98% health after just two cycles?

I calibrated my battery last night for the first time because istat was reporting the battery as fully charged at 95%.
After reading the instructions at apple's site, I drained the battery till the computer shut off. It shut down at 5% remaining power and wouldn't turn back on. I left it as is over night and started charging this morning, and the battery is reporting 98% health and just two charge cycles. Is that normal?
Also, will it hurt my macbook that I let it shut off when the battery drained? Should I have just shut it down myself?

 

I think it's anything to worry about. Usually when the battery is fully charged it stops charging and will naturally float down to 95% before being topped up again. It's just to allow some mobility in the electrons since I think constantly charging a battery to keep it at 100% is bad for it.

And I don't think the battery is actually accurate until after a few cycles anyways.

 

And don't be calibrating too often because that is a sure fire way of damaging your battery. Li Ion batteries like to be charged anywhere above 10% charge, not lower. Look at the Battery Guide for more info.

 

don't worry about it. mine was 97%. it's just the computer using a less than perfect algorithm to get the health of the battery. mine is now up at 100% and coconutBattery says i have more charge than it should hold. you really shouldn't worry about it.

 

Ok thanks everyone.

 

Mine is at 71% health after 16 cycles. Should I calibrate it? It's been a month since I've got the MBP I think

 

i dunno bout you guys, but my new mbp is at 100% health after 31 cycles. might be worth lookin into.

 

It really is no big deal... the battery life gauge is an estimate really... and your machine just estimates higher.

 

Yes, you should..

If the calibration doesn't help to improve the health you should contact apple to return that battery because it is defective.. Or you could wait a few more mouths, and return it near the end of the warranty.. Just make sure you don't have more than 300 cycles when you contact apple..

 

Yes you should.

If it doesn't improve there's something wrong with your battery.

 

There is no reason to fret if you aren't exactly at 100%. fastrandstrongr's health is probably going to waiver -3% sometime soon.

 

Mine's at 87% after 40 cycles. And this is my third battery in 2 years.

 

I drained to 10% and now I'm charging it back up. Battery health is back up to 92%. At this rate, I'll be hitting 80% way before 300 cycles.

 

Now mine is showing 100% health again, but just 97% charge. That's weird.

 

You usually won't get at 100% charge.

The battery will stop charging around ~95%, in order to prevent overcharging. But if it bothers you and you want/need that 100% before going on battery power, just unplug your charger and plug it in back in. The battery will charge to 100%.

 

That's why I don't use my battery while my notebook is plugged, and yes I've read the post that says that using your notebook without the battery might reduce its performance, but I don't need the 100% performance while doing basic stuff.

 

Yea a frend of mine learnt his lesson the hard way, he was working on his final project, and someone tripped over his power cord. He had the battery out, to save its health, and he lost all of it. So yea, I wouldnt be doing anything important if you have the battery out and on ac, incase something like that happens, or you have a ups connected to the ac. (though the batery is essentially a ups >_>)

 

I wouldn't worry, 98% is still near perfect and I've seen laptop's be less than 100% the moment they are opened up.....

 

Poor guy yep I wouldn't work on my final project without battery
Actually I will test if the notebook performance really goes down by 40-50% I'll run some benchmarks with and without battery...

 

Ok, thanks.

 

I'm at 91% health now but my battery life is only 2 hours. Barely.