MacBook Air m1 battery reduced to 98%

Batteries are considered Consumable Products. Over time it will degrade to a point where it needs to be replaced. In you case - the usage is normal as the capacity will go up and down all the time and never stay always at 100%. Apple Batteries are rated for 1000 Full Battery Cycles and / or 80% Capacity before needing Evaluation or replacement.

For additional reading on Battery and Apple Computers this link may help. About battery health management in Mac notebooks and especially for the M1 and Big Sur If battery charging is paused or on hold on your Mac

it's around 50 cycles, and it's only 89% capacity now! It's not sustainable if i run ios simulator + xcode + android simulator , vscode (backend) + chrome with a few tabs opened + 1 youtube video -> which would drain battery significantly! So It's better if you keep it's charging when building sth i guess

If one believes there is a Real Issue >> Find an Apple Authorized Service Provider << nearest your location and have it Evaluated. Just fill in the Country and City information.

IMHO - the explanations provided will prove battery is fine.

Rajchandela wrote:

Same thing happened to me also but i only have 31 cycles Apple should have to listen our concerns

If you truly believe that this is an issue, contact Apple Directly (Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support) or set up a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple Store or at the nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider and have the Mac evaluated.

BTW, "Apple" is not here. We are just user like yourself trying to help other users.

It's 51 cycle & the battery is already reduced to 90% capacity!

You can try to avoid combo that kills the battery by using some software to monitor your cpu/memory usage

example

• a plugin can cause significant jump in cpu usage
• photoshop + chrome (youtube - a few tabs) + vscode + xcode + ios simulator + android simulator + sidecar -> will kill your battery very fast (100-150% faster than using mac without them)

...

just avoid combo killing the battery as the heat from your cores will kill it pretty fast

example of a basic stack for dev:

• photoshop + final cut + docker + vscode + xcode + ios & android simulator + chrome a few tabs with youtube videos + sidecar
• you're better of charging your laptop in those cases as it will last around 7-8 hours (40-50% of 20hrs) if you're lucky
• some apps / plugins may cause lots cpu usage as well, use activity monitor to stop them if you can
• u see below 16G memory with just a few basic applications, not even running docker or xcode or photo editor (you'll never know until you test with your real scenarios) - opt out beta program may help a bit if you run many apps without needing them

Again, I’m not sure that’s as bad as it may superficially sound. At this rate it will take you 5 years to reach 80% (which seems to be the psychological threshold where your battery life no longer being what it once was becomes very noticeable), which is pretty much the average lifespan of a laptop before you tend to start itching to get a new one for various other reasons as well. But again, that's only based on a 1% drop so far. Others on here definitely seem to have batteries that are deteriorating faster than they should be on a per-cycle basis, so it's worth keeping an eye on it in case it accelerates.

To try to answer your question though, I’ve heard that Chrome isn’t energy-efficient but can’t confirm firsthand because I don’t use it much. One general tip is that screen brightness can significantly affect the battery life. I normally keep mine around 50%, whereas in the 75–100% range you can definitely tell the difference on the battery drain. Also, if putting it to sleep on battery, don’t leave anything connected to either USB-C port (not even an idle cable or adapter), as that will cause the battery to drain more than it should during sleep; which seems to be an actual bug (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252191369) that Apple will hopefully sort out sooner than later.

Otherwise, how do you find the battery life in general? As I commented in the above-linked thread, I’ve found it’s amazing for certain things (e.g. watching Netflix in Safari with little else going on in the background—it will actually approach the advertised 18 hours of video) but then surprisingly average to mediocre for other things that you wouldn’t normally think of as particularly energy-intensive. Mixed bag.

Where did you get that information? Here is a link to the warranty terms:

https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/embedded-mac-warranty-us.html

And here is a link to the costs for out of warranty battery replacements:

https://support.apple.com/mac/repair/service

I have been also a big fan of this M1 Mac and bought it last year in Feb 2021. Few things I noticed since then.

• My old MacBooks were doing ok charging with fast charger/Regular charger
• This M1 Mac is suffering form battery degradation even with the given apple charger (forget about fast charging)
• I remember for first 30-35 cycle my battery gone down like 2% already
• I Like the Magnetic snapping charging tips (generally sells on amazon and good for convince and not so good for charging speed as it has only 5v1A max output)
• Now my all device has it since I can just use one magnetic cable and (since one part stays inserted in the devices ,it may be apple or usb c or usb micro ) I only have to carry one cable anywhere I go or even in my car bcz of this.
• After using this super slow charger with low battery use checked in settings here is my battery cycle count after one year and 5 months along with some SSD read write number to probably compare my usage.
• My battery Cycle count has gone so up after that but the battery degradation has not too much. just 8 % in almost 210 cycle.(surely not good as my last generation apple MacBooks but doing good so far if you can live with overnight charging)
• I was a heavy chrome user but after knowing the battery situation and how it just drains my battery I decided to switch everything to safari and added all the extension and stuff. I am happy that safari has almost all the most common extension available for ad blocking and video speed controller etc.(no more bookmark sync between chrome and safari )

At least the macbook m1 air has 2 HUGE design flaws:

1. The screen almost cracks on its own
2. Battery capacity decay at very fast pace

I had these problems and Apple replaced both battery and screen free of charge under normal warranty. I was problably lucky that i'm in UK (european laws) otherwise I would have had to pay for repairs.

So Apple knows it's their fault but they hide the problem and make us pay for their mistake.

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!

Now, after this experience I was left with sequelae... the laptop is always plugged in and I close/open the lid with really ridiculous attention.

In 5 months the warranty will end and I will be out of luck so I will sell my macbook air and return to pc after 13 years.

I'm out of patience with Apple, i had problem with 2011 17' mb pro and his AMD gpu problem, been 3 times in service to replaced it. After that with my wife's macbook air sticky keys.

So thanks Apple or not!

I realize I'm in the wrong forum since I have an M1 MacBook Pro. But it's at 94% after 27 cycles. I bought/downloaded a nifty battery app called "coconutBattery" that dives deeper into battery health. It shows that it's constantly fluctuating. Right now it shows me at 94.6% of the Design Capacity, before my last cycle it was something like 95.2%.

Current Charge - 4791 mAh

Full Charge Capacity - 4828 mAh

Design Capacity - 5103 mAh

Manufacture Date - 3/22/21

Age - 233 Days

MacOS battery status - Good

Interestingly enough, it can also show my phones battery. Got my iPhone 12 Pro on launch day, not quite a power user, but use it a lot. Was down to 90% capacity after 12 months, now it's at 92% capacity. I'm guessing software has something to do with these numbers, maybe Apple is always tweaking how it calculates battery life.

For the number of cycle that I have the degradation is much much faster. My old Mac had some 800+ cycles and the battery health was still 85% . with this new Mac its just 88% in a year. not looking good apple. maybe we are gone have to replace it in next 2 years.

I'm having the same problem. And very dissatisfied...

My Air M1 bought in April/21, today with 57 cycles, the battery health has dropped to 87%, it's unacceptable. And Apple says it's normal. We all know that the battery is consumable, it will wear out at one time or another, but at this speed it's not normal, and the company doesn't want to assume this design error or batch failure. This week I will take it to an authorized one and demand the replacement of this battery, before the warranty expires.

*** I follow exactly the procedure for using and recharging the battery, according to the company's official article

Simple math:

27 full charge cycles/1000 lifetime estimate x 100% = 2.7% used or conversely 97.3.

So, is the software counting every charge cycle as a full cycle? Only Apple engineers

know what actually counts as a "charge cycle".