MacBook Battery Life (After 1-year)

[Raven]

Aww, the horrors! I hope you have a spare. (I don't, but maybe you're smarter than I am.)

[dlehman]

MBP is 9 months old, iStatPro says 89% health and 91 cycles.

[anf]

On a full charge, my battery life for the 1-year-old MacBook Pro lasts about 3 hours.
If I run Parallels (Windows XP), it goes down to about 2 hours.

[essjay]

I voted for 3 hours but I actually get a bit more. I've had the machine a year but it's on it's second battery after the first one just disappeared. Literally. The MacBook just wouldn't recognise it after it was cycled. Luckily it was under warranty so all was well. 100% health and capacity after 60 odd cycles on this battery.

[Flikk]

Old battery was 40 days old, 78 "Life Cycles." 77% "health." New battery received with 29% life. Charged for 6 hours, estimated run time 4:10. Health: 100%.

As of today, my MacBook and I have been together for 40 days. Yesterday, while I was happily surfing (on battery), it powered down with no warning. Okay, these things happen. I plugged it in, restarted, and all seemed to be fine. Battery was about 70%. I did other things on my other machines and when it was about 90%, unplugged it and everything was good. This morning after using it unplugged for 1.5 hours it did the same thing, but decided to only work with the power adapter, not on battery alone. When trying to boot without AC, it would try to spin the CD and then fall back into off. When on AC, if I pulled the adapter, it would last two seconds and go blank. I made an appt. with the Apple store (Fashion Show Mall, Las Vegas) for 3:20pm. I got there right at 3:20pm and the monitors showed I was 5th in line. Store was fairly packed, at least one patron at every display item. Monitors also said the next MacGenius appt. was "approx. 8:30pm." Glad I made an appt! I was served about 15 min. later, during which time the monitors had changed to "No more MacGenius appts. available today, please try tomorrow." However, one guy came by without an appt. and was told he would be put on standby and to come back in 30 min.

Once I explained my issue with my MacBook battery, my Genius tried one of his batteries. "I just want to make sure it's your battery and not your motherboard." My machine worked fine, so he said "No problem, I'll have you out of here in 10 minutes." He got me a brand new battery, tested it, and put my old one in a box on the rear counter with four others. He pulled the serial number from the "About this Mac" area, didn't need my receipt for purchase date or anything. I had even printed this page: Apple - Support - MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update to use as ammunition, but didn't need it. He did approve highly of my dashboard widget "iStat pro", available here: iSlayer.com.

So the battery issue is a very common problem, and one that Apple has tried to deal with as painlessly as possible for the consumer. My Genius did ask if the battery showed an "X" in the icon bar, and I said no. Just wouldn't run on battery. On the way out of the store, one of the 3 MacBooks, in fact the one closest to the door, had an "X" on the battery icon. When I unplugged the power, it shut down immediately! The moral of the story is to contact Apple immediately with problems and give them a chance to fix them. Hope this helps others.

[AJHmac]

Houltmac (if you're still around),

How often do you calibrate your battery?

[Emc2]

I've had my MacBook since July 14, 2006, and iStat Pro says my battery is at 91% health after 126 cycles, and has 3:12 remaining at full charge. Not too bad is it?

[Yuiichi]

@Emc2 - my MacBook was bought in August 2006. With 125 cycles, I have 87% health (stats from iStat Pro). Not bad at all!

[Jugger Grimrodd]

A battery update hit for the MacBook Pro today. What exactly do these updates do? Before the update, I was at 44 cycles and 64% battery health. After the update, I was at 100% battery health. What the heck did they do? Did they just fool my MBP to think the battery is good? I am confused.

[beley]

I have two MacBook Pros (a 2.0 Ghz and 2.16 Ghz - both Core Duos) and one of them the battery is LOUSY (and oddly, it's the one that has been attached to a power adapter sitting at a desk most of it's life).

The other one still has 85-90% of it's original battery life. I'm convinced the one with the bad battery has just always had a problem -- it just wasn't discovered due to it's always being on a desk plugged in. Now that I lug it around everywhere I notice it's 45 minute battery life (yeah, you read right!)

It's under Applecare so I'm going to try to get it replaced, but it's really hard to argue a case on a battery -- they're rarely covered.

I've had a lot of Mac portables though and usually if treated well the battery lasts a good long while. I think 4-8% loss a year is probably normal wear on a battery, with the high end of that being more rare. After 3 years (the typical length of time I keep a laptop) I usually have about 85% of the original battery life.