Why are people using their MacBook Airs on battery?

[mattoruu]

I agree with the OP. A similar thing can be said about exercising. The human body is like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depletes.

Hmm… after typing that above, I now think that this is too obscure of a reference. Not sure. Maybe some people remember it. If not, let me just say: I’m joking. It was a joke. The person who originally said this wasn’t joking, but I’m joking.

 

[movieator]

I agree with the OP. A similar thing can be said about the exercising. The human body is like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depletes.

Hmm… after typing that above, I now think that this is too obscure of a reference. Not sure. Maybe some people remember it. If not, let me just say: I’m joking. It was a joke. The person who originally said this wasn’t joking, but I’m joking.

I see what you did there. Orange you proud of yourself?

 

[Ma2k5]

My primary use for it is to enjoy using it freely, not for resale value.

 

[doolar]

Each time you put a cycle count on it, it lowers the resale value of your Air. It also shortens the lifespan of both the internal battery and the laptop. Simple way to prevent it, is by buying and using a battery pack on it when needed. I did this, got an Anker prime 27650mah portable battery bank and for any times that I need to use the Air on battery, I run it off here instead so that I don't put any wear on the internal battery. Much cheaper to buy a new battery bank than a new Air.

Just curious why more don't do this?

”Each time you start your engine, it lowers the resale value of your car. It also shortens the lifespan of both the internal combustion engine and the chassie. Simple way to prevent it, is by buying and using a trailer to put the car on when needed. I did this, got an 5000 pound trailer and a towing rig and for any times that I need to use the car with the engine running, I tow it instead so that I don't put any wear on the internal engine. Much cheaper to but a new trailer than a new car.

Just curious why more don't do this?”

I’ll tell you whey more don’t do this - it is plain silly.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I don't know about that, I think you notice the downsides right away. If you drain the battery everyday for a year, it will be at like 75% battery health.

Battery packs are very portable and don't add much more to the Air especially if you are already carrying an ext drive, mouse, SD card reader, USB hub, dongles, lights, mousepad with you (which most people are).

I buy MBPs not MBAs, but never have I concerned myself with measuring battery health. Even sillier IMO is buying a battery pack to save the battery; that is just nuts. Mac laptops have great battery performance, just use it. My MBP laptops typically last ~7 years and I have never put a new battery in since back when batteries were modular.

 

[Contact_Feanor]

Each time you put a cycle count on it, it lowers the resale value of your Air. It also shortens the lifespan of both the internal battery and the laptop. Simple way to prevent it, is by buying and using a battery pack on it when needed. I did this, got an Anker prime 27650mah portable battery bank and for any times that I need to use the Air on battery, I run it off here instead so that I don't put any wear on the internal battery. Much cheaper to buy a new battery bank than a new Air.

Just curious why more don't do this?

Do you use your iPhone on battery?
Why do you use your battery pack on battery?
Never use your iPad on battery!

 

[RF2]

Might as well never take it out of the box if you’re that worried about resale value :/

 

[me55]

especially if you are already carrying an ext drive, mouse, SD card reader, USB hub, dongles, lights, mousepad with you (which most people are).

No they don't.

 

[Arctic Moose]

Might as well never take it out of the box if you’re that worried about resale value :/

But then you wouldn’t have a computer to use.

The best solution is to buy two identical $1000 laptops. That way, you can use one and keep the other sealed in the box.

In three years, you can happily sell one for $500 and send the other trashed and useless one straight to recycling.

(Actually, if you’re going to lug around a battery pack anyhow, how about getting a used laptop that already has a trashed battery and just use that? I mean, since they’re so cheap.)

 

[fatTribble]

It makes me wonder, how much more would a used MacBook buyer pay for one with a battery having a low cycle count? My guess is $0.

I’ve never bought used, but I would be more concerned about the overall MacBook age and how many more macOS updates it could get. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[mattoruu]

It makes me wonder, how much more would a used MacBook buyer pay for one with a battery having a low cycle count? My guess is $0.

I’ve never bought used, but I would be more concerned about the overall MacBook age and how many more macOS updates it could get. 🤷🏻‍♂️

There is a national chain of resell shops in Japan that I frequently visit. They will check the battery health of iPhones and use that information in deciding how much pay for the device.

It’s a national chain of shops, so the decision-making is somewhat automated. The employee enters that battery health and other information into some algorithm and (I assume) it spits out a price.

