Battery Health decline to 96% in three month of purchase of new macbook air m1, Cycle count is 44 only

nitish_biswas wrote:

After usage of three months I checked my battery health 96% which is a drastic drop in a three month period, After 1 week of purchase i was getting issue in hinge and I submited the mac at service centre for three times, at second time they give back the mac without connecting the battery, and after that my battery was draining little bit fast comparetively from before but they say it is normal. Cycle count is 44 only

What should I do?

Stop worrying about the battery. The MacOS manages the charging/power system very well. Leaving the computer plugged in will not damage the battery or the computer.

Change Battery settings on a Mac laptop - Apple Support

Batteries - Maximizing Performance - Apple

Batteries are healthier when they hold close to 50% of charge.

If it is higher it creates harmful tension, if it is lower it also creates harmful tension.

I understand your problem completely, and the more you use your computer the more you keep it either fully charged or discharged. That's the way chemicals work in current batteries.

My recommendation is using the battery instead of avoid using it by having it fully charged, no matter how high or low is the cycle count.

I reserve my own opinion about the purpose of the Cycle Count new feature for myself and outside this Apple restricted forum.

Perfectly normal.

Batteries are consumables and are designed to be recharged and used as needed. The Macs charging system will maintain your Battery better than any human ever will so your micromanaging it is at best useless.

You can leave you battery on charge 24/7 without harm. The circuitry's logic knows when to cut back and not overcharge.

Cycle count is mostly just eye candy. If you were to leave your battery on charge 24/7 for 10 years the cycle count would be very, very low yet the battery will still degrade. That's just how modern batteries work.

The metric to watch is remaing capacity. When it drops to 80% Apple recommends the battery be replaced for optimum performance.

There is no reason to ever avoid fully charging a healthy Mac battery. Set battery optimization ON and leave it there. The Mac will take care of it's battery.

All components fail ... some sooner than others. Batteries are no exception but trying to overly "pamper" your battery into longer life is not a workable strategy.

ku4hx wrote:

You can leave you battery on charge 24/7 without harm. The circuitry's logic knows when to cut back and not overcharge.

Why would iPhones charge up to 80% and remember the time you wake up to do the final battery charge if it is not related to chemical tension inside Lithium batteries?

No battery from any manufacturer will ever overcharge, there are "mandatory" protection mechanisms for it on every device.

ku4hx wrote:

... The Macs charging system will maintain your Battery better than any human ever will so your micromanaging it is at best useless.

You can leave you battery on charge 24/7 without harm. The circuitry's logic knows when to cut back and not overcharge.

If you were to leave your battery on charge 24/7 for 10 years the cycle count would be very, very low yet the battery will still degrade.

I do not agree with you. When I typed "harmful" it's because that's really what's happening inside battery chemicals, the chemicals are being harmed, and that's why Apple recommends replacing it when it drops below 80%, because of it's degradation.

When you talk about micro-managing being useless I guess you're responding to me.

The metric to watch is remaining capacity, I agree with that, and remaining capacity lowers down faster due to heat usually caused by very fast draining, high CPU/GPU usage, the weather, or very fast charging among other factors.

There's another metric besides capacity and cycle count more that's even more important, which is the power (Watt or Amp per Volt) that a battery can transfer in a short amount of time, the horse-power of the battery, that can also lead to a useless battery like on the iPhone 5S? case by which Apple was sued and found guilty of Planned Obsolescence for example, because the OS was suddenly draining the battery much faster, and they "nerfed" or slowed down the whole Operating System in those iPhones just for their batteries to last longer.

But for the remaining capacity to keep high for longer, I recommend keeping every modern battery close to 50% charge. If you say that's "micro-managing" and it is "useless" please be aware that you're a "Level 7" user in a private Apple Community forum.

That's the reason why when you buy most hardware "with replaceable" batteries, the battery charge is usually between 40%-60%, and manufactures who plan to stock their products for a long or unknown time by distributors, usually include a physical insulator in the battery connectors that you must manually remove yourself, for example bluetooth headphones, so the battery keeps healthier for longer.

You can tell me it is useless, but please tell the whole industry what they are doing is useless, because I'm pretty sure they have restricted profit margins compared to Apple and they could pay you a lot of money for that kind of information if they're spending money uselessly.

And by the way, I never said anything about Overcharging. Every rechargeable battery, Apple or Bananas, needs and Overcharging protection mechanism, every device uses it, I don't know what's your point.

I repeat, I recommend keeping battery charge close to 50% for it to last longer. You cannot say this is useless.

LincePalido wrote:

My recommendation is using the battery instead of avoid using it by having it fully charged, no matter how high or low is the cycle count.

Please let me rephrase this.

My recommendations is using the battery instead of not using it.

I recommend not trying to avoid using the battery because the harm would be higher.

When the battery is between 40% to 100% charge and you are using your computer unplugged (not charging) the battery tension is lowered, less damage for the battery than if you are "not using" your computer.

When the battery is between 0% to 40% it's better to plug it and recharge the battery. If you go away and you want to be able to use your computer all day long or as much as possible, you better charge it in full, no need to be aware when it finishes charging or not, once battery level reaches 100% you can have it plugged or unplugged, but there's a tension you might want to free, just by using your computer "unplugged".

If the battery level is between 0% to 40% and you plan to stay at home for a while, or you have a nearby plug, you can make your battery last longer (battery health not degrading so quickly as months go by) if you stop charging when battery level/capacity reaches 60% for example, or 80% if you plan to use it for a while more while unplugged.

It's not something to be really picky about, but it is much much better than having it plugged on for years without ever unplugging it.

Full recharge cycles (from 0% to 100% and from 100% down to 0%) from time to time, that were usual in older batteries with different chemicals (Cadmium, NiH, and others), which used to have the so-called "memory-effect", are instead HARMFUL to these not so new Lithium based batteries.

Please avoid strictly measuring the time your battery lasts in just one single session for two reasons:

• battery health will degrade faster
• you can never get the same exact CPU usage over-time, due to varying brightness conditions, varying software updates, macOS updates, security updates, Spotlight indexing documents, etc..., even more if you have any web site open, be it as a widget or in the browser, as Javascript can affect CPU usage a lot, as the web site may be changing their code on the fly

It would be even worse if you use any of the usual Tools (programs, Apps, whatever) used to measure and check the real performance of the battery, because they may saturate your CPU, make it drain faster, create more tension inside the chemicals, and make it degrade faster, the more degradation the more times you do so.

I hope you find this information useful, although heavy reading, it was heavier for me to type it on a Friday night...

Conclusion, use your computer freely and don't care too much about battery.

Just avoid having it always 100% charged, in case you urgently need to rush out to "who knows", specially if it never happens that you need to do so ;)

And a note to the other user: overcharging a battery is not the same as having a Lithium battery tension high.