2019 MacBook Pro battery installation and use issues.

Aftermarket battery quality is generally poor. If Apple can no longer service that Mac it leaves you with only bad options. In such cases OWC / MacSales is the only vendor whose products I can recommend. They will stand behind what they sell.

Return the Amazon product in accordance with their return policies.

I understand. Nothing but bad choices, but what's worse is hearing from people on this site who replaced their Mac batteries with cheap aftermarket ones despite the fact they remained eligible for authorized service. When they discover those batteries are junk, it gets worse when they learn Apple will henceforth refuse to service those Macs due to the unauthorized repair... and they're stuck.

With your Mac (I believe) Apple replaces the entire battery assembly along with its keyboard and trackpad, which is an attractive solution for Macs with keyboard problems (common on that variety — they changed the design in 2019 so yours might not be one of them).

Macs last a long time, and in most cases they don't need their batteries replaced before the owner decides to upgrade. Batteries are wear items though, so if you like squeezing the most life out of a Mac it becomes likely you will want a replacement before permanently retiring the Mac. I have a MacBook Air from 2011 whose battery needed to be replaced by Apple once. Still, Apple put up a bit of a fight because it was still at 80% — not sufficiently aged for them — but I didn't want it to become "vintage" and be faced with those bad choices. It's now at about 72%, but it still lasts most of a day, which is fine with me. One battery replacement over the course of a Mac's economic life is ok.

You should write an Amazon review detailing your actions. It's not a pleasant experience. If people only knew what was involved they might consider other options.

At the end of the day, I’m still getting about six hours out of a charge.

That's the only metric that matters. Apple's battery charging algorithms including its percentage estimates are predicated on genuine Apple batteries incorporating proprietary Apple firmware in conjunction with ever-changing Apple battery management software, so aftermarket batteries will never indicate anything with any degree of accuracy. macOS is considering all the variables, and it just shrugs. 30% probably means nothing. Garbage in garbage out.

If I were you I would not attempt to fix things in the manner googling suggests, which will only degrade the battery's actual capacity and accelerate its demise. Just use it. I'm sure it will be fine.

<< I run it so that the battery indicator is at about 30% and then I shut the computer down completely to leave overnight. When I turn the computer back on, it starts out at 30% but immediately runs down to 1% and alerts me that it requires to be plugged in. >>

That computer is a battery-CAPABLE device, It is not optimized as a battery-operated device (it is not an iPhone.)

Your computer performs best when connected to AC power, such as the power adapter. It can use the full output of the Power Adapter AND when doing especially challenging work could also freely "borrow" power from the battery. In some cases, even with the power adapter connected, the charged state may decline during very stressful work.

When used only on battery, your computer has no extra cushion of power, and may perform more slowly. However, for ordinary non-stressful tasks this may not be objectionable (possibly not even noticeable.)

In general, you should ALWAYS connect a power source when it is possible to do so, and only run on batteries (which could be somewhat slower) when no power sources are at hand. Modern Macs maintain optimum battery charge levels under program control, and will NEVER over-charge. Connected to Power is NOT necessarily charging.

When you set it down in one place, or set it down for the night, Plug it in. Then you won’t CARE whether it would drain the battery. 

Plug it in, Activate Battery Health Management and do not spend another moment of your time thinking about charging.

According to the estimator on this Apple support page:

Mac Repair and Service - Apple Support

A 2019 Macbook Pro is still supported for battery service.

Unfortunately, now that you have changed the battery, they probably won't touch it.

Allan Jones wrote:

According to the estimator on this Apple support page:

Mac Repair and Service - Apple Support

A 2019 Macbook Pro is still supported for battery service.

I suspected it was, but didn't confirm.

Unfortunately, now that you have changed the battery, they probably won't touch it.

👍

MikeWilliams311 wrote:

In my 2019 MacBook Pro, I took it to the Apple Store to see what they could do. Unfortunately, they stated that the computer is now old enough that they don’t service them anymore.

It is so sad to see Apple does not even know their own devices.

I decided to go and get a battery myself on Amazon and, with the help of the instructions which came with the battery and a YouTube video, I was able to successfully replace the battery myself. Let me tell you, it’s not easy.

Congratulations for being able to do the replacement. Unfortunately as others have mentioned, the quality of most third party Lithium Batteries is extremely poor even when purchased from a respected vendor.

Did you perform the battery "calibration" procedure (aka special exercising of the battery) the first time you used the laptop after installing the third party battery? I find this is necessary, but even with this "calibration" exercising of the battery, a poor quality battery will still have issues.

I run it so that the battery indicator is at about 30% and then I shut the computer down completely to leave overnight.

I would not leave the laptop's battery @ 30% charge overnight even with it completely powered off. Much too risky. Plug the laptop in whenever you can.

