How interesting!
That has to be exactly where CoconutBattery is pulling the data from. Look at that.
Thank you!
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Please share the battery capacity of your Macbook Pro 2021 M1 Pro/Max 14/16!
- Thread starter Paulo Henrique Baldassi
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That has to be exactly where CoconutBattery is pulling the data from. Look at that.
Thank you!
I noticed too on my Intel MBP (latest Mac OS) they don't even put the % anymore. lol
Notice that my data (not values) differs from yours which also interesting:
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Yea I've noticed this as well. The Intel and Apple-Silicon Macs appear to be generating slightly different reports for some reason.
I use AlDente pro and I love it. 40 cycles after almost a year.
What is the benefit of Al Dente? It keeps the machine from charging past 90% or something like that, but what about the minimum limit?
Edit: I read about the app to remind myself what it is. Interesting. Still I’m not sure how realistic it is that folks see benefit from it, seems like a confirmation bias type thing where how would anyone really know if it helped, or not…
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BatteryUniversity offers a great webpage on how to prolong the life of one's batteries. https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries
Most manufacturers will state that storing a Lithium Ion battery at around 40% can significantly increase the longevity of a battery if it is not being used versus leaving it at 100% charge. But specifically in reference to the above article, however, (see below)
Using Al-Dente allows users to utilize a 60-80% state of charge level usage. A MacBook will run completely off of wall power when plugged in and not charging, whereas an iPhone constantly runs off of the battery despite being plugged in. Capping the laptop's state of charge results in significantly less wear/tear on a battery. See how using 100% of available energy results in discharge cycles of 300-500 vs 1,200 - 2000 for 70-75% state of charge.
Leaving one's battery at a high state of charge will result in capacity depletion more rapidly than leaving a battery at a lower state of charge.
AlDente allows capping charge at a lower % of state of charge thus significantly lessening the capacity loss.
I have been using MBPs since 2011. Most of my MacBooks are plugged in most of the time. I rarely use my devices off of power but I do enjoy the freedom of movement if I need them, which is now and then. I've noticed that this results in signifiant wear and tear on the battery when constantly staying at 100% state of charge. Over the course of 3 years, battery health would drop fairly rapidly to 70% or so.
Apple has acknowledged this capacity loss and they themselves have now offered an 80% max state of charge for those of us who are plugged in all the time. The problem is, one needs to have a near perfect charging habit for this automated feature to kick in (and it can take weeks for this to happen).
Al-Dente allows state of charge to be set instantly and at the user's desire. Having used AlDente for years and using coconutBattery to record my laptop's battery health daily - I have seen massive reductions in capacity loss having my battery sit at 70% while plugged in all day for years on end vs 100% state of charge. AlDente allows me to charge it up to full if I'm going out and vary the state of charge to keep the battery "exercised" instead of always running off wall power.
Those of us who have observed batteries for awhile have noticed that maintaining a high state of charge for long periods of time is far more detrimental to the longevity of a battery than charge cycles.
Thanks for the thorough explanation! Interesting food for thought.
I think this is a fundamental usage issue with MacBook models. They're literally designed to be portable. They're laptops! They're designed to be used on battery, before being recharged.
Yet most people use them plugged in 90+% amount of the time and never move them from the same spot on their desk. They literally never use the battery! These people would probably be better off with a desktop Mac, maybe using an iPad for those rare times when they need portability.
But outside of the Mac Studio, the desktop Mac range in Apple Silicon have very ordinary performance. Once upon a time getting a laptop was to accept compromised performance, in favour of portability. But Apple's turned that on its head. If you want performance, get a MacBook Pro. Using desktop is to compromise on performance in exchange for... Well, what?
It's a curious state of affairs.
That is not true. Go look in Starbucks and see how everybody have their laptops connected to a power outlet.
And most high performance laptop only work on a power outlet, on battery they loose alot of performance.
So saying laptops are designed to be used on a battery is non-sense. It is simply just a feature.
I see some people plugged in but not many.
