Macbook Pro - Battery Full Charge Capacity

Question

Level 3

691 points

Macbook Pro - Battery Full Charge Capacity

All this talk about bad batteries on the MacBook Pro.....

In system profiler, my battery shows:

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5365

Is 5365 "good", "excellent", "normal", "lousy" or "toasted" ??? Should I call Apple and request a warranty replacement or rejoice that I have a good battery? What value should I look for in "Full Charge Capacity"?

Battery life is much lower than I expect, but that may be "normal" for an Intel based MacBook Pro. I dunno; I am asking ...

MacBook Pro 17" & PowerBook Ti G4 15", Mac OS X (10.4.10), Apple Extreme Base Station

Posted on Jul 14, 2007 4:17 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Jul 14, 2007 4:42 PM in response to Jane Knox

Typical full charge capacity is 5000-5500 mAh when new. It will decline with age. The battery life is about 500 full discharge cycles.

I don't know what "battery life" you expect, but under typical usage without aggressive power management the battery should last from 3 to 3.5 hours.

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Answer 2

Jane Knox Author

Level 3

691 points

Jul 19, 2007 8:14 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks for the feedback! It convinced me that I needed to call Apple Care and whine. They are replacing both of my batteries under the extended warranty.

The old batteries both show full charge capacity over 5000 mAh but both of them intermittently just shut down - not sleep, just cut off power completely. Both of the batteries also show X in the menu icon from time to time.

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Answer 3

Jul 19, 2007 10:44 AM in response to Kappy

The 5500 mAh figure is for the 60W battery in the 15" MBP. The OP lists a 17" in the profile - nominal capacity for a new 68W battery for the 17" is ~6200 mAh.

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