When I turn the computer back on, it starts out at 30% but immediately runs down to 1% and alerts me that it requires to be plugged in.

FYI, disregard any information on the Mac's login screen as it is usually incorrect and will usually reflect the status from when the system was last accessed. Only go by the information once you log into macOS. The reliablity of the information on the lock screen changed some years ago.....most likely to stricter security & privacy changes.

In system settings, the battery health states that it’s normal.

macOS changed its battery condition metrics shortly after macOS 15.x Sequoia was released. It takes a lot before the battery condition changes from "Normal" to "Service Recommended".

I’m wondering what is going on here and if there’s anything anybody thinks I could do to improve performance or at least the computer‘s ability to properly read the charge on the battery.

There is nothing you can do other than replace it with a battery from OWC or iFixIt. Of course the best quality Lithium Battery is from Apple themselves with an official battery repair. You got a bad battery.....nothing you can do about poor quality hardware other than replacing it.

There were lots of good reviews on Amazon about this one and the price was fairly low so I figured I would roll the dice.

First, the ratings & reviews on Amazon cannot be trusted at all....for any product. Besides many of the ratings/reviews being false through offering free products for review, on many product pages if you look at much older comments of a "product", you will notice the review mentions a product that is completely different than the one currently being sold.

Even if everything there is 100% true & honest.....many of the battery resellers end up getting different batteries in stock which means the quality can change with every batch. So while a particular seller may have a good product for a while, they may end up changing the source of their product which may turn out to be of lesser quality. I have a reseller I work with who generally has good reliable products, but even they changed the source of their batteries without any notice to me and those batteries were pure junk. Unfortunately even after informing them of the problem, they still sell the junk batteries.....I must contact them for special ordering of the "good" batteries which are more expensive.

FYI, Amazon doesn't care about what is being sold on their platform. Amazon has been alerted to faulty & dangerous products before and those products remain for sale on their platform. Plus keep in mind many people will give a rave review without accurately assessing the product and many will bash a product they don't understand even though the product description is very clear. 95% of the product reviews are worthless. There are generally only a few truly detailed reviews from someone knowledgeable about the product to give a proper review & rating. Take reviews & ratings with a grain of salt (applies to all sites these days).

HWTech wrote:

FYI, Amazon doesn't care about what is being sold on their platform. Amazon has been alerted to faulty & dangerous products before and those products remain for sale on their platform. Plus keep in mind many people will give a rave review without accurately assessing the product and many will bash a product they don't understand even though the product description is very clear. 95% of the product reviews are worthless.

👍

Notice that a good Amazon review will be published right away, whereas a critical one can take days to appear — if it even appears at all. Even a favorable review with critical comments will be "flagged for review" or rejected for no apparent reason and with no apparent recourse. It's their "AI" at work. Their reviews are useful, probably better than most sites, but you really have to read between the lines to separate those from truly knowledgeable people vs the uninformed / misinformed that constitute the majority.

As for the Apple Store representative's premature and erroneous dismissal of that Mac's eligibility for battery replacement, it is the continuation of a trend that has been going on for years. It's bad enough they don't know their own products (and they don't) but it's worse when they give bad advice.

I wish everyone would come to this site first.

<< I think the elephant in the room for the Apple Store employee was the touch bar situation. He said that they would no longer service that and then referred me to one of our local Apple certified fix it places.>>

The official Apple policy at the Apple-owned Stores is "Nothing less than complete fixes."

If they can't put it back into operating like a new machine would, they generally won't touch it.

<< I had heard that these batteries can expand if you leave them plugged in all the time and

it looks like that’s what happened to mine. >.

That is a correlation, NOT a cause and effect, over a sample size of ONE.

There are plenty of folks who gently exercised their batteries daily, and still had them fail or expand and fail.

MikeWilliams311 wrote:

I was not aware of any battery calibration procedure.

Only OWC and iFixIt seem to mention it. "Calibration" is really a hold over from the older battery technology where it was actually a calibration. I consider it more like "exercising" the battery these days.

lt may just be coincidence, but the one battery I got last year which was bad was the only one where I had not performed the calibration/exercise. All of the other 100+ batteries I got all held up except for the one bad batch I got when the supplier switched to a less expensive & lower quality battery. Fortunately I have methods of testing these batteries in macOS to reveal their hidden flaws more reliably so I can get them exchanged immediately. It also helps to develop good relations with a parts supplier.

I suspect many third parties don't really test their batteries which may be why this calibration/exercise is necessary. I also believe that some of the third party batteries may be ones that did not pass Apple's rigorous standards so are sold to consumers as a third party battery, while others are made as cheaply as possible to sell under what a legitimate battery costs, but quality suffers greatly.