Battery Usage.

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

Guys, maybe my question is already answered in my own question 😅

I finally bought my Macbook Air M3 and I won't deny that I take a lot of care with the batteries of my devices, for example, I never let the battery of my Watch and my iPhone run out completely, I don't take my devices on the beach on hot days, I don't leave them charging in a warm place, etc. I have always sold my iPhone's with battery health according to my care. And now I bought a Macbook. I'm a lawyer and 90% of the time I use my Macbook is when I'm close to electricity.

I learned from the internet that the ideal is to always keep the battery between 20 and 80%, according to the Battery Optimization itself. The extremes are bad.

Now comes my question: using the Macbook connected to the outlet 90% of the time would be more harmful to the battery than always using the device through the battery itself and charging it when necessary? How do you use your Macbook?

 

[joeblow7777]

I understand that you're very battery health conscious, but in the grand scheme of things, most of the things that we have control of have little effect on the longevity of the battery. I've always used all of my laptops plugged in more often than not, and their batteries have always been healthy after years of use. Just let the battery complete a cycle every now and then, even if only once a month, to let the electrons flow.

 

[AlmightyKang]

Don't worry about it.

My MBP is usually run to 100% and tanked to 0% on a regular basis and left on charge for 2-3 days at a time and the machine has had the crap hammered out of it most of that time. The battery health is at 93% after 2 years and I can't honestly tell any difference from new.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

I learned from the internet that the ideal is to always keep the battery between 20 and 80%, according to the Battery Optimization itself. The extremes are bad.

Oh this age old question is a classic here and can span hundreds of replies to a thread. You're right, 20-80% is indeed the magic range and even battery optimization will at times charge to 100% when not sitting on 80%. Third party Apps like AlDente can limit this if you're mostly hooked up to power.

So you will now get many replies of differences in battery chemical aging, not to micro manage, get on with more important things in life and just replace this (battery) consumable device when needed.

I also understand your OP and do try to get the most out of a battery without this impeding or limiting my actual usage on a grand scale. As an example, my iP 13 Mini is now on 90% health after 15 months of what I call reasonable precautions i.e. 5W charger use and charging "as little as possible", whilst others here are still in their high 90s, not caring at all. I've started also to use tethered Car Play, that inevitably charges when plugged in, once more disrupting a patterned use. Not just that, but I had battery optimization (on the iP) only work properly for 4 months after initial purchase.

In a way I'm not really offering much good advice but to say that it's almost a luck of the battery lotto and that your device usage should never be limited to attempting to save an extra couple weeks worth of battery health. But yes, I absolutely "get" both sides of the argument.

On another note. I have a smart charger for the LiPo of an RC car and the battery feels like it has not lost an ounce of health after many many years. The charger includes functions such as balancing between the two cells, discharge and a "storage" voltage.

I realize I've said a lot without really saying anything

 

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

I really appreciate your help and response. I've been more neurotic with battery care, but today I only take care of what's necessary, as I said. I wanted to have this same treatment with the battery of my Macbook, since I know that keeping the battery at 100% most of the time is harmful, but I know that the more I use it, the more it degrades. I believe that, in this Macbook Air M3, Apple has changed the policy from 500 to 1000 cycles to reach 80% of battery life, hasn't it?

As you said, sometimes we take so much care of the battery and it has the same useful life as a person who doesn't take care of it 😅

 

[AlmightyKang]

Worth also considering it as a resource which is used up intentionally. Everything has a finite life. I would aim for 3 years ownership with AppleCare, buy a new machine and sell the old one (do not trade it in - poor financial choice!). Factor this into your financial plan and consider it a monthly cost. Let the person you sell it to worry about all the problems!

If you run like that, you always have a warrantied battery which will be replaced if it goes under 80%. Everything is not a problem then. Less worry, nice fresh machine every 3 years.

 

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

Worth also considering it as a resource which is used up intentionally. Everything has a finite life. I would aim for 3 years ownership with AppleCare, buy a new machine and sell the old one (do not trade it in - poor financial choice!). Factor this into your financial plan and consider it a monthly cost. Let the person you sell it to worry about all the problems!

If you run like that, you always have a warrantied battery which will be replaced if it goes under 80%. Everything is not a problem then. Less worry, nice fresh machine every 3 years.

