Poll: How many charge cycles does your battery have?

February 14, 2008 by Dr. Macenstein
Filed under: MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Polls 

My “new” Macbook is my first laptop in about 10 years, so I’m not overly familiar with how long these new-fangled rechargeable jobbers can potentially last. So out of curiosity, I thought I would take a poll of our readership to see how many charge cycles their current Mac Laptop battery is running on. To test this, I am using the excellent (free) iStat Pro widget by iSlayer.

I bought my MacBook on November 3rd, and as you can see, it currently has 76 charges, or roughly 1 charge for every 1.3 days. So, how many charge cycles can I expect?

(For the purposes of this poll, let’s only list cycles for “usable” batteries, meaning those that hold an hour or more of charge time. If your battery currently has 700 charge cycles but only last 5 minutes when unplugged, you really have a portable desktop, NOT a laptop. Put your best guess as to when it could hold a reasonable charge.). Take the poll below and let’s see how many charges the average working Mac laptop has.

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Comments

42 Comments on Poll: How many charge cycles does your battery have?

  1. rghanbari on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 12:28 pm

    2. Check out MiniBatteryLogger. Nice battery monitoring tool that publishes to a central database so you can benchmark yourself against other Mac users.

  2. Rob Bickers on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 12:35 pm

    3. My wife’s has 119 - we bought it in March ‘07. Sadly, my iMac just can’t hold a charge.

  3. Aaaron H. on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 1:32 pm

    4. I’ve had a few MacBook Pros over the years and have been using iStatPro for a while. In my experience, by the time it gets to 200 charges I find the diminishing battery life becoming obvious and I start looking at getting a new one and using the old one for backup.

    It _feels_ like it doesn’t last as long before that, but 200 is about where there is no question that it’s getting worse. Mind you, it’s still usable after 200, but the life cycle is starting to be detrimental to my regular use.

    (taking a look at iStat, I’m current at 166. I guess I have another month or so before I have to start looking).

  4. Jason on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 2:10 pm

    5. I’m at 148, purchased June last year.

  5. EvilTuna on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 3:04 pm

    6. damn, i’m at 54 cycles and i bought this in november

  6. Robert McGovern on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 3:16 pm

    7. My laptop was bought last January and I am currently on 234 battery cycles and apparently 100% health. Certainly it seems to perform near as well as it used to but I am not great at keeping the battery “calibrate”.

  7. i on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 4:34 pm

    8. i have a macbook the battery that came with it died after only 136 cycles and my new battery is about 148 cycles

  8. zmttoxics on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 4:50 pm

    9. Hey man,

    I got my macbook in the beginning of october (just before the new versions, I got the screw I know).

    But I am very good about taking care of my battery and use the power cord when I can, and let the battery drain fully every few weeks.

    I only have 43 cycles on it, and its older then yours. So hopefully, mine will last longer because of my TLC for it.

  9. Pacorro on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 5:41 pm

    10. My laptop was bought last January and I am currently on 12 battery cycles and apparently 100% health.

  10. hansning on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 6:04 pm

    11. how the heck is it that you have 76 cycles on it and it still has 100% health?? is there some kinda secret to this? i have 143, and the health is at 73%…

  11. Ian on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 7:22 pm

    12. Something really wierd just happened. With my Macbook Pro battery with 23% remaining, my mobile phone battery and my MBP both seemed to die of battery failure at exactly the same time, as though there was an electro-magnetic pulse in the area! It has cut out like this a few times and I wonder if there is a fault. If there is a fault, I could get a new battery under the warranty which would save me replacing it, but I doubt I can prove there is a problem.

    My charges are 109 and I bought my Mac in May 2007 which puts me on 2.47 charges per day, that could be because I’m normally not on the battery.

  12. Dean Gray on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 8:06 pm

    13. 367 charge cycles and 100% health on a black macbook purchased xmas ‘06. I think i’m doing well.

  13. Derek McNelly on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 8:42 pm

    14. I’m at 132 cycles, 100% health, and on a regular cycle. Only run on battery power 4 times a week, and at least once every two weeks, I completely kill the battery and put it on the charger overnight.

    For some reason, I get better battery life now than I did back in July ‘07 when I first got it.

  14. Richard on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 9:20 pm

    15. my damn crappy SR MBP shows 88 cycles and 89% life its about 7months old.. maybe i need to cycle the batteries more. :)

  15. dbr on Thu, 14th Feb 2008 10:33 pm

    16. 319 cycles, health at 88%. It was bought.. erm.. a year or two ago.
    The battery still lasts about 2.5 hours while not doing a lot, or around 1.5 - 2 while watching videos

  16. MacBandit on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 1:19 am

    17. 393 cycles and 100% health. I tend to use my battery until nearly dead almost everyday. I got my Macbook when the Core2Duos were released over a year ago. I still get over 4 hours regularly.

  17. matt on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 3:18 am

    18. 18 Cycles had this macbook since the Nov ‘07 rev

  18. Bart on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 5:17 am

    19. Last iBook G4 1.42GHz model.

    114 load cycles
    79% health
    26 months

  19. Raptor316 on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 10:05 am

    20. Wow. 18 cycles in the year I’ve had this MBP. Guess Im near an outlet far too often :)

  20. Eric on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 10:33 am

    21. 769 cycles

    78% health

    Bought it the day that MacBooks came out.

