Battery capacity and loadcycles

My laptops only 8 months old and the capacity is at 84% already.
I know more the loadcycles the worse but Im still not sure how it works!

Do not rely on Coconut, compare the reading with the one in About this Mac>More Info>System Report

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MBP 17" Battery Capacity and Run Times : Survey

I've had 2 MBP 17's so far, and I'd like to get a general idea from everyone about their battery capacity and run times they are experiencing.
My first MBP17 had a Full Charge Capacity of ~5900mAh before calibration and PMU reset, and 6800mAh after. This translated to about 3:40 of run time under light load.
My current MBP17 had a Full Charge Capacity of ~5899mAh before calibration and PMU reset, and 6942mAh after (currently). This translates to about 3:48 of runtime....still trying to get some more real-world run time numbers under different loads.
This proves to me that it is quite critical to calibrate your battery and reset your PMU at least once to ensure that your battery is reporting it's correct capacity. I'd be interested to know what everyone else's batteries are reporting.

I've had 2 MBP 17's so far, and I'd like to get a
general idea from everyone about their battery
capacity and run times they are experiencing.
My first MBP17 had a Full Charge Capacity of ~5900mAh
before calibration and PMU reset, and 6800mAh after.
This translated to about 3:40 of run time under light
load.
My current MBP17 had a Full Charge Capacity of
~5899mAh before calibration and PMU reset, and
6942mAh after (currently). This translates to about
3:48 of runtime....still trying to get some more
real-world run time numbers under different loads.
This proves to me that it is quite critical to
calibrate your battery and reset your PMU at least
once to ensure that your battery is reporting it's
correct capacity. I'd be interested to know what
everyone else's batteries are reporting.
Battery Information:
Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 6864
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 6862
Amperage (mA): -469
Voltage (mV): 12436
Cycle Count: 2
William

Battery Capacity And Charging

My MBP's battery has an original battery capacity of 6300mAh.
When fully charged its capacity is at just under 6800mAh.
I guess this would be considered overcharging; could this cause problems of any kind?

My replacement battery started with just under 6800 mAh, and over time drifted downward (which is normal) then stabilized (at around 91% health ±5%, where it's remained since about cycle 30). While it's above 6300 mAh, iStat and CoconutBattery will report health as 100%.
As Kappy stated, the 6300 mAh value (rounded up from 6296 mAh, actually) is a nominal value, calculated from the wattage and voltage specifications of the battery. Individual batteries will vary, with many initially exceeding that calculated value.
Bottom line, what you're seeing is normal and nothing to worry about.

Battery capacity dropping and changing constantly?

I recently purchased a MBP 13" a few days ago and downloaded coconut battery to check my battery capacity and it seems to fluctuate a bit. It has been approximately 5 days since I began using the computer. I haven't been keeping the display on the highest brightness (do sometimes, but only when plugged into the charger at home) and keep other power saver settings on but the battery is still at about 5570 mAh, is this good or bad? Coconut battery says this is approximately 96% of the designed 5770 capacity. It dropped down to 5536 just yesterday and has risen back to 5576 as of this post. Is this normal because my computer is so new and it can't exactly calculate how much it has, or am I draining the battery that heavily?
I use it for school daily, and return home with approximately a 35-50% charge (depending upon usage during the school day), and begin charging when it reaches approximately 20%. Should I be charging earlier than this? I know not to let it drop to critical levels such as 10%, but not sure when I should exactly start charing to maximize this batteries lifespan. Thank you for whomever answers!

The small fluctuations you're seeing in your battery's Full Charge Capacity are entirely normal and will continue, perhaps lessening somewhat as time passes. I still see fluctuations (up as well as down) of 2-3% in my two-year-old battery's capacity, though of course the overall trend is gradually downward. It began at 4805mAh (103% of its design capacity of 4650) right out of the box, and it has been reported as low as 4320. It's now at 4530 after 137 cycles (this battery is rated for 300 cycles, unlike yours which is rated for 1000). I don't check it but every couple of months, so it could very well have gone outside that range at times without my noticing. I suspect that part of the reported variation is due to calibration error (I occasionally go longer than I should between calibrations) and part is due to limited precision in the measurement. I just don't worry about it at all, and I recommend that you don't either.

I just bought a new macbook pro 13-inch. I ran coconut battery test and it says age of the macbook is 22 weeks. And the battery load cycles shows 4 and battery capacity is 96%. Is this all normal? Does anyone have same issues?

