Macbook Pro(early 2008) battery issues

[ron11612002]

I recently replaced the battery in my macbook pro(early 2008). I'm getting roughly 3 hours of battery life on a full charge. I bought this battery from a local Apple dealer. I am concerned that he sold me a used battery.

My questions are : How many hours should you get from these batteries on a full charge? and Is 3 hours on a full charge an acceptable/normal time?

any feedback is appreciated. thanks.

 

[miles01110]

Depends on what you're doing. Do a search and you'll find lots of people with the same "problem" that isn't really a problem.

 

[GGJstudios]

I recently replaced the battery in my macbook pro(early 2008). I'm getting roughly 3 hours of battery life on a full charge. I bought this battery from a local Apple dealer. I am concerned that he sold me a used battery.

My questions are : How many hours should you get from these batteries on a full charge? and Is 3 hours on a full charge an acceptable/normal time?

any feedback is appreciated. thanks.

You can use iStat Pro to see how many cycles are on the battery, which would be an indication if it's used or not. It's not likely that any Apple dealer would sell a used battery. As for battery life, read the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[oxfordguy]

I recently replaced the battery in my macbook pro(early 2008). I'm getting roughly 3 hours of battery life on a full charge. I bought this battery from a local Apple dealer. I am concerned that he sold me a used battery.

My questions are : How many hours should you get from these batteries on a full charge? and Is 3 hours on a full charge an acceptable/normal time?

any feedback is appreciated. thanks.

3 hours sounds reasonable for that model, I barely get 2 hours from my early-2008 MBP original battery (on 277 cycles), even when new I don't remember get much more than 3 hours of actual use. This site suggests "offical" battery life for this model is 5 hours, but even Apple said that this "depends on configuration and use" and the "wireless productivity test measured battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%".

Perhaps more relevant is this article on battery life in "real world" tests e.g.

"The (early-2008)15-inch 2.5 GHz MacBook Pro's battery life improved significantly, about 21 percent over the previous model, lasting 2 hours and 55 minutes, compared with 2 hours and 25 minutes for the 2.2 GHz model. The battery boost for the new 17-inch model is a less-impressive 5 percent: 2 hours and 53 minutes for the 2.5 GHz model as opposed to 2 hours and 45 minutes for the previous 2.4 GHz model.

In a likely less stressful "battery drain" test, C|Net reported that:

We got an impressive 4 hours and 23 minutes with our battery drain test -- that's 47 minutes more than the older version of the MacBook Pro, and 20 minutes more than the MacBook Air."

The battery life of new Macbook Pros is much better than the older ones (even with new batteries), so don't expect to get 6-7 hours from a battery for an early-2008 Macbook Pro.

Hope this helps!

 

[ron11612002]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Oxfordguy, thanks for the invaluable articles you provided on the performance of the battery. I'm happy to know that my battery is running at normal capacity for its generation.

Hopefully I will continue to get greater longevity for my MBP.