  21. Amir on Fri, 15th Feb 2008 3:54 pm

    22. 98 cycles, 97% health and bought it on december 18th ‘07 and i use my MBP till i get the warning that i need to charge it..

  22. Domenico on Sat, 16th Feb 2008 10:24 am

    23. 11 cycles, but this is a replacement battery I got in January. My first battery came with the MBP last March, but by the beginning of Jan I was getting an hour or so of battery life. The Genius at the Apple Store said that such a falloff should not happen until after 300 cycles, but I was somewhat less than that. So I got a new battery swapped in for nothing.

  23. Beezer on Sun, 17th Feb 2008 9:03 am

    24. 278 Cycles.
    84% Health.
    I charge when the thing dies, and do the whole drainage for 2 hours and fullcharge thing every other month.

    I bought it when the first Macbooks came out.

  24. Cubert on Sun, 17th Feb 2008 11:57 am

    25. My PowerBook (April 2004 rev.) had 650+ cycles on it when I replaced the battery just 2 weeks ago. It would last about 75 minutes if no web browsers were open and about 30-45 for active websurfing.

    My new battery now lasts several hours and has been through only a dozen or so cycles. But, having a web browser open really reduces the charge duration.

  25. jonasn on Tue, 19th Feb 2008 7:14 pm

    26. iBatt2 gives this info:
    Capacity: 3585 mAh
    Design (original) capacity: 4400 mAh
    Cycle count: 439
    Depletion: 00:25 lost

    G4 12″ 1.33 GHz. Bought in September 2004 if I’m not mistaken.

  26. Brent on Fri, 16th May 2008 12:56 pm

    27. My Macbook Battery Died :-( after 601 cycles

  27. Isabel on Mon, 26th May 2008 12:26 am

    28. I’m at 83 cycles and purchased my Macbook in January of 2008. Yikes!

  28. Scott on Sun, 17th Aug 2008 9:17 pm

    29. 2.33ghz MBP

    66 cycles

    89% health

    This is my second battery. The first one one was a lemon, didn’t hold a charge out of the box.

  29. Pujo Aji on Mon, 8th Sep 2008 10:50 pm

    30. mbp 2.4

    cycles : 115
    age : 7 months
    current : 4898
    original : 5500

  30. Sarah on Tue, 9th Sep 2008 10:59 pm

    31. I am at 726 cycles and my health is at 88%.
    Just today I had a problem when I unplug the power cord it just shuts off…
    I purchased my MacBook in Dec 06. That’s almost 2 years…not bad.

  31. nathan on Sat, 13th Sep 2008 1:33 am

    32. I have 374 cycles with 100% life according to istat. The battery still seems to work for a long period of time. Although, i do feel like it doesn’t last as long as it did when i first got it, not by much though. Probably get around 3 hours of use per charge.

  32. Andy Macaulay-Brook on Wed, 24th Dec 2008 4:02 pm

    33. Just died at 511 cycles - MacBook that’s 28 months old and used solidly every day, so not bad compared o some listed here.

  33. Nick on Fri, 26th Dec 2008 4:57 pm

    34. Regular Macbook 2.16 Ghz model
    Bought May of ‘07
    259 Charging Cycles, 96% health :D

  34. cheryl on Fri, 30th Jan 2009 9:07 am

    35. I have had my macbook for 18 months.. i have 700 cycles and i still have 100% health.. two programs say that.. istat and coconut.. i think i have a freak macbook.

  35. Ck Leung on Sat, 31st Jan 2009 1:57 pm

    36. I have had my Macbook for.. about 7-8 months now. I have 325 Cycles and 89% health…

  36. Boourns on Sun, 15th Mar 2009 9:27 pm

    37. Had MBP since March 2008.

    177 cycles.

    85% health.

    I can get about 2.5 hours on medium light with normal Internet usage and watching videos.

  37. Jordan on Sat, 2nd May 2009 1:49 pm

    38. 412 cycles batt health is jumping from like 92 to 94 now to 91

  38. craig on Sat, 16th May 2009 9:05 am

    39. how do you know how many cycles it has?

  39. Pauli Terho on Thu, 28th May 2009 4:13 pm

    40. Look for Battery Health Monitor

  40. Marcel on Wed, 3rd Jun 2009 7:55 am

    41. Had 621 cycles and still on 98%. Though have the impression it drains faster than it used to do.

  41. Hazzy on Fri, 19th Jun 2009 4:15 pm

    42. Mine has done 547 and the health is 100%. I’ve noticed (or think that I’ve noticed) that in the past couple of days the battery drains faster. It’s really strange, and also kind of worrying. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it. I think it depends on whether or not you charge it fully before unplugging it or if you leave it plugged in after it’s charged. I’ve noticed that the health on mine goes down when i do either of these things.

  42. Nikk on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 6:09 am

    43. Have 476 cycles and apparently 100% health. I know that it drains much faster than it used to, get about 1hr with no AC power. If I plug into printer, it drains automatically. Bought it June 05, so it is now 4 years old. Can you simply buy a replacement battery?

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