I just bought a new macbook pro 13-inch 6 days ago. I ran coconut battery test and it says age of the macbook is 22 weeks. It shows 4 battery load cycles and battery capacity is 96%. Is this all normal? Does anyone have same issues?

"Is this all normal?"
Yes.
"Does anyone have same issues?"
What issues?
Coconut indicates an approximate battery capacity, and 96% is excellent. During testing and run-in, the MBP is charged and discharged, and a cycle count of 4 is appropriate.

Random Battery capacity!

A few days ago, I notices that my battery had weird reactions. The charge indicators fluctuates, goes into the red, back well into the black, ...
Yesterday, I checked wit coconut battery. It gave me a capacity of 1740 mAh (39%)!! Five minutes later, it showed a capacity of 4407 mAh! When I recharged the battery this morning, it stopped at the "full" capacity 2149 mAh and is now back to 4400 mAh.
My battery has 16 cycles (has been exchanged recently with the exchange program). What is going on? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hallo there,
i have got the same problem with my battery.
i received a new battery -also as part of the battery exchange program in germany- in October 2006. Now, since two weeks or so, the battery-life is just 1 - 1,5 hour, depending on activity (1 hour, if running iTunes and streamripper simultaneously, for example). I checked the system profiler for battery-capacity and noticed the same weired thing: max. Capacity is 2400mAh, then it's 27xxmAh some hours after, then 35xxmAh, some minutes after that it is 29xxmAh, a day later again at 27xxmAh, and so on...
i calibrated the battery and did pmu-reset (2x). charging the battery is no problem, 20 cycles were done for now.
i called apple-support, but they told me, there is no more warranty for changed batteries and they can not send a new one to me. they gave me no other advice then buying one. did anyone solve this problem, or any suggestions on that? And what may be the defective part, battery or pmu?
My system is a powerbook (bought in juli 2005) g4 1.67GHz, 512MB RAM, osx 10.4.9
greetings from germany and looking forward to your help
bastian
powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Is About this mac/more info/power reliable for battery capacity assessment

Hi,
I calibrated my brand new battery for my Alubook 15". Here are the results :
First cycle : 4200 mah
Second cycle : 4520 mah
Third cycle : 4370 mah
Fourth cycle : 4220 mah
Fifth : 3920 mah.
The battery was sold for 4700 mah.
1. Does this get any sense ? would you worry about future battery performances based on this capacity decrease from the third cycle ?
2. I have read that resetting PRAM may reset this battery power assessment to more reliable data : Any experience about this ?

Luc --
You raise some interesting points, at least one of which we debated (without resolution ;-)) prior to the change over to the New Discussions -- that concerned whether the batteries used by the new revision of PowerBooks were qualitatively different than the ones used by previous revisions. I don't think we came to a firm conclusion on this.
But on two other points you raise we did at least draw some firm observations, if not flat out conclusions.
The first has to do with the 10.4.3 update and whether it may have had power management effects for the better. I personally noticed a slight increase in my battery life since the update, which I have attributed (at least in part) to the fact that a process that runs almost all the time in the background (having, I think, something to do with the trackpad and related functions) called "kernel_task" now runs at about half the CPU usage that it used to. It used to regularly consume 7-8% of my CPU resources. Now, when I check in Activity Monitor, "kernel_task" regularly consumes about 2.5-3.5%.
The second relates to the new PowerBook revisions, their greater stated battery life and any hardware changes made in them that may be responsible therefor. Here, I remember reading in several places on these Boards and elsewhere that the type of RAM used by the new PowerBook revisions, i.e., PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRAM (running at 333 MHz), while it may not necessarily be faster than the type of RAM used in the previous PB revisions (PC-2700 DDR SDRAM) (since both types of RAM are running at the same 333 MHz in each model), the DDR2 RAM used in the new revision PBs does consume significantly less power to run. Therefore, it seems to have heavily contributed to the new revision PB's claim to longer battery life. Indeed, I've read that since both RAM types run at the same speed in the PB, it was precisely because of the low power consumption signature of the DDR2 RAM that was the reason it was chosen for the new revision PBs.
Well, good luck testing out your new PB and it's battery. Let us know how it all turns out and, of course, feel free to post back if we can be of any further assistance.
Bonne chance! A bientôt.
Oh, by the way, as for battery capacity and degradation over time and with use, you might find my own statistics to be of interest. I've run off battery power quite extensively since I got my PB in March of this year, and, after 164 complete cycles in about 9 months of use (including may times where the battery was completely drained), my original stated capacity of 4400 mAh has only decreased to 4228 mAh (using the same Apple battery that came with my PB when I first got it). I think that's pretty decent from what I've heard and seen with others.
Later.
-- JDee

Battery Capacity took a hit???

