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Native Kid from the 505

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 28, 2021
2
0
Hey everyone, so I got a (possibly common) dilemma regarding replacing my battery in my aging MBP. It's a mid-2010 13 inch unibody model, non-retina version. It still has the original battery when I purchased it from the Apple Store in early 2011 for college, and it has undergone numerous repairs and parts replacement, except for the battery. It still works but it tells me to "Service Battery" and I intend on doing so. For the record, the battery has not begun swelling yet, it takes awhile to recharge but runs down to near 15% within an hour from "full charge."
By the way, I also intend on keeping and using my MacBook Pro for another decade or at lesst 5 more years. I plan on upgrading my hard drive to a SSD or a 1 TB HDD next.
So, after upgrading my RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB a few months ago, I am still actively looking for a battery replacement. I had ordered one from Amazon back then, a RayHom brand, but had returned it after I read a few reviews of it exploding or causing other problems. I didn't want to chance it. Also when I had it installed into the MBP and plugged in recharging, it was only two hours in and it had only reached 6% charged. I didn't want to leave my MBP plugged in for 12 to 24 hours, especially unattended with the risk of causing an explosion or a fire if iit's indeed a faulty battery.
I had received the battery completely discharged shipped to me. Also a few other things that bothered me is that one of the screws that bolt it down wouldn't go in, while the other screw had no issues. Maybe it was a manufacturing defect on RayHom's end. And the LED battery life indicator light (on the left side of the MBP) wouldn't turn on to show me its level, only unless it was plugged in. Whereas with the original battery when its completely discharged, it would at least blink repeatedly for a second to let me know it needs to be recharged.
In the case of the RayHom battery, no battery level reading, only when it was plugged in. There were two instances when the plug came off my laptop and the MBP went out as if it were any ordinary electronic device that requires to be plugged in, for it to be operational.
So back to my dilemma and my question, are there any other good, reputable reliable aftermarket sources or vendors from Amazon or ebay that sells good, hopefully legitimate battery replacements for my kind of MBP? Other than iFixit or OWC, I'd like to know of any other sources, because I've read some bad reviews that made me think otherwise.
Links to good resellers on Amazon, ebay, or websites would be appreciated. Thanks.
 

bingow

macrumors member
Mar 6, 2021
30
11
Alto, NM
One newbie to another: search for other battery threads in this forum, one posted April 6 by @jsmith_273 that begins "Help!" (sorry, I couldn't get the link to stick). The consensus is "it's a crap shoot." I wonder if doing the recalibration procedure might help? Maybe one of the old heads here will advise.

I'm happy, so far, with my very new OWC battery. By the way, your experience with the misaligned screws apparantly is a manufacturing error: the original Apple battery I removed had broken at one of the screw tabs, and the new OWC battery was identically misaligned!
Hmmmm...
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
29,175
13,223
Remember what Forrest Gump said about the box of chocolates:
"You never know what you're going to get".

I'd try one of the OWC batteries.

Beware of "factory OEM batteries" you see for sale on ebay, etc., "for cheap".
Most or all are probably counterfeits.
 
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