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Battery health
- Thread starter viorelgn
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I believe it starts to degrade at around 250-300 cycles. So basically you're in the clear. And its always good to let the battery drain occasionally, as oppose to keep it plugged in all its life.
Not really. It’ll degrade based on both cycle count and / or age. If you don’t cycle it for 3 years you don’t have a brand new battery after 3 years, you have a battery that is 3 years old and hasn’t cycled.
General consensus, including Apple, seems to be use it sensibly and don’t stress about it.
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Unplug the power cord, then it’s running off the battery. But it sounds like you’re overthinking it already.
Nobody knows what the optimal number is or even if there is an optimal number of times to drain your battery, but what is known is that never allowing your battery to drain is not good for it and constantly running it down is not good for it either. Don't be afraid to use your battery but don't overuse your battery either if you can help it.
Personally, I try to go through one cycle count a week. I'm not trying very hard to follow this schedule. It just happens to be roughly what I'd use if I didn't try very hard to keep my laptop plugged in. If I find that I'm burning through 3 or 4 cycles a week, I'll make more of an effort to keep a charger around so I can stay plugged in more.
If the battery is at 100 % and you leave the charger plugged in, the machine runs from the mains, just like a desktop computer. There's charging circuitry that takes care of the whole process. In fact, charging a lithium battery this big with a dumb charger and eventually overcharging it could cause mayhem.
When you're at your desk, plug it in. Want to move to the couch? Whatever, it's a laptop, run it from the battery. Back to the desk after thirty minutes? Plug it back in, so it's full when needed again. Don't stress over the battery, they're very well designed. I still get 7 hours of battery life from my 4+ year old MacBook Pro with hundreds of cycles on it.
When you're at your desk, plug it in. Want to move to the couch? Whatever, it's a laptop, run it from the battery. Back to the desk after thirty minutes? Plug it back in, so it's full when needed again. Don't stress over the battery, they're very well designed. I still get 7 hours of battery life from my 4+ year old MacBook Pro with hundreds of cycles on it.
"What do you think about this health battery ?"
The specs you posted of your battery look fine.
Seems to me that the "best practice" used to be taking it "off charge" once or twice a week, letting the battery run down to 40-50%, and then putting it back on charge.
The theory was that this "exercised" the battery and kept it in good shape.
But now I hear that with newer batteries, doing so isn't required any more...
So... If you want to "leave it on the charger" for extended periods, that's probably ok.
But nothing wrong with taking it off charge whenever you wish, either.
The specs you posted of your battery look fine.
Seems to me that the "best practice" used to be taking it "off charge" once or twice a week, letting the battery run down to 40-50%, and then putting it back on charge.
The theory was that this "exercised" the battery and kept it in good shape.
But now I hear that with newer batteries, doing so isn't required any more...
So... If you want to "leave it on the charger" for extended periods, that's probably ok.
But nothing wrong with taking it off charge whenever you wish, either.
I read that as well, but also read other opinions saying that it still probably is a good idea to let modern batteries get a workout. And then right on cue, an expensive NewerTech MBP replacement battery that I got for my wife started to expand. She never unplugs her laptop. The battery was 2 years old and she only ran it through 4 cycles the entire time.
The exact same thing happened to another MBP that I had some years ago that I never unplugged. It was never cycled and after about 18 months, the battery became unusuable.
Leaving your laptop plugged in is supposed to be fine because newer batteries are not supposed to ever overcharge. They have circuits in them to shut down charging when they're full, but my limited experiences are telling me that regardless of if they overcharge or not, it's still wise to listen to the people who say it's better to unplug the power from your laptop one a regular basis. I have yet to have a battery die prematurely on me when it was being exercised regularly.
Impossible to achieve 200 cycles in a month. Lets say you had a workload that meant on battery it would last 4hrs and be totally drained, then assume it would take 4hrs to charge up again, AND you did this continuously for the entire month, you would have approx 90 cycles at most.
A charge cycle is a total of 100% capacity, so 2 charges from 50-100%=100%, 2 charges of 75-100% plus one of 50-100%=100%, 10x charges of 90-100% (and any mixture that adds up to 100%) and so on.
I got over 1500 cycles on my first Early-2011 MBP battery in 7yrs, it was only when it started to drop capacity quickly from 80% that I replaced it with a new genuine battery. For most of the 7 years it sat on a charger during the working day on my desk, then drained to 25% in the evenings before being charged overnight. Batt cap dropped to approx 85% over the first 3 years then slowly down to 80% over the next 4yrs before dropping quickly (over say 2mths) to 65% and being replaced. No swelling or anything observed. The machine is still in daily use as my prime machine.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but if you're planning on running your battery down so your number of charge cycles looks "normal" for a battery of that age, don't do it. There isn't an optimal number of charge cycles to have. The idea is to let your battery work, but without working it to death. Just start letting your battery supply power often enough to go through a cycle at least a few times a month. Trying to catch up with your battery cycles isn't going to help your battery live longer.
Yeah, try to go through at least a couple cycles a month, but you don't want to use up a cycle by draining the battery to zero each time. That's stressful on the battery and will likely decrease its life if you do it regularly.
The best thing is to just use your laptop as a laptop. If you're in the habit of always taking the charger with you when you move around, stop doing that and just use the charger when you're at home and at your desk. As @Howard2k said, it sounds like you're thinking too hard about this. If you just use your computer normally without trying to protect it, you'll probably be just fine.
Piggy-backing on this topic as people seem fairly knowledgeable...
I currently have a late 2013 15in MBP which hardly gets any use, plus a mid-2011 Mini that I use as a media hub. I was really excited to see the new Mini update and the plan was to buy a new one of those to replace both my existing devices since now the vast majority of my home computing is done on iPad. But the cost of change would be around £1500 and that makes me pause...
My MBP is still a power house so I was thinking about using it as my media hub, permanently docked at my desk, instead of the Mini. Very occasionally it might go mobile. This would mean it is permanently on charge. How bad would that be for the device?
I could use a timer socket so that it only charges during ‘key hours’ of early evening when it is more likely to be actively used? What do people think?
I currently have a late 2013 15in MBP which hardly gets any use, plus a mid-2011 Mini that I use as a media hub. I was really excited to see the new Mini update and the plan was to buy a new one of those to replace both my existing devices since now the vast majority of my home computing is done on iPad. But the cost of change would be around £1500 and that makes me pause...
My MBP is still a power house so I was thinking about using it as my media hub, permanently docked at my desk, instead of the Mini. Very occasionally it might go mobile. This would mean it is permanently on charge. How bad would that be for the device?
I could use a timer socket so that it only charges during ‘key hours’ of early evening when it is more likely to be actively used? What do people think?
You should use up 1-2 charge cycles a month. That's not a firm number. I don't think there's a true optimal number for how much to discharge your battery. All I know is that that number is higher than zero and lower than daily. Also, don't eat up 100% of a charge cycle straight if you can help it.