I assume they check other devices’ battery health as well (laptop, tablets, etc.), but I know for sure that they check the iPhone’s battery health.

How much more would they pay for a MacBook at 99% battery health vs a MacBook at 79% battery health? No idea.

 

[smirking]

Because that doesn’t work that way. Having the internal battery at 100% all the time isn’t good for it and doing that doesn’t prevent the Mac from calculating a cycle has happened.

I've learned the hard way that both plugging in 100% of the time and none of the time are both effective ways to kill your battery.

I've been hard on batteries because I do power hungry things and don't like being chained to my desk so I have a laptop. Consequently, I've had to either be plugged in more than I wanted to or I'd be burning through full battery charges in an hour.

I couldn't win... but the Silicon chip Macs changed all that! They're so power efficient that even when I use my M1 Pro MBP at full tilt on battery power, I can still get through most of the day.

I really don't think most users on Silicon Macs... especially a Silicon MBA need to obsess about battery health one way or the other.

 

[navaira]

Disheartening to see such an obvious troll post rewarded with 7 pages of comments in barely 24 hours.

It’s very funny! (And on the front page.)

I use my Air M1 on battery because it’s a laptop. I tend to keep it in my lap. (Not at all times. I remove it while I’m showering and/or sleeping.) My lap is portable, I even sometimes carry it to the garden, in fact, and sometimes into trains or planes, where I admit I detach the laptop to put it on a tray table. Battery – made in Dec 2020 – is down to 83% and has been there for 14 months by now, I bought the M1 in June 2021. The resale value here depends only on whether the battery is above or below 80%, so when the M4 Air is out I will decide whether to replace the battery for €189 or sell this one for €700+ and get an M4. (The main reason to stick with the M1 is the wedge shape, I love it even if it’s Ancient and Unfashionable. The main reason to replace it is that I really should have gone with 16GB RAM…)

I didn’t buy a laptop with 14-hour battery life to keep it connected all the time. I have a power bank for emergencies, of which I have so far experienced zero, but I used to use it when we were paying stupid money for energy before 11pm.

Windows laptops that are approaching 3.5 years have ‘we will recycle this for you for free’ resale value with 100% battery capacity (LOL, a Windows laptop with 100% battery capacity after two weeks of using…) In the Netherlands, on Rebuy, 81% and 99% has the same resale value, as long as it’s below 1000 cycles (759 in my case).

 

[throAU]

How do you know they are not accurate?

Because battery chemistry is not an exact thing from day to day and dependent on a lot of variables.

 

[smirking]

It makes me wonder, how much more would a used MacBook buyer pay for one with a battery having a low cycle count? My guess is $0.

I've bought a used laptop and have sold my share of them as well. As with all sales of used items on online marketplaces, it's complicated. The cycle count does matter simply because there are tons of people who don't understand that the cycle count is a very incomplete indicator of battery health. Go on eBay and you'll see listings proudly boasting low cycle count. Dig in and you sometimes uncover that they have 100 cycles, but only 81% health.

On the other hand, I've seen people who sold MBPs at very healthy resale values despite having over 1000 cycles, but still over 90% health. There are also plenty of buyers who know the most important numbers to pay attention to.

 

[darkpaw]

I don't know about that, I think you notice the downsides right away. If you drain the battery everyday for a year, it will be at like 75% battery health.

Nope. From Apple's own website, and generally universal knowledge:

Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 1,000 complete charge cycles.

That's about three years, and with 5% more than your claim.

 

[smirking]

How do you know they are not accurate?

Just use something like Coconut Battery and follow your battery history over time and it should be obvious that all battery readings need to be viewed as flawed. You'll see things like your battery degrading rapidly to 90%, but then regain a few percentage points, and then fluctuate +1% or -1% for the next 18 months.

Your battery isn't losing health and gaining it back. Either your earlier battery readings were significantly wrong, your current ones are significantly wrong, or they're all somewhat wrong.

 

[ttyRazor]

I would still like to keep the cycle count down. A laptop with high cycle count is not easy to resale unless you're selling at a heavy loss.

My dad was recently complaining that his iPhone 8 wasn’t holding a charge for long anymore and wondered what the best way to replace it was. I told him to just take it to an Apple Store, but it was probably time to get a new phone soon anyway. I asked to look at it to check the battery health, but before I even got that far I saw that the current battery charge was… 97%. Apparently he believes it should stay at 100% indefinitely when not using it, which he rarely does.

