?

 

[Neutral Gamer]

Ok, so to ensure a long life for my battery, I should charge it fully, and use it without the adapter until it shuts down, then repeat? All the time?

In a nutshell, YES.

On average I use my MBP on battery once a day, and if I do then I'll keep using it on battery until it gets to 1%. I'll only start charging again after that and when I do I'll try not to use it on battery until it's fully charged.

Obviously not "all the time" - you don't have to use it on battery unless you need to, but I try and do so at least once every day or so.

Hopefully your battery will have a long and healthy life in doing so! Good luck

 

[iW00t]

Death is the only option for me now that my MBP is no longer perfect. I feel dirty using it - despite the 1% drop it's only half the laptop it used to be in my opinion! Time to buy a new one me thinks ...

I agree. I will be a nice guy and pay a princely sum of $1100 for your 2.2ghz MBP or $1375 for your 2.4ghz one.

You won't get a better price elsewhere, I am paying more than half of what it is selling for in the stores!!!

 

[Neutral Gamer]

I agree. I will be a nice guy and pay a princely sum of $1100 for your 2.2ghz MBP or $1375 for your 2.4ghz one.

You won't get a better price elsewhere, I am paying more than half of what it is selling for in the stores!!!

At $1375 I just couldn't live with myself - you'd be paying way too much for my tarnished MBP!

How does $999 sound? It's nearly 4 months old now and it's only the 2.4GHz processor rather than the WAY faster 2.6GHz you can upgrade to nowadays. The 1920x1200 glossy screen may cause you a lot of eye strain and the 160GB 7200rpm is nothing compared to the latest 200GB ones you can get.

Ok, ok, I'll go down to $899. Can you pick up?