Poll: How many charge cycles does your battery have?
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.






February 14th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Check out MiniBatteryLogger. Nice battery monitoring tool that publishes to a central database so you can benchmark yourself against other Mac users.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
My wife’s has 119 - we bought it in March ‘07. Sadly, my iMac just can’t hold a charge.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
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).
February 14th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m at 148, purchased June last year.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
damn, i’m at 54 cycles and i bought this in november
February 14th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
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”.
February 14th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
i have a macbook the battery that came with it died after only 136 cycles and my new battery is about 148 cycles
February 14th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
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.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
My laptop was bought last January and I am currently on 12 battery cycles and apparently 100% health.
February 14th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
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%…
February 14th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
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.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
367 charge cycles and 100% health on a black macbook purchased xmas ‘06. I think i’m doing well.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
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.
February 14th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
my damn crappy SR MBP shows 88 cycles and 89% life its about 7months old.. maybe i need to cycle the batteries more.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
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
February 15th, 2008 at 1:19 am
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.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:18 am
18 Cycles had this macbook since the Nov ‘07 rev
February 15th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Last iBook G4 1.42GHz model.
114 load cycles
79% health
26 months
February 15th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Wow. 18 cycles in the year I’ve had this MBP. Guess Im near an outlet far too often
February 15th, 2008 at 10:33 am
769 cycles
78% health
Bought it the day that MacBooks came out.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
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..
February 16th, 2008 at 10:24 am
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.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:03 am
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.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:57 am
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.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
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.
May 16th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
My Macbook Battery Died
after 601 cycles
May 26th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I’m at 83 cycles and purchased my Macbook in January of 2008. Yikes!
August 17th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
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.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
mbp 2.4
cycles : 115
age : 7 months
current : 4898
original : 5500
September 9th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
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.
September 13th, 2008 at 1:33 am
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.