Hello, I have a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina 15'' that is not showing a 'Service Battery' warning on the menu bar. I've also noticed occasional random shutdowns when the battery falls around the 20-40% charge range. The battery shows nearly 800 cycles. Is this normal behavior for a laptop of this age?
MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14
The "service battery" flag triggers when the retained capacity drops below 80% of the design capacity. In your case, you are at 67%. Apple states that a battery should go "up to" 1000 cycles before it drops below 80 percent; note the "wiggle words." In real life there are too many variations in battery usage patterns for this to be an every time thing. We've seen batteries trigger the alert at 500-600 cycles and other that go well over 1000. I think the highest cycle count I've seen reported here was almost 2200.
Babowa's sage advice to seek service now before the battery swells is the best action you have. This document shows Apple battery service pricing for notebooks:
mac Repair - Official Apple Support
but you'll need to check with Apple to see if yours is still an "eligible" model. For most service they only work on devices that have been out of production for less than five years, and yours stopped in Feb 2013, so you may not be able to have Apple replace it. However, some battery replacements seems to go outside the usual limits on service, so check, don't guess.
If you find Apple cannot replace the battery, post back and the can offer some options.
The "service battery" flag triggers when the retained capacity drops below 80% of the design capacity. In your case, you are at 67%. Apple states that a battery should go "up to" 1000 cycles before it drops below 80 percent; note the "wiggle words." In real life there are too many variations in battery usage patterns for this to be an every time thing. We've seen batteries trigger the alert at 500-600 cycles and other that go well over 1000. I think the highest cycle count I've seen reported here was almost 2200.
Babowa's sage advice to seek service now before the battery swells is the best action you have. This document shows Apple battery service pricing for notebooks:
mac Repair - Official Apple Support
but you'll need to check with Apple to see if yours is still an "eligible" model. For most service they only work on devices that have been out of production for less than five years, and yours stopped in Feb 2013, so you may not be able to have Apple replace it. However, some battery replacements seems to go outside the usual limits on service, so check, don't guess.
If you find Apple cannot replace the battery, post back and the can offer some options.
At this point, it doesn’t matter if it is normal or not, but what does matter is that you heed the warning and have your battery checked and most likely replaced as they can swell and damage other components and, at worst, explode.
is 'Service Battery' at 800 cycles normal