Actually AppleCare is perfect, but here in Brazil, like the price of all Apple products, it is a fortune.

 

[Mockletoy]

I've got a Late 2013 13" MacBook Pro that only has a few dozen battery cycles and has sat plugged in (mainly acting as a home server) for years and years. I've done almost nothing to baby the battery or try to keep it from wearing out. It still has 90% battery health.

The next person who posts might tell you the story of a well-cared-for and much newer machine with far worse results.

My iPhone 14 Pro Max is much newer than my old MacBook, and I've at least somewhat tried to charge the battery responsibly, but it also has about 90% battery health after less than two years.

So, just use your device. A huge amount of how things go is just luck.

 

[RockyW]

Oh this age old question is a classic here and can span hundreds of replies to a thread. You're right, 20-80% is indeed the magic range and even battery optimization will at times charge to 100% when not sitting on 80%. Third party Apps like AlDente can limit this if you're mostly hooked up to power.

So you will now get many replies of differences in battery chemical aging, not to micro manage, get on with more important things in life and just replace this (battery) consumable device when needed.

I also understand your OP and do try to get the most out of a battery without this impeding or limiting my actual usage on a grand scale. As an example, my iP 13 Mini is now on 90% health after 15 months of what I call reasonable precautions i.e. 5W charger use and charging "as little as possible", whilst others here are still in their high 90s, not caring at all. I've started also to use tethered Car Play, that inevitably charges when plugged in, once more disrupting a patterned use. Not just that, but I had battery optimization (on the iP) only work properly for 4 months after initial purchase.

In a way I'm not really offering much good advice but to say that it's almost a luck of the battery lotto and that your device usage should never be limited to attempting to save an extra couple weeks worth of battery health. But yes, I absolutely "get" both sides of the argument.

On another note. I have a smart charger for the LiPo of an RC car and the battery feels like it has not lost an ounce of health after many many years. The charger includes functions such as balancing between the two cells, discharge and a "storage" voltage.

I realize I've said a lot without really saying anything

I love this reply so much. So often online, in responses, you see a condescending (that is when someone is talking down to you) tone running through someone's post and I love the balance provided in your reply. It feels like this is what is lacking a lot on forums these days or even the internet in general - understanding that your opinion doesn't mean you're right and you have the awareness that you can see both sides.

My thoughts on the battery, I have a MacBook Pro 2016 that is now always plugged into the monitor, I have had battery optimisation turned on since whenever it was an option and it seems to have done an amazing job with battery health. Due to it's age it doesn't show the percentage of health in the settings but in system report it does say "Normal" which for a laptop coming up to 8 years old and has been used extensively in that time I would say that is nothing short of incredible.

My personal theory is that like any battery, the main culprit for battery health reduction is heat rather than charging habits, its why I try to steer away from charging my iPhone with a magsafe due to the heat it generates at times.

I did get an M3 MBA a few days ago and I have looked into using AlDente but the list of reasons why it is a waste of money is as long as my arm and I don't think there is a definitive answer if it helps.

 

[throAU]

I learned from the internet that the ideal is to always keep the battery between 20 and 80%, according to the Battery Optimization itself. The extremes are bad.

Just use the thing, do not install battery management or monitoring software and enjoy the machine. I've had many MacBooks and they've all had batteries that have lasted 5+ years at which point the machine is pretty much due for replacement.

The lowest I've seen is just under 90% after 5 years with no special management or faffing about. Screwing about limiting/using less of the battery to preserve the battery (why? if you aren't using it?!) is just.... weird.

Apple's inbuilt battery management already does optimized charging to try help with this these days.

And yes, the biggest killer of batteries is excessive heat. Try to keep the machine cool. This is well known, and I've seen stats from our corporate UPS vendor that every 5C increase in temp above 25C reduces battery longevity by something like 10%


This article is for lead-acid car batteries, Lithium Ion aren't exactly the same but the same basic concept applies. Heat is bad:

Why Hot Temperatures Reduce the Lifespan of Batteries

Hot temperatures reduce the lifespan of batteries

www.midtronics.com

 

[throAU]

Don't worry about it.

My MBP is usually run to 100% and tanked to 0% on a regular basis and left on charge for 2-3 days at a time and the machine has had the crap hammered out of it most of that time. The battery health is at 93% after 2 years and I can't honestly tell any difference from new.