So it was normal day, and i went to calibrate my MBP battery, for i havent done it in a while. When it was done, all at 100% i checked the battery capacity, and it dropped a ton. Before calibration was around 5500mAh, now:
Battery Information:
Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4692
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4294
Amperage (mA): -1623
Voltage (mV): 11986
Cycle Count: 27
not a lot of cycles, so why has the battery gone down by 15% in less than one day??
Thanks in advance

It hasn't done the drop in one day. It's done it progressively between the previous calibration and your most recent calibration. It's like when the electric company meter read comes to see your meter. It's not as you used all that electricity in the one day. The calibration is to align the computer presumed battery capacity with the real capacity.
However, your actual battery capacity seems lower than it should be. I would give it a week and try recalibrating… and be sure to let it sit in forced sleep for the minimum of 5 hours.

Battery capacity very low, despite careful use and maintenence

Hello,
The current battery capacity of my MacBook Pro seems to be diminishing rather swiftly. I bought my Mac around 4 months ago, and have been using it for less than 3 months. I try to run Battery Calibration often (sometimes many times in a row, just because the situation allows for it), and I have never started charging it until it has went into standby due to low power. I tend to use it when running on battery, though I do occasionally keep the power-cord plugged in when fully charged.
The problem is, my overall battery life is down to 93% of the original, only with 63 loadcycles. That's not the worst part - it has recently been going down even quicker then before when 98% or so worried me.
I have kept a log of the life of my battery using CoconutBattery, it is as follows (in order from earliest to most recent):
98 % (5440 mAh) 2007-09-06
99 % (5464 mAh) 2007-09-09
98 % (5410 mAh) 2007-09-10
98 % (5440 mAh) 2007-09-12
98 % (5444 mAh) 2007-09-13
99 % (5450 mAh) 2007-09-13
99 % (5450 mAh) 2007-09-15
99 % (5463 mAh) 2007-09-15
98 % (5420 mAh) 2007-09-17
98 % (5429 mAh) 2007-09-19
98 % (5443 mAh) 2007-09-21
98 % (5392 mAh) 2007-09-21
97 % (5387 mAh) 2007-09-22
97 % (5360 mAh) 2007-09-26
97 % (5352 mAh) 2007-10-01
97 % (5387 mAh) 2007-10-04
100 % (5544 mAh) 2007-10-15
97 % (5339 mAh) 2007-10-16
96 % (5292 mAh) 2007-10-17
98 % (5437 mAh) 2007-10-19
95 % (5242 mAh) 2007-10-21
93 % (5143 mAh) 2007-10-23
Why are there so many jumps in percent, both up and down? How can I improve on my battery capacity? Can I anyhow make it increase back to the full 100%?
Is it better to keep it plugged-in or use the battery? Is the OK to charge it often?
Thank you for your time. I hope you can help!
Rudi

It doesn't say that on the apple site!
You're right, it doesn't. It in fact actually implies the opposite…
"Standard Maintenance
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her MacBook Pro on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month."
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
Thing is, this text is aimed at those that rarely use their batteries as opposed to that those that do given that with regular battery use you're already doing the right thing.
Additionally, by regularly using your battery the function a calibration is actually relegated to a way of accurate reporting. Over time the cells degrade and the battery's circuitry as well as your MBP's SMC gets out of sync with this which results in incorrect battery run time figures. In the worst case this irregularity can result in your MBP shutting off without warning as it thinks it has more power than it really does. Calibration just lines this all back up again.
This does not mean you shouldn't calibrate but to do it only every now and then. I have an iCal to-do item to do it after 6 weeks from the last one although it can actually mean I don't do it for 8-10 weeks.
maybe change the battery - if so, will I still be able to purchase a new battery for my current SR model? Or should I buy one and keep it in stock now?
Assuming Apple changes the MBP battery on it's next revision you'll still be able to purchase new batteries for your MBP. While they don't make then indefinitely they won't leave us high and dry without a source of new batteries even after a line is not longer current.
Buying new batery is not recommended until you actually need it as Li based batteries degrade from the time they're made so the newer the stock the better.

