What's wrong with my Battery?!

[Burnsey]

A few days ago I took my MBP to class at university, and when it booted up I noticed it had only ~45min of battery life. I checked the health in iStat and saw that it had a very low health:

The thing is though halfway through the battery, the health shot up to 88% or so, and my battery life returned to sane amounts. So I thought it was just a calibrating issue, took the computer home, drained the battery, and recharged it after a couple of hours.

next boot, everything was fine and dandy (though still at 88% health which bothered me a bit). The problem is that halfway through that, the battery health suddenly fell again to the same amount as attached above, and my battery life took a dive. So yet again I took it home and calibrated it. However now whenever I run it on battery, no matter how many times I calibrate it, the health stays at 25%. Sometimes it goes up to 27%, but overall it's really low.

Right now with my battery, no matter how often it is used, calibrated or recharged, I get a steady 25% health and ~50min battery life. What's wrong with it? and given the low amount of cycles relative to the health, is there grounds for a replacement battery on this 1.5 year old out of warranty and non-applecared computer?

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Your battery is new enough (judging from the specs of the machine) that it should be covered under warranty, just give Apple Care a call.

 

[alphaod]

If you still have AppleCare, then you can get a replacement; it's possible your battery is messed up.

 

[Burnsey]

Well as mentioned in the post the computer is now over 1 years old and is out of warranty. I do not have Apple care. What about apple's under 300 cycles replacement thing?

 

[alphaod]

Well as mentioned in the post the computer is now over 1 years old and is out of warranty. I do not have Apple care. What about apple's under 300 cycles replacement thing?

The 300 cycle thing is just Apple's line of when they can refuse to give a new battery replacement; it's also the designed spec maximum for Li-Ion battery--AKA they know that around 300 cycles the cells will start die and capacity will decrease. If you're capacity is under 50% (or it fluctuates), you can get a replacement usually if you're under AppleCare and the cycles is below 300.

I didn't see the last line; well you pretty much have to get a new battery. Though you can set up an appointment with the Apple Genius and they can diagnose to see whether it's your battery or power system (integrated into logic/planar board)

 

[e12a]

I had a similar problem with my battery suddenly dropping health. At the time I had the 2.33 MBP, and after the battery update it seemed to kill my battery, sending the health to 34% at 68 cycles (i remember it vividly). I was able to get it replaced, 11 months old and i had applecare.

you can try going to an applestore as mentioned earlier. They may make an exception.

 

[kaltsasa]

One or more of the cells in the battery is failing. It's happened to me, thought at only 83 cycles you might take it in and see what they can do. I wouldn't expect to see cell issues till 200+ cycles, this battery may be generally defective and they may replace it anyway.