Service battery (33 months old)

[emembee]

My 2012 13inch Air (8/256 1.8 i5) is under 3 years old (bought Jan 2013) but have just seen a Service Battery under the menu top bar icon. Using Coconut Battery tells me the capacity is down to 76% and load cycles are 280, is that why I have the Service message, and would I need to get a replacement battery?

I am running latest El Capitan and only just seen this issue so maybe it is related, or do Apple want customers to get batteries changed if under 80% charge?

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[keysofanxiety]

My 2012 13inch Air (8/256 1.8 i5) is under 3 years old (bought Jan 2013) but have just seen a Service Battery under the menu top bar icon. Using Coconut Battery tells me the capacity is down to 76% and load cycles are 280, is that why I have the Service message, and would I need to get a replacement battery?

I am running latest El Capitan and only just seen this issue so maybe it is related, or do Apple want customers to get batteries changed if under 80% charge?

Thanks for any ideas.

Do you have AppleCare? If you do, they now cover batteries under the extended warranty, so I'd go and get that sorted ASAP.

 

[emembee]

Do you have AppleCare? If you do, they now cover batteries under the extended warranty, so I'd go and get that sorted ASAP.

No I don't. Guess I need a genius!

 

[rigormortis]

id try charging it to 100 % , and reset pram and smc before paying $129 at the apple store.
. i had a service battery once, and it went away.. its supposed to be 80 % at 1000 cycles

12-inch MacBook,
13-inch/15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display $199

17-inch MacBook Pro $179

11-inch/13-inch MacBook Air,
13-inch MacBook,
13-inch/15-inch MacBook Pro $129

 

[emembee]

Just today the service battery display has gone, despite it bring 77%, so no idea what happened but in System Profile it puts battery health as 'good'.

So I will just hang on I think and not look at a new battery ... though not getting much more than about 3 hours but I can live with that anyway.

 

[Kaylor]

Just today the service battery display has gone, despite it bring 77%, so no idea what happened but in System Profile it puts battery health as 'good'.

So I will just hang on I think and not look at a new battery ... though not getting much more than about 3 hours but I can live with that anyway.

The battery in my 2012 13" alternated between "replace now" and "good" for a while until one day my battery life dropped drastically and I started getting really sporadic battery readings [my battery would go from 100% to ~60% in the span of 10 minutes or so, then up to ~80%, then suddenly to ~10%, and my MBA would just shut off]. It turned out that all of the cells in my battery had failed catastrophically.

I don't mean to scare you, but there's a possibility that's what's going on.