MacBook Air late 2018 - only 3h battery life after 500 cycles

[bearinthetown]

I have MacBook Air late 2018 with 16 GB RAM and maxed out CPU. I always complain about battery life with my Apple devices and I never know how people achieve good battery lives.

After 2 and a half years and 500 cycles, my battery lasts just 3 hours. Can someone share their REAL battery lives with MacBook Air 2018 or newer, with information about the cycles?

I'm using Google Chrome, pretty sure it doesn't help. But 3 hours? Come on

 

[xboxbml]

I have MacBook Air late 2018 with 16 GB RAM and maxed out CPU. I always complain about battery life with my Apple devices and I never know how people achieve good battery lives.

After 2 and a half years and 500 cycles, my battery lasts just 3 hours. Can someone share their REAL battery lives with MacBook Air 2018 or newer, with information about the cycles?

I'm using Google Chrome, pretty sure it doesn't help. But 3 hours? Come on

Yeah chrome doesn’t help!..which OS version? Have you tried resetting PRAM/SMC?..

 

[bearinthetown]

Newest version and yeah - I reset PRAM/SMC from time to time, because it's what Apple suggests every time something's broken. It helps one in fifty times, so...

 

[auxbuss]

Mine's the basic 8Gb/128Gb from Nov 2018 and still on Catalina. Cycle count:179. I haven't noticed any battery degradation yet. I routinely get 8 hours or so, perhaps 14 if I'm just writing. I don't use Chrome, though. Watching videos using Iina, the machine uses 10%/hour.

 

[ghanwani]

Do you have coconutBattery? If not, download it and see what it says for the % of design capacity of your battery.

I have a 2019 MBA with 906 cycles and ~85% design capacity. Mine lasts about 4-5 hours if I'm in heavy use (i.e. zoom calls for the entire time), closer to 4. Otherwise, for average use it's about 5-6 hours, closer to 6.

If the % of design capacity is < 80%, you should probably get the battery replaced. Based on what you report, I would guess % of design capacity is probably in the 50-60% range.

 

[daabido]

My early 2017 Air only lasted about 350 cycles according to Coconut Battery and was down to about 70% of it's original charge.

I bought a Newer Tech battery and replaced it less than a week ago. The "new" battery was older than my computer (according to Coconut), but it seems to be working.

My Air lived mostly on power so maybe why the battery didn't last long. Definitely get the Coconut and check out what's happening.

 

[xboxbml]

My early 2017 Air only lasted about 350 cycles according to Coconut Battery and was down to about 70% of it's original charge.

I bought a Newer Tech battery and replaced it less than a week ago. The "new" battery was older than my computer (according to Coconut), but it seems to be working.

My Air lived mostly on power so maybe why the battery didn't last long. Definitely get the Coconut and check out what's happening.

I may be wrong about this... but I theorize that a non-Apple replacement battery will basically be a "clone" of an original, circuit board wise.. Coconut will show you the serial # of the battery, meaning it has some board in it. So I believe that every Apple machine destined battery a supplier makes, looks exactly like every other battery it ships, for a particular model machine.

 

[ulf01]

I have the same issue with my MacBook Pro 2018.
Thanks for the coconutbattery-link!

The design capacity is 5088 mAh. The current full charge capacity is 3590 mAh. This is 70.5% after 482 cycles only. In real life I barely reach 2hrs of battery life time.

I have always treated the battery well, very rarely fully discharged, never stored in extremen heat/sun etc.
I have been chatting with Apple Support and they don't seem to care. Just recommending to get a new battery installed - but apparently I should pay for this.

I this really Apples way to handle quality issues?

 

[ulf01]

Appel's reply:
"I really am sorry for this. This is not the experience that Apple wants you to have. But, we don’t have any options to enroll your device for free battery replacement. You will be charged for the battery replacement as the device is out of warranty."

 

[adrianlondon]

Use Activity Monitor, or "top -o cpu" in Terminal, to see if there are any processes that continually use lots of resources.

Also, I use the following Applescript to see what health my battery has. I'm sure apps like Coconut-something do a prettier job but the info is the same.

applescript: make your own battery health meter

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about how to extract numbers from strings. That led one reader to wonder what use they could make of such a handler. That sounded like an invitation for a little App…

applehelpwriter.wordpress.com

 

[bearinthetown]

Hi ulf01, can you please tell me what you normally do on your MacBook? My recent finding is that it's actually common for users working with quite have apps to get just a couple of hours. I wish I knew that, because I lost a lot of nerves with people saying I'm lying or I'm stupid and can't measure my battery life properly. When I'm doing my work, I'm getting around 3.5-4h. But with light usage it's more. So, most users are just light users.

 

[ulf01]

Hi ulf01, can you please tell me what you normally do on your MacBook? My recent finding is that it's actually common for users working with quite have apps to get just a couple of hours. I wish I knew that, because I lost a lot of nerves with people saying I'm lying or I'm stupid and can't measure my battery life properly. When I'm doing my work, I'm getting around 3.5-4h. But with light usage it's more. So, most users are just light users.

I mostly sit on my sofa and browse the internet with Safari: News, LinkedIn, Facebook, little video only. In parallel sometimes the WhatsApp-App is open and email certainly.