Battery Capacity Dropping Very Very Quickly

[imrealldum]

Hello,

I have a Macbook Pro 15 inch Early 2011 with an aftermarket battery from iFixit (original was replaced due to high cycle count and diminished capacity). I use an application called battery guard that sits in the menubar and gives me information about the battery including health stats. I got this new battery for Christmas a few months ago and it was performing great up until Saturday and showed health ~100% the entire time. Beginning on Saturday, the health has been dropping like a rock. Battery health is currently sitting at 51% on a 257 cycle battery, from 100% on Saturday morning. To give some extra context, my original battery went up to close to 2000 cycles I believe and hovered around 60% health at the end. I'm hoping the battery will stabilize at some still-useful capacity if it doesn't go back up on its own.

I'm generally careful about not leaving the laptop plugged in all of the time and baby my computer a lot. I tried running the calibration sequence (search "mac battery calibration") but that made no difference at all. I also opened up the bottom panel of the computer, the battery looked fine and had no visible abnormalities.

Worst case scenario involves remembering who bought the battery for me and taking advantage of iFixit's 1 year warranty. I hope to avoid this, so if anybody has any ideas as to what could be causing this and what I could do about it, that would be amazing!

Thanks for reading!

 

[duervo]

That's one of the symptoms of what happens when a battery starts to fail.

It's possible that the software you're using could be faulty. Check the developer's forums for anybody having a similar problem. If you don't see anything there, then it's probably just a failing battery.

At any rate, I'd start the RMA process with iFixit.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Yep that sounds like some of the battery cells have gone you'll need to replace it.

 

[nebo1ss]

Hello,

I have a Macbook Pro 15 inch Early 2011 with an aftermarket battery from iFixit (original was replaced due to high cycle count and diminished capacity). I use an application called battery guard that sits in the menubar and gives me information about the battery including health stats. I got this new battery for Christmas a few months ago and it was performing great up until Saturday and showed health ~100% the entire time. Beginning on Saturday, the health has been dropping like a rock. Battery health is currently sitting at 51% on a 257 cycle battery, from 100% on Saturday morning. To give some extra context, my original battery went up to close to 2000 cycles I believe and hovered around 60% health at the end. I'm hoping the battery will stabilize at some still-useful capacity if it doesn't go back up on its own.

I'm generally careful about not leaving the laptop plugged in all of the time and baby my computer a lot. I tried running the calibration sequence (search "mac battery calibration") but that made no difference at all. I also opened up the bottom panel of the computer, the battery looked fine and had no visible abnormalities.

Worst case scenario involves remembering who bought the battery for me and taking advantage of iFixit's 1 year warranty. I hope to avoid this, so if anybody has any ideas as to what could be causing this and what I could do about it, that would be amazing!

Thanks for reading!

[doublepost=1461145994][/doublepost]How is you cycle count so high if you put a new battery in at Christmas. Did you check the cycle count when you first put the battery in. i have a new Macbook Air I bought about six or more months ago and the cycle count is only 60. Check the battery with an app called coconut battery it will tell you how much of the design capacity the battery is capable of reaching when it is fully charged.

 

[imrealldum]

That's one of the symptoms of what happens when a battery starts to fail.

At any rate, I'd start the RMA process with iFixit.

Yep that sounds like some of the battery cells have gone you'll need to replace it.

Shoot, I had a feeling that might be the answer. I won't be able to start the RMA process for another month, do you guys think that the battery is going to fail completely before then? Is it safe to continue using my computer during that time?
[doublepost=1461165999][/doublepost]

[doublepost=1461145994][/doublepost]How is you cycle count so high if you put a new battery in at Christmas. Did you check the cycle count when you first put the battery in. i have a new Macbook Air I bought about six or more months ago and the cycle count is only 60. Check the battery with an app called coconut battery it will tell you how much of the design capacity the battery is capable of reaching when it is fully charged.

Battery Guard has similar function to coconut battery, it just draws the statistics from OSX's own system report. The health I was reporting is the ratio of capacity to nominal capacity.

My computer is older and much less efficient than the newer models (especially the Air) which combines with my heavy usage to create a lot of cycles.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Impossible to tell I'm afraid , take a look inside for any swelling if you can, if there is swelling then it I'll be a danger to the machine and a fire hazard.