Value Of Low Battery Cycle Count

[TechRunner]

Greetings all,

I have a 2015 13" MBA I'm getting ready to sell, and it has spent most of its days hooked to an external monitor in clamshell mode. As a result, it's showing only an 89 battery cycle count.

My question is this: Does a low cycle count add any value to the laptop, or is the age of the battery more important than cycle count, thus eliminating any perceived increase in value?

Thanks in advance for your input!

 

[chrfr]

Greetings all,

I have a 2015 13" MBA I'm getting ready to sell, and it has spent most of its days hooked to an external monitor in clamshell mode. As a result, it's showing only an 89 battery cycle count.

My question is this: Does a low cycle count add any value to the laptop, or is the age of the battery more important than cycle count, thus eliminating any perceived increase in value?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Old batteries can often swell up and stop working. I personally wouldn't consider such a low usage on an older computer to be a real asset.

 

[JBGoode]

Health is more important than cycle count. It may have only 89 cycles but might not have the capacity it once had due to age. Install coconut battery and check it. There is also an app in the store that’s currently working to check health: Battery Health - Monitor Stats.

 

[thekev]

As a practical matter, no. Batteries go bad with age no matter what. If it's several years old, the buyer is likely to need to replace the battery at some point. It doesn't always happen, but it's likely. Battery health as indicated by capacity (and voltage output) does not mean it will last forever. They sometimes go bad pretty fast.

Even if this wasn't the case, I'm not sure how much more I would really pay for that. A battery replacement is a couple hundred on a macbook pro and should be less on an Air. That is the cost of replacement, not the amount that the battery contributes to the value of a used machine. If you just replaced the battery, that might add a little value but I would imagine still less than the typical cost of replacement when weighed against the average selling price for the model. Now I wish I had some hard data to accompany this.

 

[Fishrrman]

Take a screenshot of Coconut Battery and post the results here.

 

[TechRunner]

Thanks so much for the replies everyone. Here's a screenshot of Coconut Battery as you requested @Fishrrman...

 

[Fishrrman]

The status of the battery (from the results in reply 6 above) look very good.

That may serve as a main "selling point" in the sale of the MacBook.

But don't expect it to add much $$$ value to the sale...

 

[TechRunner]

You've all basically confirmed what I feared, that a low cycle count doesn't really impact resale value all that much. Thanks for the input! Much appreciated!

 

[toke lahti]

Age will eat the capacity of rechargable lithium battery for about 3-10% a year depending on details.
So, with laptops, the wear is much greater than age. But as you can see from the answers, potential buyers might not believe you on this.
Your battery seems to be almost as good as new.
4 years and 100 cycles and it still has 96% of it's original capacity.
Linearilly thinking it should last for 100 years then....