Battery Cycles

Vita · 21 Aug 2011 at 13:38

I have had my MBP 2011 for about 6 days now and I'm on the 7th battery cycle, I have read that after a while of cycles the battery health goes down. I can say I use the battery and don't leave it on the charger all the time, only charge once the battery has gone to low health.

Is this the way it should be done? Or can I leave it on charge all the time and it won't make much of a difference?

FreeStream · 21 Aug 2011 at 13:42

Apple say you should use it regularly and drain it completely (let it to go sleep + then till the sleep LED turns off) every month.

Mines going down slowly (97% atm) after 80ish cycles - 2010 15"

naudiz · 21 Aug 2011 at 14:24

For reference I've got a late 2008 Macbook, 1140 cycles and my battery is at 90%

MikeHunt79 · 21 Aug 2011 at 15:10

Moses said:
A fairly pointless statement, if you don't say how you use your laptop! And would that be the older sort of batteries, which could be removed easily? Would they have different tech?

They both use Li=po as far as I know, and with these it's better not to fully discharge them.

pingwing · 21 Aug 2011 at 17:14

To preserve the health of the battery you need to let it charge all the way up and all the way down as a cycle. So when you take if off charge don't put it back on till you are down to about 10% charge, this means the battery can do both its "quick charge" and "slow charge" parts to its recharge cycle. Not letting it do them tends to break the battery quicker.

On mine I'm on about 800 cycles after 2 years with 92% health (09 15' mbp) which has been saved by regularly using it on the battery as well as on charge. Make sure you mix it up a bit as if you are just using it at your desk, having it always plugged in doesn't do it any good after a while

uniQ · 21 Aug 2011 at 19:21

A lot of missinformation in this thread.

A full cycle does not require the MBP to be drained all the way down. You could discharge to 50% recharge and repeat and that would count as a single cycle.
Battery Cycles:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/

The 2011 MB Batteries are rated for 1000 full cycles before they fall to around 80% or up to 5 years. At your current usage you would reach 1000 cycles in just over 3 years. However obviously YMMV.

Suggest a read:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Also install coconut battery gives more information on cycles and battery health and allows you to log it over time.

Vita · 21 Aug 2011 at 19:54

uniQ said:
A lot of missinformation in this thread.

A full cycle does not require the MBP to be drained all the way down. You could discharge to 50% recharge and repeat and that would count as a single cycle.
Battery Cycles:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/

The 2011 MB Batteries are rated for 1000 full cycles before they fall to around 80% or up to 5 years. At your current usage you would reach 1000 cycles in just over 3 years. However obviously YMMV.

Suggest a read:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

Also install coconut battery gives more information on cycles and battery health and allows you to log it over time.

Thanks for the excellent post uniQ. I probably get 2 cycles/day more or less as I have my laptop on nearly all day. I will also get coconut battery, cheers.

PardonTheWait · 21 Aug 2011 at 20:37

These batteries are good to the point where it's just not really worth thinking about what you're doing. They're about £120 to replace and that's years away.

naudiz · 21 Aug 2011 at 20:46

Sorry I should have added more info to that post. I use my MacBook daily, and I drain it completely and then recharge it.