Recommendation for replacement Macbook Air battery

[JasMan101]

Hi Guys,

Can anyone recommend somewhere I can get a replacement battery for my mid-2012 MacBook Air?

Looking online the replacement looks pretty straightforward (he says). My Mac has started switching off randomly and I don’t it to knacker the hard disk.

Thanks,
Jas

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

Replacing is super simple (10 screws on bottom casing and 5 for the Battery). IFIXIT is a great site

I would run it through AHT first to get a better idea whether it is actually the battery at fault.

Hold D on boot up (make sure it has internet connection)

 

[shiver]

Doesn't sound like a battery issue to me so worth running a hardware test as above says.

Also, MacBook Airs do not have hard disks

 

[JasMan101]

Thanks for the information. I ran AHT and no issues detected.

I should have given more information in my initial post. The service battery warning as been showing on my mac for a while. When the laptop losses power and I try to turn it back on I get the battery needs charging sign on the screen. Once I charge the battery its fine for a while but then loses power again. This led me to believe the battery isn't holding its charge and need changing.

Before I shell out for a new battery any other checks I should carry out?

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

You could check to see how many cycles the battery has been charged. Another indicator but again, not conclusive although given you're getting the Service indicator too, you may well be right. Maybe pop into your local Apple store/AASP and get them to run it through their ASD diagnostics to be sure. It's a great deal more in depth over the AHD/T you can do at home. They wont charge you for testing it (at least they shouldn't). Anything over 1000 is considered EOL by Apple.

To check the battery cycle count,

Click the Apple logo, About, System information (or Report depending on what your OSX version is).

In there, you should be able to find Power in the left panel and it will show you how many cycles there is under Health.

 

[JasMan101]

I checked the battery count on my current battery and it ~850. Got the laptop tested by Apple today. Yep the battery is gone. Everything else was fine though. They have the replacement battery in stock but want to charge my £129.99 the replacement. I Apple I would think about it. Suffice to say I don’t want to pay that much.

Any suggestions where I can get a battery?

I looked on eBay and they are a lot cheaper but I am concerned about the quality of them. I don’t the replacement to leak and damage my laptop.

Thanks guys

 

[dirtybeatfreak]

As I mentioned above, I would try IFIXIT. They are around £80 there which is still quite a lot, better than Apple though .

 

[JasMan101]

Cheers all

 

[iraiguana]

Replacebase are good. I did exactly this, battery seems to work like when I first bought the laptop, so worth a punt at £50 delivered.

 

[BinnsY]

Replacebase are good. I did exactly this, battery seems to work like when I first bought the laptop, so worth a punt at £50 delivered.

I would second this, I recently replaced the battery in my 2013 macbook air using a replacebase one from ebay. The markings on it really do look like its a genuine apple battery.

Being completely honest the first one I got from them actually seemed to have issues in that it was repeatedly cutting out and loosing power in a manner actually worse than the origional battery I replaced. However, I sent them details of this via a message on Ebay and had a replacement battery with me within a couple of days with no need to return the old faulty one. That one I've now had fitted for a few weeks and it's working exaclty as I would expect with battery life back to how it was when the machine was new. I mention this as not only am I happy with the product itself but I've effectively had to test thier customer service as well and found it nothing less than perfect.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Just to be clear, there is precisely ZERO chance of getting a "genuine Apple battery" from anyone but Apple or a certified Apple repair place. You may be able to get a good quality battery, but that's fairly unlikely. It's a very scammy business, and it's far more likely you will get something of inferior quality. There is a massive price difference, so you may feel that replacing it multiple times at the cheaper price is still worth it.

Edit: iFixit are a very reputable company, so their batteries are going to be good quality. For the small price difference, I'd argue you might as well go for the genuine Apple replacement.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Just to be clear, there is precisely ZERO chance of getting a "genuine Apple battery" from anyone but Apple or a certified Apple repair place. You may be able to get a good quality battery, but that's fairly unlikely. It's a very scammy business, and it's far more likely you will get something of inferior quality. There is a massive price difference, so you may feel that replacing it multiple times at the cheaper price is still worth it.

Edit: iFixit are a very reputable company, so their batteries are going to be good quality. For the small price difference, I'd argue you might as well go for the genuine Apple replacement.

I wouldn't call £50 small though (iFixit £80, Apple £130). Even more so if you go elsewhere.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

I wouldn't call £50 small though (iFixit £80, Apple £130)

Fair play. Although I look at it over the estimated lifetime of that battery (3-5 years?), so not a lot in the grand scheme of things.

 

[BinnsY]

Just to be clear, there is precisely ZERO chance of getting a "genuine Apple battery" from anyone but Apple or a certified Apple repair place. You may be able to get a good quality battery, but that's fairly unlikely. It's a very scammy business, and it's far more likely you will get something of inferior quality. There is a massive price difference, so you may feel that replacing it multiple times at the cheaper price is still worth it.

I did quite a bit of digging into this before ordering the one i did from Replacebase and it does look like theirs are genuine. The way they tell it they aren't directly purchased from Apple, but rather are purchased from the same OEM that make the batteries actually for Apple. I know on mine it's had the Apple logos blanked off with black marker pen but you can just make them out in the right light underneath and I compared it to the origional apple battery I took out and they really do look identical. I assume it's when the factores in question have made more stock than apple require for a paticular order, or they are simply using the same tooling to produce the batteries and then blanking out the logos to avoid any complications with them selling "apple" branded batteries to other companies.

It even reports as being manufactured by "Simplo" within tools like coconut battery and they are known to be a manufacturer apple use.

There will certainly be many fakes on the likes of Ebay, paticuarely the ones that claim to be genuine for £25, but my experience on the one from Replacebase has proved rather positive.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

It even reports as being manufactured by "Simplo" within tools like coconut battery and they are known to be a manufacturer apple use.

It's a lot easier to print a fake white Apple logo and then cross it out with black marker to make it appear genuine, than it is to manufacture (and pay for the expensive raw materials required) an actual high quality battery. The point is it's just a very scammy industry outside of the big manufacturers like LG and Panasonic, and there's a reason good quality batteries are expensive.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

The chances of one of Apple’s suppliers selling ‘surplus’ batteries is inconceivable. The lengths that companies like Apple go to to secure their supply chain and the contract terms that these companies have to adhere to are watertight.

Their suppliers will have clauses in their contracts that will phrohibit them selling parts on the gray market. If genuine new parts leak onto the market they can say goodbye to that Apple contract.

If you really think about it there is no way these are genuine or got onto the market legitimately.

A good fake whether it’s a battery or a handbag will be visibly the same as the genuine thing, it doesn’t make it real.

 

[BinnsY]

It's a lot easier to print a fake white Apple logo and then cross it out with black marker to make it appear genuine, than it is to manufacture (and pay for the expensive raw materials required) an actual high quality battery.

I agree with this, but at the same time the effort they would have gone to to also make the battery identify as being made in the same factory as one known to make genuine apple batteries. The overall construction is utterly identical to the genuine one I took out of the mac, the battery life feels as it did when it was new, and simply put if it weren't for the black pen marks over the apple logo I don't think I could tell them apart in the slightest, even down to simply things like the quality of the ribbon cable etc.

I can accept it may not be a genuine apple battery in the strictest sense of the word, but in the same way you've acknowledge that iFixit will probably make good quality batteries, it seems like replacebase are also sourcing good quality batteries to me and I certainly wouldn't pay the 100% premium apple charge over the one I've had from them.