Less than 50% battery health

[brianhn1]

Had my MBA for about 3 weeks now and my battery status as of right now is the following:

Battery health: 49%
Cycles: 15

I decided to check the health after I only got 2 hours of battery time during each charge.

1. Should I be recalibrating the battery??? I have never done it yet.
2. Does cold weather have a large impact? I rarely take it outside.
3. Could I just have prematurely hit a defective battery?

Thanks

 

[kuebby]

It's defective. It's happens. Apple will take care of it.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

Try recalibrating for fun (might fix it but I doubt it), but you probably got unlucky and simply hit a bad battery. It happens sometimes. Just bring it back to the apple store and tell them how short your battery life is.

 

[brianhn1]

Another question due to my ignorance:

Would they be willing to move the HD over to my replacement MBA or I have to do a backup myself?

 

[aristobrat]

I wonder why they just wouldn't just replace the battery in your MBA instead of giving you a new one?

 

[NC MacGuy]

If it is bad and you take it into an Apple Store and they have another for exchange, they will ask you if you'd like the data transfered from old to new.

 

[clayj]

I wonder why they just wouldn't just replace the battery in your MBA instead of giving you a new one?

Because it might not be just the battery. MBAs are still new enough that Apple are collecting bad ones back from customers for testing purposes.

 

[NC MacGuy]

You may want to try this first:

MacBook Air
If the MacBook Air is on, turn it off.
Connect the power adaptor to a working power source.
On the MacBook Air keyboard, press (left) Shift-Control-Option along with the power button once.
Note: You must use the keys on the left side of the MacBook Air keyboard.
Wait 5 seconds and press the power button to start the MacBook Air.
Apple recommends only performing an SMC reset when the MacBook Air has been properly shutdown. This prevents issues from occurring to the file system.

While the power adaptor does not need to be connected to reset the SMC, it may be necessary in situations where the battery needs charging, or the MacBook Air has been without power for an extended period of time.

From Apple Support pages.