2018 i9 Macbook Pro Low Full Charge Battery Capacity and low performance

Hey Oz,

I am having the same problem with a maxed out I9 as well. I checked several 2018 MBP 15 machines in Apple stores and other retailers. None of them were reporting battery capacity as low as mine, they ranged from around 7200 mAh to 7600 mAh. My battery is currently at 7 cycles and reporting 6999 mAh, the machine is less than 3 weeks old.

I have gone into the Apple store, they did a diagnostic and reported that my battery was at 99%. I am an engineer and don't think this is correct. I paid over $4000 for a top of the line MacBook Pro to use for business and wind up getting

Hey Oz,

I am having the same problem with a maxed out I9 as well. I checked several 2018 MBP 15 machines in Apple stores and other retailers. None of them were reporting battery capacity as low as mine, they ranged from around 7200 mAh to 7600 mAh. My battery is currently at 7 cycles and reporting 6999 mAh, while the design capacity is the same as yours at 7336 mAh, also the machine is less than 3 weeks old.

I went to the Apple store, they did a diagnostic and reported that my battery was at 99%. I am an engineer and don't think a brand new MacBook Pro should have lost 300 mAh of capacity and only report a 1% loss (which is unacceptable in and of itself being brand new) by apples calculation. Coconut reports 4% capacity loss.

It is a bummer to pay over $4000 for a top of the line MacBook Pro to use for business and wind up getting something with lower battery capacity out of the box than EVERY single other 2018 MacBook Pro I have been able to check.

It is at least a little reassuring that I am not the only one with the problem. My machine is an August 2018 build, when was yours built, maybe there was a bad batch of batteries that Apple has yet to discover?

Oz, Just did some quick calculations. Apple advertises a battery capacity of 83.6 Watt-hours for the 2018 15 inch MacBook Pro which equates to the battery having a calculated capacity of approximately 7333 mAh (relatively good agreement with System Report indicating 7336 mAh.) This can be confirmed by using the calculator at https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/wh-to-mah-calculator.html and using the values of 83.6 Watt-hours and 11.4 volts.

Your battery is reporting a max capacity of 7060 (mine at 6999) and thus your calculated capacity in Watt-hours is 80.484 Watt-hours vs new capacity of 83.6 Watt-hours. (Confirm with the calculator at https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/mah-to-wh-calculator.html)This represents a capacity loss of 3.73%. This almost 4% capacity loss is unacceptable after only 19 cycles. At least it's not as bad as mine which is currently at 79.78 Watt-hours after only 7 cycles representing a capacity loss of 4.57%. I would not easily trust Apples in house diagnostics since they told me I only had a 1% capacity loss. I did my own calculations and do not see how that could be the case based on the data reported by Apple System Report and simple math.

Anybody else care to check their battery capacity?

Have you installed the specific software updates for the 2018 i9 model MacBook pro?

Tried an SMC reset? [the procedure has CHANGED for your model].