Is this normal battery life? :\

The 6 cell battery for my t500 has a first used date of June 2010, and it currently has 298 cycles on it. (This is my second battery for the machine.)

The condition says fair, and says it currently lasts for up to 30 min full charge. Is that normal wear for a 1.5 year old battery?

 

300 cycles is starting to get up there.

 

How many cycles do you usually get out of a battery?

 

What is the actual WHr capacity of the battery?

 

I did a few google searches on other brands, and it looks like 300 cycles is pretty common, save for apple which gives 1000 cycles for the macbook pros for 2009 models and newer.

Are the newer thinkpads offering more cycles than 300 now also? Or do they still use the older battery tech?

Apple Portables: Determining Battery Cycle Count

 

The number of cycles you get out of a battery during its effective lifetime is also dependent on the manufacturer. Sanyo batteries have typically had the worst reliability, so your ~300 cycle mark isn't too surprising. My Sanyo 9-cell on my T500 gets about 70% of its original charge, with far less cycles than yours.

 

i believe the thinkpads with non-removable batteries (E420s, X1) are rated for 1000 cycles.

also, panasonic seems to do the best, and you could probably find a 9-cell (if you don't mind the extra bulk/weight) cheap on ebay.

 

So if I am comparing a w520 to a macbook pro 15", I need to consider that the macbook pro will probably have triple the battery cycles?

I would say thats worth $200....

 

yes, because of the different battery technology (li-po vs standard li-ion). there are many other differences besides just the battery, though. by the time the w520 battery were to completely stop working, you could probably buy another pretty cheap.