Battery health of M1?

[Chairman.Jobbie]

I have 118 cycles on my MBA M1 and the health is currently reading 92% according to iStat Menus app ... disappointing to lose ~8% after 11% of the 1000 battery cycles life - IF this is correct?

In the system preferences power section it says 99% battery health.

Battery Health 2 app says I have 100% battery health.

Which one to believe?

What battery health do you have?

 

[trevpimp]

I would believe the original Apple preference

Apps could be wrong especially when they are third party and not officially made by Apple.

*Could be, just my personal advice*

 

[smirking]

Which one to believe?

I would tend to believe the more disappointing number. I also wouldn't entirely believe the more disappointing number. You'll probably see your battery health bounce around if you check enough. It wouldn't be surprising for it to recover and gain a few points back up to 95%, but batteries don't age backwards. It indicates the measurements have a degree of error involved.

93% to 95% after 110 cycles is pretty average.

I know some people have managed to have pretty amazing batteries even after 800 cycles, but I would be thrilled if any of my laptop batteries held steady just for 400 cycles much less 1000 cycles! That's battery luck for ya though. Some just get very lucky.

In any case, if your battery percentage drops below 80% during your warranty period, you can take it in for a free battery replacement. I tend to get AppleCare for this reason alone. I feel I have a 80% chance that my battery won't last the full three years. They rarely last even 2 for me, but lots of this has to do with my usage characteristics. I run some power hungry processes that are battery destroyers so I have to do most of my work plugged in almost all the time... which is also not good for your battery.

I'm hoping that the lower power consumption qualities of the M1 will stop this pattern for me. I may actually skip AppleCare when I get an M1.

 

[jdb8167]

I would believe the original Apple preference

Apps could be wrong especially when they are third party and not officially made by Apple.

*Could be, just my personal advice*

The apps are using official values from MacOS. These values come from a config system called ioreg. The values are generally pretty raw and Apple frequently runs an algorithm to flatten out inconsistencies over time. But the values are all legitimately retrieved from the hardware.

Having said that, Apple’s numbers are what everyone should be using for diagnostics. The ioreg numbers are useful information but need to be interpreted. One example is the full charge value on my M1 MBA that is used to to get the raw percentage of the battery health has hovered around 96.3% for several weeks. Recently it has shot back up to close to 97%. This is with 40 charge cycles. Apple’s battery health percentage is still reporting 100%

 

[smirking]

As jdb8167 said...

You can just go to the source and do the math. The values plugged into those battery health apps are available in the Power section of your system report... but these numbers are error prone. I have no idea what I'm talking about so I'm not even going to attempt to explain by how much or why. All I can say is as an occasional battery watcher, I definitely see these numbers bouncing around in unrealistic ways.

 

[ctjack]

The ioreg numbers are useful information but need to be interpreted. One example is the full charge value on my M1 MBA that is used to to get the raw percentage of the battery health has hovered around 96.3% for several weeks. Recently it has shot back up to close to 97%. This is with 40 charge cycles. Apple’s battery health percentage is still reporting 100%

I think we need a combined look at the problem. Yes, there are fluctuations to the ioreg numbers, but i don't really bother myself about +-1-2% fluctuations.
But still there is no way that my 88-90% ioreq/94% Apple/67 cycles will suddenly go up for 94-96% ioreg/100% Apple because of these fluctuations. I think that Apple's number is a lagged version of ioreg. I remember losing fast and bad on Iphone ioreg, but the Apple number stayed the same for couple weeks. When the things went south on that phone, Apple's number started to adjust by downgrading quite aggressively.
So overall, if your ioreg number hovers around the same numbers up and down and nothing unusual happens, then the Apple number could be the best approximation of the current state. But if ioreq will go down really fast, then it means that somebody needs to replace battery/laptop asap.

 

[GaryPDX]

I was getting ready to post a new thread on this. My M1 MBP Pro is 10 months old and shows 60 cycles, 87% battery life (characterized as "fair"). I am making an appointment with the local Genuflect Bar immediately; will report back if anything interesting emerges.

 

[smirking]

I was getting ready to post a new thread on this. My M1 MBP Pro is 10 months old and shows 60 cycles, 87% battery life (characterized as "fair"). I am making an appointment with the local Genuflect Bar immediately; will report back if anything interesting emerges.

They won't take any action until the battery falls below 80%. If it's still 81%, Apple considers it normal and healthy regardless of if you got there in 1 day or 4 years.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I was getting ready to post a new thread on this. My M1 MBP Pro is 10 months old and shows 60 cycles, 87% battery life (characterized as "fair"). I am making an appointment with the local Genuflect Bar immediately; will report back if anything interesting emerges.

"genuflect bar" hahahaha! I love it.

 

[kdoug]

I was getting ready to post a new thread on this. My M1 MBP Pro is 10 months old and shows 60 cycles, 87% battery life (characterized as "fair"). I am making an appointment with the local Genuflect Bar immediately; will report back if anything interesting emerges.

Spend a few extra $ next time and install AlDente Pro.

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

Mine is now 87% after 199 cycles - istatsmenu app. No weird usage.. just daily all day and charging overnight. I had a on online chat with apple support but they just suggested turning off apps that use excessive battery. As stated above, they won't do anything until around 83. The system battery report says 94% of max charge.. it does last most of the day but to me the istatsmenu feels accurate.

 

[StoneJack]

Mine is now 87% after 199 cycles - istatsmenu app. No weird usage.. just daily all day and charging overnight. I had a on online chat with apple support but they just suggested turning off apps that use excessive battery. As stated above, they won't do anything until around 83. The system battery report says 94% of max charge.. it does last most of the day but to me the istatsmenu feels accurate.

Charging overnight is not a good idea, perhaps, even though I do it as well (Intel Macbook pro 2019)

 

[ctjack]