infinity8

I curious how many cycles can the Macbook Battery take before it's storage capacity starts to dwindle. And If I charge my battery before it's low, would it affect the life of it, should I completely use the battery power right to the warning window shows before charging.

wytwolf

The macbook battery is a Li ion battery. These batteries don't like full recharges, they would rather have mulitple mini charges or top ups. A cycle doesn't mean evey time you charge it. For example 1 complete charge is one cycle, but 5 20% top ups are also considered one cycle. Li ion batteries are suppose to have a 3 year shelf life whethere the are used or not. But don't leave it plugged in 24-7 either. If your going to have it plugged in alot i would drain it down to 50% once a week and apple suggests to do a complete power cycle once a month to calibrate the sensors that tell osx how much time is left. Why some people leave a macbook plugged in 24/7 I don't know, in that case they are better of with a small imac.

TheDirtyOne

I have had my MacBook for a year now doing a complete power cycle monthly (sometimes more). I, for the majority, leave it plugged in overnight on a regular basis. This has not affected my battery life at all or at least noticeably. I still get an approx. 3.5 hours out of it before I get the warning that I should plug it in. That also depends on my power settings as well which I'm conscious about. So in my case, I haven't seen any dwindling as of yet.