My wife's battery % showing "service battery" only happened after it dropped below 80%. This happened on her 2017 MBP 13'. The key is to submit a ticket and get Apple Support to see that message because it will go away (the service battery message) - but as long as they have a ticket where they saw it, they'll replace the battery. We weren't able to get the battery replaced because of Covid (we didn't want to send it in for weeks) - so we waited half a year and then contacted them with the ticket and they replaced the battery (allowing us to drop it off and get it back within 12 hours).
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I'm pretty disappointed with the MBP 16" battery health situation.
- Thread starter khalitzy
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according to service when battery drops below 80% it is eligible for replacement (entire top case). it will be covered under apple care (if you have one)
If it hasn't changed in 5 days then that may be what your capacity really is. Here is mine after 13 months.
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Just used it normally. Definitely no long discharge. If I'm near power I use it, when I'm not using or don't plan on it for awhile I don't leave it plugged in and it sleeps.
This was the most disappointing MacBook I've ever bought. Almost 2 years old and the battery just died overnight. This thing was connected to power 99% of the time. Honestly I don't believe I've ever had the battery below 30%.. And to get the battery replaced I have to give away the laptop for a week. Since I use this to earn my income I would have to take a week of (unpaid vacation) to get it fixed and pay 209 Euros for it as well. I my 2012 MacBook still charges with it's 5 year old battery, that can easily be changed by anyone with a Phillips screwdriver (but that's another subject).
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Connected to power 99% of the time is not a good strategy for battery life. Once you get the battery fixed you might look at getting one of those programs that limit the upper end of charging to a value you set.
One's charging habits is not relevant to a complete battery failure within two years.
Maybe not, but is this the reason for total destruction of the battery? If this were the case then surely this should be made obvious.
Constantly having the battery on power generates additional heat in the battery. Heat is the enemy of battery life.
Ok. I have never noticed additional heat when power was connected. I only notice additional heat when I'm editing a video, which is maybe 4 or 5 days out of the month. And if I disconnect power to do this the battery would be drained in 2 hours and that since day 1.
The battery discharges hard when you need a lot of power for your editing task such as rendering, this is also not the best for battery life. If I remember correctly, in the days of removable batteries a plugged-in Macbook could not run at full performance without the battery installed since they needed power from both the charger and the battery.
For me, video rendering is quite intense with Adobe Premier and now DaVinci Resolve, and really stressed the 16" MBP. It ran the MBP had the fans screaming and throwing off a lot of heat. I have since decided to move most of my editing to a desktop windows system and the noise and screaming fans are gone. And on the plus side, I have some nice big monitors on the Windows system.
That's great but this is kind of the reason I paid 3.5K. My MacBook 2012 (with much less CPU/RAM power) did this well too. It was not destroyed.
Yes heat is not great for the battery or any other component. However, laptop heat generation is mostly a result of CPU and GPU usage, not keeping your laptop plugged in.
I do not think you should worry about keeping your laptop plugged in. This is not a serious issue. You most likely got a defective or bad battery.