I have 91 % battery health after 129 cycles. How much cycles should it take to get to 91 %. Also is it safe to charge through usb c hubs? Using m1 Macbook Air
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Is 91% battery health after 129 cycles considered good for a MacBook Air?
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I don't have a MacBook Air but I have a MacBook Pro M1 Max with the following battery health Information:
Cycle Count: 722
Condition: Normal
Maximum Capacity: 86%
I bought the laptop on launch day in 2021. The battery health in my case was at 99% when I had around 100-130 cycles. I don't think 91% battery health is normal at 129 cycles.
Cycle Count: 722
Condition: Normal
Maximum Capacity: 86%
I bought the laptop on launch day in 2021. The battery health in my case was at 99% when I had around 100-130 cycles. I don't think 91% battery health is normal at 129 cycles.
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Based on just the cycle count that does not sound good at all. How long have you had the Air? Have you often kept the battery at 100%? Have you ever left it at 0%? Or do you try to keep it between 20% and 80% to prolong its life?
No, it's pretty bad. The battery can take 1,000 cycles under ideal conditions. But it's lost 9/20% and the replacement threshold is 80%. This means 9/20 = 45% gone.
The notebook was probably plugged and kept at 100% for a long time.
The notebook was probably plugged and kept at 100% for a long time.
If the OP's had the Air for a full 3 years, 91% isn't terrible even if 91% is otherwise atypical for 129 cycles. But yeah, without knowing more, I assumed the same as you did that it was plugged in all the time. I've been guilty of that mistake before myself.
Mine started dropping about 1% health per charge cycle at around 40 charge cycles until I switched to slow charging with Ikea Askstorm dual 5W (overnight when laptop is powered off) and 18W (while laptop in use) charger. Too bad Ikea stopped selling it.
Age is just as important as the number of cycles.
My M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro, which by now is about 3 years old, also shows a battery health of 91% but with only 74 cycles.
My M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro, which by now is about 3 years old, also shows a battery health of 91% but with only 74 cycles.
There are other chargers that supply both USB-C PD and 5W USB-A. It's possible to slow charge the M1 Air overnight using a normal 5W USB charger.
My M1 Air has been in daily use since November 2020 (I bought it at launch) and the battery info says:
Health Information:
Cycle Count: 377
Condition: Normal
Maximum Capacity: 85%
Also amount of time spent plugged in and charged up to 100%. At 100% charge the cell voltages are at their highest and the chemical deterioration maximum. That is why Apple have been introducing OBC (Optimised Battery Charging) and third party apps (like AlDente and Energiza) have become popular ...to reduce time spent at high charge level.
Apples OBC has never worked on my mostly-plugged-in MBAs so I have been using AlDente to limit max charge to 60%. Current machine M2 MBA is 68 cycles, 100% Apple Health (not same number used by Coconut and third party apps)
You can't really say that. Batteries that stay plugged in all the time tend to not age well. It doesn't mean that it couldn't age well and everyone's battery situation is different.
The way you use your computer and how hot it is in your environment are just a few other factors that can affect how gracefully your battery ages. Also, people just get lucky or unlucky in the battery lottery.
If you're above 90% after 10 years of any kind of use, I'd say you're one of the lucky winners of the battery lottery. Batteries will degrade just through the passing of time alone.
To clarify: I meant during the time span OP declared. Don't you agree? In ten years time OP's MBA will have 10% left, with the same rate of decline.
The health number isn’t very scientific and comparing numbers between different sources (macOS’s built in vs coconutBattery’s health estimates) doesn’t really make sense.
Could be, can’t extrapolate 10 years ahead based on a single datapoint.
My previous MacBook Pro’s battery degraded very quickly because it was always plugged into the socket. The battery dropped below 80% with about 250 cycles. Since I bought the new MacBook Pro 16 inch 2021 back in October of that year I use it more often on battery and less time plugged into the socket over long periods of time and the battery health is still phenomenal after 3 years and 722 cycles.
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Well, going to the battery all the time can also backfire, though.
A problem with all of these battery discussions is that we talk about cycles as if they're all the same. Battery health is complicated.
If I speed drain my battery in one hour by compressing 4K video and you drain it over 8 hours just browsing basic websites, we both have used one cycle, but my one cycle would have been much more stressful and likely to degrade the battery.
I would definitely try to get Apple to either replace the battery or the unit itself. I don't care how much battery that would've been left ten years from now. 91% after 129 load cycles is rubbish. You are entitled to the opposite opinion, of course.
That would be a waste of time. Apple as a general rule will not perform warranty replacements for a battery until it falls below 80%.
I tried. I had a battery go from 100 to 83% in 16 months and my AppleCare was ending. I gave it a shot. They wouldn’t do it. Their diagnostics said it was acceptable and the answer was final. Well known tech personalities have attempted to get battery replacements before 80% and were denied.
So I paid for another year of AppleCare expecting to need it very soon, but I never got that battery replacement. Why? Because after 1 more year, it was 85% so I bought one more year of AppleCare. It was 84% by the time my AppleCare ran out after 5 years of ownership.
Either my own readings were inaccurate or the battery had 2 years of exceptional health. Battery aging isn’t linear and the health readings are notoriously noisy. You won’t get far by insisting a battery that still meets Apple’s battery health minimum standards is rubbish.
For the record, that battery is now at 3 years out from that day I tried to get a new battery. Current health? 83% in Coconut Battery. (All readings are from Coconut Battery and not the Apple Battery Health tool.)
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The battery capacity is likely lower than actual. The number provided by Apple is often optimistic and never pessimistic.
Plenty of people running around with “100%” day one iPhone 14s for example.
It depends on what those cycles were. =Did you let it go to "dead" and then recharge to 100%? Doing the 129 times will use up more battery life than if you cycled from 40% to 80% 129 times.
Apple will not replace a battery that still has 91%. That would be nuts. The battery is still good. But if it falls below 80% then they will replace it.
But battery capacity is very non-linear. You lost 9% on 129 cycles but, I bet you only loose another 4% in the next 129 cycles andafter another 129 it goes down only about 2%, So after 400 cycles you'd still be above 80%
My memory is that in the very early days of Silicon Macs with Big Sur there was a problem (can't recall what it was) with certain pass through USB hubs. It was fixed in a dot release of macOS 11 and has not been heard of since.