I just bought an M1 MBP and am charging using an iPad 20W charger instead of the supplied 61W charger. I don't need to charge up quickly so I’m deliberately slow charging to hopefully minimize stress on the battery and keep my battery health up for as long as possible. Does anyone else do this? Trying to determine if I should bother with this practice or just use the standard charger as nature intended.
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Deliberate slow charging to preserve battery health
- Thread starter Hey Now
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this seems great if you’re charging overnight. Fast charging by its very nature will degrade it faster
Interesting approach. I would tend to trust that Apple has set up the battery management software to provide a good balance between battery life and fast charging, but using the lower wattage charger for those times when you're not needing a faster charge may be smart.
Someone here who is more knowledgeable regarding battery technology can probably address this further, if they happen to notice your post and care to provide their input. In the meantime, you won't know if this is beneficial for at least a couple of years, so I'm assuming that you are planning on keeping your MacBook for a reasonably long time??
Someone here who is more knowledgeable regarding battery technology can probably address this further, if they happen to notice your post and care to provide their input. In the meantime, you won't know if this is beneficial for at least a couple of years, so I'm assuming that you are planning on keeping your MacBook for a reasonably long time??
That whole fast charging thing has me a bit nervous for the reasons you outlined. The kind of things I do are battery killers so I don't want to add any extra stress on the battery if I can help it. Still, if I'm on the run and I need a fast top-up I'll appreciate that fast charge. I'll just avoid using it when I don't need it unless I hear otherwise that it's entirely OK to do so.
I found my 20W iPad charger charges the 14" MBP from 20% to 100% in about 4 hrs. I am not doing this to preserve battery health, but it is very convenient when traveling to only have to carry one small 20W charger and one USB-C cable to charge either iPad or MBP. (I generally don't use them simultaneously.)
If you have a usbc cable with a lightning device, different lightning adapters have different watt ratings
Forgot to add the link for the AlDente app ... https://apphousekitchen.com.
I bought apple care so I don't care to preserve the battery but I feel I may never get my moneys worth since I can't get this MacBook to go lower than 80% battery before I'm done using it. Wonder if I can get it to 0% in a long day of use.
I'm giving AlDente a try. If it does what it says it will, it's going to be totally worth the money in a couple of years. My battery is set to charge to 80% and the rest of the settings are in the screenshot before. Anybody else who's used this for a while have any feedback?
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Did you pay for the premium version of it? My version does not look like that. I have used it on my 2018 15" and I keep it between 75-80% and every 2 weeks or so, I will charge it to 100% and drain it to 20% as a calibration.
You can also use the MagSafe 3 cable with a lower-powered USB-C charger - which is what I do at the office where I have my 87 watt brick from my old 2018 machine.
