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Huh? MacBook Pro at 96% charge, Coconut Battery says 91%

Prof.

Prof.

macrumors 603
Original poster
Aug 17, 2007
5,372
2,197
Chicagoland
Hey, Y'all -

I have the new 13" Pro. And there is always a 4 to 6 percent difference in battery status between the top menu bar and coconut battery. Is this something to worry about? With my 15" Pro, coconut battery and the menu bar are always perfectly synced.

Here's a screen shot of it as it's charging.
 

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Prof. said:
Hey, Y'all -

I have the new 13" Pro. And there is always a 4 to 6 percent difference in battery status between the top menu bar and coconut battery. Is this something to worry about? With my 15" Pro, coconut battery and the menu bar are always perfectly synced.
Click to expand...

What is coconut battery?
 
Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Things can fluctuate a bit, and it may just be reading something different. Though I personally haven't seen it be off by more than about 2-3% I'm sure it can happen.

It could also be something different on the new model that coconut battery hasn't been updated to work with. When my Late 2008 MacBook came out it had like 130% charge remaining when it was full, lol. The parameters in coconut battery didn't reflect what the battery actually had.

I did a quick check just to see, but I'm on my old iBook. It shows up right here anyway :) Even nearly a decade later.

Uc4QE8u.jpg
 
Prof. said:
Hey, Y'all -



I have the new 13" Pro. And there is always a 4 to 6 percent difference in battery status between the top menu bar and coconut battery. Is this something to worry about? With my 15" Pro, coconut battery and the menu bar are always perfectly synced.



Here's a screen shot of it as it's charging.
Click to expand...


That's interesting. I've always known CB to be in sync with my system's battery %. It's probably a bug. Hopefully it gets fixed with an update. Maybe email the developer and see if they're aware of the issue.
 
Prof. said:
Hey, Y'all -

I have the new 13" Pro. And there is always a 4 to 6 percent difference in battery status between the top menu bar and coconut battery. Is this something to worry about? With my 15" Pro, coconut battery and the menu bar are always perfectly synced.

Here's a screen shot of it as it's charging.
Click to expand...
It's common. coconutBattery has a history of issues with inaccuracy.
 
My personal opinion is that the coconut app causes people to obsess over the battery. I'd not worry about what it reports and just enjoy your computer.
 
GGJstudios said:
It's common. coconutBattery has a history of issues with inaccuracy.
Click to expand...

maflynn said:
My personal opinion is that the coconut app causes people to obsess over the battery. I'd not worry about what it reports and just enjoy your computer.
Click to expand...
This is what I was thinking, but when a college student drops $1,500 on a new computer for school, we tend to overanalyze :p
 
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The displayed percentages are just estimates. There will always be variation. You could potentially have two of the exact same MBP running the exact same apps and the percentage could vary a bit.


maflynn said:
My personal opinion is that the coconut app causes people to obsess over the battery. I'd not worry about what it reports and just enjoy your computer.
Click to expand...

I agree. The best decision I ever made was turning battery percentages off on all my devices. Now I don't obsess over it nearly as much as I used to. The only time I re-enable it is when my battery is low and I need to keep working but don't have an outlet nearby.
 
I have noticed differences between OSX and iStatus percentages, but never more than maybe 2-3%. It seems like a known issue with Coconut Battery.
 
Prof. said:
Is this something to worry about?
Click to expand...

Coconut battery is accurate. If you look in System Report you will see it always shows the same readings as Coconut battery.

What is gong on there is OS X fudges those % numbers in the menu bar, I suspect so people don't get concerned about small fluctuations.

IbJcKH7.png
 
Weaselboy said:
Coconut battery is accurate. If you look in System Report you will see it always shows the same readings as Coconut battery.

What is gong on there is OS X fudges those % numbers in the menu bar, I suspect so people don't get concerned about small fluctuations.

Image
Click to expand...
This is what mine says at the moment... The menu bar says 100%
 

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Prof. said:
Hey, Y'all -

I have the new 13" Pro. And there is always a 4 to 6 percent difference in battery status between the top menu bar and coconut battery. Is this something to worry about? With my 15" Pro, coconut battery and the menu bar are always perfectly synced.

Here's a screen shot of it as it's charging.
Click to expand...

First post but I just purchased a new rMBP 13" and I'm having the same issue. I am very pleased with the computer and researched what should be done with a brand new computer. I ran across "calibrating the battery" but it was very vague on which models it applied to. I later find that newer macbook's with builtin batteries don't need calibrated but I had already done it. (charged for two hours, then used it till it went to sleep at 0% battery, let it sit drained for 5+ hours, then charged it to full battery.

What I noticed was it took an abnormal amount of time to get to 100%, it was at 96% in 2ish hours and then it estimated another 44 minutes to get to 100%. It then reached 100% very soon after that but I started digging and found coconutBattery. I downloaded it and it reads a 5% difference from what the status bar says. I'm not sure if the battery calibration (not even requried for my computer) is what caused this or this is maybe a bug with CB or something is wrong with my battery.

Currently sitting at 74% in status bar with it reading 8:49 remaining (it's read 8:49 this for the past 10 minutes) and 70.8% in coconutBattery.

Did you let yours die on battery power or has yours had this difference since you got the computer?

Thanks
 
Androlison said:
I'm not sure if the battery calibration (not even requried for my computer) is what caused this or this is maybe a bug with CB or something is wrong with my battery.
Click to expand...

You don't need to calibrate the battery and Coconut Battery is accurate. Read back through the examples with screenshots in the thread. All that is going on is the OS does not accurately display the % in the menu bar, presumable so people do not become overly concerned about small changes in battery percentage.

There is nothing wrong with your Mac and what you are seeing it totally normal.
 
Weaselboy said:
You don't need to calibrate the battery and Coconut Battery is accurate. Read back through the examples with screenshots in the thread. All that is going on is the OS does not accurately display the % in the menu bar, presumable so people do not become overly concerned about small changes in battery percentage.

There is nothing wrong with your Mac and what you are seeing it totally normal.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. After further research I did find that the newer MacBooks don't need calibrating and I will no longer do that process.
My concern was that I had already completed that calibrate process and then saw the 5 % difference between CB and my status bar. I never checked CB before I began the calibration process so I don't actually know if before I did that process, CB and my status bar read the same percentage or they may have still read a 5% difference.

I've found quite a few threads where people are seeing similar 5% discrepancies between their mac's status bar and CB. I'm wondering if they too let their battery die on battery power to 0%.

I'm beginning to think it's normal, it just bugs me because others see very accurate (identical) percentages between the two.

That being said, I'm going to use it normally for the next week and see how my battery life is.

I just want to most out of my investment.

Thanks
 
Which do you guys find to be the better App: Battery Coconut or Battery Health?

Thank you
 
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