Battery Calibration and Charge Capacity?

I am currently using a PB G4 15" (high res DL SD) and I've had it for about a month. I just read about calibrating the battery and went ahead and did it. Have I done any damage to the battery or shortened it's effectiveness by waiting a month to calibrate rather than when it was first out of the box?
Also, i also just read about checking the battery charge capacity using the system profiler. My charge capacity prior to calibration was 2731 and after calibration it's 2930. However, it sounds like it should be in the 4400's based on the posts I've read. What do these numbers mean and do I have a faulty battery since it's so low?
Thanks for your help.

Hi Kevin --
Yeah, I'm not loving those numbers you posted either. I'd try performing the calibration procedure once or twice more to make sure that that battery capacity number doesn't change.
The other thing I would do if I were you is download Coconutbattery: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27425
It's a free app available at versiontracker and it will tell you your battery's original capacity as well as it's current capacity.
I agree with you that a capacity of 2930 mAh after only a month of use and 16 cycles suggests that your battery is defective and should be replaced at no cost to you under the terms of the warranty.
For a frame of reference, after 10 months of use and 166 load cycles, my battery's original capacity of 4400 mAh is now 4228 mAh. No way yours should be in the 2930 mAh range.
When you call AppleCare to arrange for a replacement, if in fact that's what you end up needing to do, the agent you speak with, in addition to making sure that you've properly calibrated your battery a few times (as mentioned earlier) may also ask that you reset your PB's Power Management Unit (PMU). While I'm skeptical that a PMU reset will alter the outcome, you can find instructions on how to reset the PMU here (just in case you need to): http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449
Good luck and please post back how everything turns out.
-- JDee
PS. You probably know this, but the calibration procedure has been changed slightly for your DL hi-res version of the PB. Here it is below, just to make sure:
PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD)
The battery calibration for the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) has been updated because of a new battery released with this computer. With these computers, follow these steps to calibrate your battery:
Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your PowerBook's battery until the light ring on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.
Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.
Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.
Tip: When the battery reaches "empty", the computer is forced into sleep mode. The battery actually keeps back a reserve beyond "empty", to maintain the computer in sleep for a period of time. Once the battery is truly exhausted, the computer is forced to shut down. At this point, with the safe sleep function introduced in the PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) computers, the computer's memory contents have been saved to the hard drive. When power is restored, the computer returns itself to its pre-sleep state using the safe sleep image on the hard drive.
Message was edited by: JDee

Freezing, storage capacity and battery life

I have a 60GB iPod "Photo" (color display) which I recently received as a trade-in battery replacement from Apple to repalce my old one that was five years old. When I started using it, I had trouble with it freezing or "locking-up" during play, the number of songs seemed to be inordinately small compared to the number I had before (before I had >6300 songs but when I put 750+ on it, it filled about 40% of the capacity) and the battery would run down very fast. I never had that kind of trouble with my old iPd Photo. I kept having to reset it and I even did a restore on it. I found a suggestion in here to refomat it through Windows but I was unable to accomplish that in XP SP4. I decided to go ahead and restore it anyway, then try again anyway. After I restored it, I selected the option to have 128Kbps bit rate as the preferred setting (I hadn't selected this option in my earlier formatting and restores) and to convert songs downloaded to the unit to that bit-rate. Lo and behold, since I did that early Friday A.M., I put 1200+ songs on it and it took up only 5.5GB of space, I haven't had a freeze-up and I haven't had to do a reset, and the battery seems to last. So if you have the type of problems that seem to crop up often in the discussions here, try making sure you have selected the 128Kbps bit-rate. You may have to restore and erase all your music and re-download it, but it will be worth it.

Probably isn't a battery issue. I'd suspect two things: individual songs and hard drive. Keep track of which songs are playing when the iPod crashes and play them on your computer. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes a song gets munged on your computer and this can cause the iPod to crash.
Second, there might be a hard drive problem, either bad sectors or bad files on it. If the songs are fine on your computer then I'd suggest performing a 'restore' which will erase the drive. Then add songs. Note I said restore erases the drive. If a file on your iPod was damaged, or if the program code was munged, this will fix it. However, if the hard drive has bad sectors only a format and then restore will fix it.