My M1 Pro MBP is on 93% after almost 3 years and has been similarly treated.

Also worth noting that the battery capacity measurement is not 100% accurate, either. It's an estimate and is NOT precise. So people really need to stop sweating over a couple of percentage points either way - because it simply isn't that accurate!

 

[Mockletoy]

I did get an M3 MBA a few days ago and I have looked into using AlDente but the list of reasons why it is a waste of money is as long as my arm and I don't think there is a definitive answer if it helps.

The thing is, Apple's built-in battery care on Macs is very dumb and rigid. You need to have a super regular schedule for it to keep your machine appropriately charged, or you need to just leave it plugged in at least mostly all the time, and then it'll keep it somewhat reliably at 80%.

Al Dente will let you take a lot more granular control of it, but then what should you actually do with it? Limit it to, say, 70-80% always? So you're permanently giving up X% of your available battery life now in the hopes that your battery won't degrade down to that same level in the future? I mean ... why, you know?

"Oh, I better limit myself to 80% of my available battery life all the time so that my battery doesn't degrade down to 80% too fast!" That doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

Otherwise, you have to set up charging schedules (meaning you have a steady routine, which the built-in battery management could learn, so you don't need any hacks to begin with). Or you have to remember to wake your Mac and tell it to top itself up a hour or two before you know you're gonna need it, which you might not even know if you don't have a strict schedule, so you're stuck with the same reduced battery life you're trying to avoid being stuck with by babying your battery?

It's a hard problem and solutions like Al Dente work for a lot of people, but for me it's just too fiddly. It's just one more thing for me to have to fuss over when I could be doing literally anything else, so I just make sure I keep my AppleCare current, try to avoid draining the battery to 0% or letting it sit for ages at 100%, and use the device however I need to use it to be productive or simply enjoy it.

 

[jdb8167]

The thing is, Apple's built-in battery care on Macs is very dumb and rigid. You need to have a super regular schedule for it to keep your machine appropriately charged, or you need to just leave it plugged in at least mostly all the time, and then it'll keep it somewhat reliably at 80%.

Apple's Optimized Battery Charging (OBC) seems to work for me pretty well. I use my MacBook Air every work day on battery for 8-10 hours. I plug it in when I get home at night. Most times the battery charging will charge to 80% until early in the morning at which time it will charge to 100%. My M3 MacBook Air is pretty new and checking on the 24-hour log it looks like it charged to 100% a few hours after plugging it in and didn't wait until morning. I haven't been checking recently and maybe I haven't used the MBA enough yet for the OBC to kick in yet. I don't worry about it much. My M2 MBA definitely did the wait until morning thing most of the time.

One dumb thing though is that the OBC never figured out that I don't usually use the MacBook Air on battery on weekends. It stays plugged in to a dock on my desk. It still always charged to 100% early on Saturday morning on my M2 MBA.

 

[throAU]

Battery charging optimization is a hard problem that no automated thing will get 100% right all the time.

Apple's optimized charging does a pretty good job, considering.

If you think you can do better manually or whatever, turn it off.


However, I've got machines that lasted 6-9 years without ANY battery management and were still well above 80%

 

[BR4DOKYBrazil]

Thanks for the answers.

I generally charge my Macbook while using it in my office and with the Air Conditioning on, so I don't really have any problems with battery temperature.

I'm going to try to use the Macbook without neuroses, but taking the necessary precautions to keep the battery healthy.

 

[krspkbl]

I am one to talk because I like to keep my devices between 20-80% but seriously just use it whatever way you want. Batteries will die one day sooner or later. Your battery is going to hold up just fine over the years of it's intended life span and if it doesn't then it's defective (which you might be able to get replaced under warranty), you probably won't care anymore, or pay to replace it, or have bought a new device anyway.

Not everyone cares about their battery and will not bother worry about it. They use it as they need to. Device makers know this and will take it into account. Loads of people will run their phone/laptop and let it charge fully and keep using it for hours.

I think most devices now have a software limit. I mean, say you charge it to 100% that doesn't mean the physical capacity of the battery is at 100%. It could be at something like 80-90%. Over time the software will adjust this so maybe in 3-4 years when it says 100% it'll be at 85-95% and then 90-100% then 100%.