Apple laptops work the same regardless of if they're plugged in or not. (Although with M1 Max MBPs, you can set the Energy Mode. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212852)
One thing I really enjoy about my M1 laptop is that when I unplug I can set the battery power's "energy mode"
I can disconnect from the mains and read for hours and not even use more than a few % of battery, lol. Absolutely amazing.
I did not have a personal MBP for the last several years and instead used an iPad Pro as my "primary" device. The M1 processor allows me to read with my laptop on my lap without overheating myself. So I dumped $ into an M1 Max and sold my iPad Pro and have been iPadless for awhile.
Despite my MBP spending most of its life plugged in, I do enjoy the afternoons/weekends that I can use it as my primary reading device - and when I do have rare days where I have to be away from my desk, this thing is my entire desktop.
While my work Dell laptops lose a LOT of power when connected to battery, that is one thing I really like about MacBook Pros - I can't tell the difference when on battery power vs plugged into the wall. There have been several times I even gamed for hours and had a "oops, I wasn't plugged in" moment.
Now my work Dell Latitude with a Xeon processor - I can tell a MASSIVE performance drop on battery, despite having Windows set to maximum performance. So I think this is true for a lot of laptops.
The M1 processors continue to astound me. I could do days on my M1 laptop and not have to charge if I wanted to.
Most of the times. I run calibration once in every month. My last MBP had around 1200 (Health 65%) cycles in 6 years and After replacing battery in 2020, it had around 500 (Health 86%) cycles within 16 months. So, let's see how it goes this time.
I don't understand why Coconut battery and Battery Health 2 shows different values.
About half the folks in my local coffee shop use power and the rest do not. I don't even bring my power brick with me because my MBP will last an entire work day without it. The only laptops that lose performance when not plugged in are PC's and intel Macs. You don't need to worry about that with Apple silicon.
Also, Apple laptops and any laptop is designed to run off a battery--that's pretty obvious. That doesn't mean everyone uses them that way but its not "just a feature". It's pretty much the core use case of a laptop.
I don't believe Intel Macs drop performance when not plugged in. Mine certainly never did (i7 and i9) and I tested this by running benchmarks.
I use my 16in M1 Max during the day solely on the battery and plug in at night with the 140w supplied charger. I received mine at the end of Oct 2021 (one of the first ones delivered) so it's been almost one year of ownership. Mac battery health is at 98%.
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When you say 98%, is that what System Preferences > Battery > Battery Health reports? Because obviously Coconut Battery is reporting something 93.4% there. As mentioned, Coconut Battery reads straight from the hardware.
I think this is a looming scandal. M1BatteryGate—MBP 16in with M1 chips appear to have bad batteries that degrade quickly. It'd be great if somebody from MacRumors could pick this up.
Yes that's correct, System preferences battery health is at 98%. This has dropped a bit faster than my past MacBook Pro's but everyday usage still feels about the same as when it was new.
Thanks for this. From this we can see that there's a 4-5% difference between what Apple officially reports and what's actually the case for battery health.
This aligns with the battery life indicator in the menu bar. It's typically around 5% behind what the hardware reading is (e.g. on my MBP right now the menu bar says 89% left, but Coconut Battery says 80.5%). This is why the menu bar continues to report 100% battery life for maybe an hour after being taken off charge... Pretty deceptive practices, if you ask me.
I also noticed the difference between the battery life indicator and CoconutBattery is around 5-6% but it's usually when it's above 50%. They start to even out and eventually match each other when they both drop to around 30-40%.
16" M1 Max (almost a year now)
17 cycles
Terminal shows:
"MaxCapacity" = 100
"DesignCapacity" = 8694
"AppleRawMaxCapacity" = 8692
My use case is about 95% of the time plugged in using an external monitor, sitting at 80% battery charge.
17 cycles
Terminal shows:
"MaxCapacity" = 100
"DesignCapacity" = 8694
"AppleRawMaxCapacity" = 8692
My use case is about 95% of the time plugged in using an external monitor, sitting at 80% battery charge.