2 day old MacBook Pro at 98% battery capacity

I'm a little bit concerned about the lifespan of my new MacBook Pro's battery. When i recieved the machine i performed a battery calibration as Apple recommends. I then charged and discharged again. I was concerned when Coconut battery (not always accurate) told me my battery was at 98% total capacity. Is this normal? after 2 cycles my capacity is down 2% .
I'm surprised because I've never seen this on my old iBook which usually loses 1% capacity per month.
I've read that these lithium ion batteries have a memory, that the cells not being used stop functioning because they are not needed. Is this true?
When at home should i keep the machine plugged in? My iBook used to be fine when i took it to school and drained it, then charged it at night. Opinions?

More or less, yes, I do. Actually turns 5-days old today and at 97.8% of capacity (5330 mAh compared to 5450 when new) after 4 battery loadcycles. Coconutbattery says this is 97%, but my math is a bit higher at 97.8%. Clearly this rate of decline is not sustainable.
So my question to you was, did "don't worry, enjoy" mean that in your experience, the initial few percentage points of battery capacity is blown off quickly, but the battery capacity will quickly stabilize to something that is still acceptable?
My battery on a full charge this morning (day 5 of ownership) lasted 3:50, with display at 50%, no use of the optical drive, Wifi on, bluetooth off, and running Mail, Safari, Firefox, iCal, Excel & Activity Monitor (to keep an eye on things). No work was done in Excel, Firefox or iCal, just Mail & Safari. So, I, too, am a bit concerned about being nowhere near 7 hours. Or 5 hours, for that matter. So, short battery life and losing 2.2% of capacity in 4 loadcycles and 5 days is concerning, and tempting to connect the dots.

Battery capacity rapidly falling

SInce the battery update about 10 days ago my battery has been losing it's maximum charge capacity. I noticed that when unplugged the time remaining on my powerbook went from about 2hrs 30mins to about 1hr 30mins after the update.
I downloaded CoconutBattery to monitor this and since Jan 13th, it has gone from 2440mAh to 1805mAh today (20th Jan). I have tried re-calibrating the battery and resetting the power manager (each several times), but this seems to make it worse!!
My battery is 13 months old (15 according to Coconut battery) and has had 314 loadcycles.
Is my battery failing and is this just a coincidence that this has happened just after the battery update?
P.S. perhaps I should give my wife this powerbook and swap for her MacBook Pro when it arrives?
15" G4 1.33GHz Powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.4)

That thread doesn't solve my problem.
After the Battery Update, I noticed that my battery capacity was much less than before, I then downloaded Coconut Battery and started recording the capacity. At that time (after the update) the capacity was 2440mAh (13th), it has declined pretty rapidly from then on (2190mAh on the 15th, 2097mAh on the 17th, and 1805mAh on the 20th). During this time I have tried recalibrating and resetting the PMU etc, and this actually seemed to make things worse?!
I would assume that a decrease of 600mAh in one week is not what one would expect.
My questions are:
1. Is the battery failing?
2. Is this related to the battery update?
3. My battery has had 315 loadcycles, how many loadcycles should I expect from a battery before replacement?
4. Is it possible to reset the battery? Or remove the update?
Thank you for any assistance.
Rob

Any explanation about battery capacity?

My MBP Retina display is 2.9 month old, 43 loadcycles. So, my concern is that today i saw the following information about my battery capacity, which is: currenty capacity 8519 mAh and and design capacity 8460 mAh. Someone can tell me anything about this? appreciate!

Your battery has marginally more capacity than the design predicted, don't worry it is fine, and it will decay anyhow.

First battery charge and current issues?

Hi!
I just bought a new MacBook (2.0 GHz, 160 GB). I have two quick questions:
1. I plugged in my AC adapter, turned on the notebook for about 5 minutes to make sure it works fine, etc, then shut it down to let the battery charge. Would I have lost any battery capacity by not fully charging the battery first? And do I need to let the battery run through a full cycle when I first use the computer to ensure full capacity?
2. Are there any updates/best practices for the 2008 (December) MacBook batteries? I know there was an issue in 2007, but for the new line am I set to go? And is it still best practice to put shut the Mac down instead of putting it to sleep to save wear and tear on the hard-drive/battery?
sorry for all the questions: it has been 5 years since I bought my last notebook so I am a bit rusty/excited!

See the following:
About Batteries in Modern Apple Laptops
Apple - Batteries - Notebooks
Extending the Life of Your Laptop Battery
Apple - Batteries
Determining Battery Cycle Count
Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance
Battery University

Battery capacity and loadcycles

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