I’ve tried to explain that it’s perfectly normal for a device that’s in constant contact with cell towers and WiFi to use battery over time, but it’s hard to change someone’s mind about something like that when the underlying premise is so flawed to begin with. Like yours!

Anyone focusing that much on battery health when buying a used laptop is probably looking for any excuse to pay as little as possible already and would just find some other thing to bargain down over. Anyone else would probably just get a not much more expensive refurb to not deal with someone trying to haggle so aggressively.

 

[ttyRazor]

It’s very funny! (And on the front page.)

I use my Air M1 on battery because it’s a laptop. I tend to keep it in my lap. (Not at all times. I remove it while I’m showering and/or sleeping.) My lap is portable, I even sometimes carry it to the garden, in fact, and sometimes into trains or planes, where I admit I detach the laptop to put it on a tray table. Battery – made in Dec 2020 – is down to 83% and has been there for 14 months by now, I bought the M1 in June 2021. The resale value here depends only on whether the battery is above or below 80%, so when the M4 Air is out I will decide whether to replace the battery for €189 or sell this one for €700+ and get an M4. (The main reason to stick with the M1 is the wedge shape, I love it even if it’s Ancient and Unfashionable. The main reason to replace it is that I really should have gone with 16GB RAM…)

I didn’t buy a laptop with 14-hour battery life to keep it connected all the time. I have a power bank for emergencies, of which I have so far experienced zero, but I used to use it when we were paying stupid money for energy before 11pm.

Windows laptops that are approaching 3.5 years have ‘we will recycle this for you for free’ resale value with 100% battery capacity (LOL, a Windows laptop with 100% battery capacity after two weeks of using…) In the Netherlands, on Rebuy, 81% and 99% has the same resale value, as long as it’s below 1000 cycles (759 in my case).

I’ve come to think of that front page comment blurb link as the troll box. So many engagement boosting bad takes there.

 

[Ruggy]

In the US Apple charges $159 for a battery replacement on a MacBook Air. Of course people get batteries replaced.

This is correct. Price varies from $129-199 depending on model.

 

[raythompsontn]

It's not meant to be constantly charging.

The battery is not constantly charging when the laptop is plugged into power. The laptop will stop the charge and just top the battery off a little when the battery occasionally drops below 100%. In the Apple world as the battery charge approaches 100% the charging current is slowly dropped. Once 100% charge is reached no more current is sent to the battery. It's how charging circuits work.

I have seen many laptops, plugged in 100% of their life (about five years in office environment I worked). At the end of 5 years all the batteries were in excellent shape and had 90%, or more, of their useful life left.

All this futzing and worrisome behavior over a battery, in a device that will reach it's useful life before the battery expires, is just plain silly.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

OP's name is "DeepSix" because we're actually all 6 feet under and this entire thread is purgatory.

OMG this is a Jacob's Ladder thread. And just in time for Halloween.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

I can always bring both C300's with me as I got a bag for it that can fit both in and with all the cables.

But what about wear and tear on the bag? Don't you also need a larger bag to carry the original bag, to protect its resale value?

 

[DeepSix]

It makes me wonder, how much more would a used MacBook buyer pay for one with a battery having a low cycle count? My guess is $0.

I’ve never bought used, but I would be more concerned about the overall MacBook age and how many more macOS updates it could get. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Even though many don't agree but there are a lot of people out there who ask for the devices cycle count when inquiring about your for sale item.

For example, I sold my M1 iPad Pro 3 months ago. The girl asked about the battery health condition and how many cycles it had. I told her but she asked me for proof of it. So I had to physically show her in person how many cycles it had and what health the battery was still at. Then she bought it right after at my asking price, no questions asked. Had I not been able to prove it to her, she likely wouldn't have bought it.

So many buyers do care about battery health and the cycle count.

 

[DeepSix]

Nope. From Apple's own website, and generally universal knowledge:

Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 1,000 complete charge cycles.

That's about three years, and with 5% more than your claim.

Don't always believe specs, many manufacturers these days exaggerate specs on their websites. Im not saying that this isn't true of a Macbook internal battery but has there been physical proof that it can handle 1000 full cycles from 100%-0% and still retain 80% of its capacity?

Li-Ion batteries are generally only good for 500ish full cycles before the capacity really takes a hit. If it's a cheap quality Li-Ion battery then it will be even less than 500 full cycles. Unless Apple is using LiPo4 batteries in their Macs, I just find that spec to be exaggerated.

I hope we soon see Li-Po4 batteries in laptops.