Macbook Pro 2014, new battery won't charge, only works on mains power

DrNickH wrote:

Hi all, thanks for reading 'another' battery thread.

I just bought a battery replacement, not an original as Apple didn't have one, as my old battery said service required and wouldn't last very long.

So fitted, all went fine, until I turned on the laptop. It is SOOOOOO slow to do ANYTHING.

Now to the battery, it sees the battery, but it won't charge it and it is stuck at 62 %. I followed the 'instructions' that came with it (bought from Duracelldirect.co.uk - which strangely Ive now learned isn't actually Duracell but a company just selling Duracell stuff) to try and cycle the battery but I cant run it to zero as the computer won't run just from battery power.

I refitted my old battery and it worked fine, it would charge and allowed the laptop to run just on battery power.

When I removed the 'new' battery (so no battery installed) the laptop is still slow, but it is still so much faster than when the new battery is fitted - any reason why? I understand the throttling when no battery, but with?

I'm curious if there's something obvious I need to do to get the mac to use or charge the battery?

Thanks in advance for ANY help.

Macbook Pro Mid 2014, OS 11.7.2

With your new battery installed did you reset the SMC Reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

this controls the power management...

I agree with @leroydouglas that OWC is your best option for a third party Lithium-ion battery. iFixIt is another possibility, but I personally would go with OWC.

With the Apple Retina laptops, the laptops always operate from the battery even when the charger is connected. Any sort of power related issue will result in the Retina laptop running slowly. The Apple Intel USB-C laptops are even worse in this regard.

The quality of third party Lithium-ion batteries are extremely poor even when purchased from a reputable vendor. Just look at how hard it is for Apple to get good batteries...even Apple receives defective batteries at times due to how difficult it is to make a Lithium-ion battery. The current Lithium-ion battery technology used in these laptops still has natural flaws which the battery makers are constantly trying to reduce & overcome to make better quality & longer lasting batteries (as in lasting more charging cycles and more years...not necessarily running a laptop for more hours on a single charge), but it takes time to test & bring these newer designs to market although there are some promising improvements being made to the Lithium-ion technology.

DrNickH wrote:

Thank you for the reply, I had and have just tried again, to no avail.

after doing the reset, pressing the power on it would start for a second or two (could hear the initial fan spin) before it would die. I had to try four-five times before I finally heard the chime and waited a further lifetime for it to boot.

How can having the battery in place make it go so weird!?

Not all third party batteries are made alike.

Return it if it is faulty or not working as expected...

i don't even see Apple listed here <https://www.duracelldirect.co.uk> ? I'll leave that up to you to dig deeper.

You can try —OWC/MacSales partners/ reseller around the world:

https://www.owcdigital.com/reseller/resellers