Battery draining very fast (low number of cycles)

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MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Mid 2010

Released April 2010 / 2.4, 2.53 GHz Core i5 or 2.66 GHz Core i7 Processors

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Nic @nclh

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Posted: May 11, 2016

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Battery draining very fast (low number of cycles)

Hi all

I bought a second handed MacBook pro 15" mid 2010 - the battery was renewed just before my purchase.

Battery type is TOP A1321, it only has 221 cycles and it has the OS X Battery status "Good".

More info about the battery is here: http://oi66.tinypic.com/2lo3dyb.jpg (using the coconutBattery tool)

I am working in the IT industry so I always charged my battery the way it should be (always pulling out charger when fully charged, etc etc..)

I've checked my Activity and there are no processes with extreme high CPU % usage..

I am using OSX Yosemite (10.10.5) - could that cause the problem? Should I try to downgrade?

Stil, my battery is draining fast, very fast - when fully charged I think my battery only lasts for bout 45 min - 1 hour.

For a laptop this is far from ideal so I would like to fix it..

Thanks for advices!

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Can you explain what you are doing on your system, web browsing, gaming writing of some sort?

Have you looked at Activity Monitor to see if something is running in background (malware or peer sharing)?

May 12, 2016 by Dan

Hi @danj - first of all thanks for your comment.

Most of the time I just use my Macbook for web browsing (reading articles, facebook, etc) - so no heavy gaming or any usage of my 8GB and i7 processor.

I did check the Activity Monitor, but I don't find anything suspicious (with high % usage).

Is it possible there is something running on low % CPU usage but with high battery usage?

Thanks in advance.

May 12, 2016 by Nic

Given the rate of discharge I would have expected something standing out in Activity Monitor.

You could try creating an external bootable disk (USB thumb drive) to see if it runs longer under a clean OS. I wouldn't touch your internal until your sure it runs better off of the external. Keep in mind your system will be slower! As the USB I/O is not as fast as the internal SATA port. This is only to see if the there is something going on within the OS.

May 12, 2016 by Dan

@danj I created a ubuntu live cd and when "testing" ubuntu the battery is stil draining very fast.. From 90% to 50% in +/- half an hour.

So I guess it isn't OS related but battery related?

May 13, 2016 by Nic

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3 Answers

Can you explain what you are doing on your system, web browsing, gaming writing of some sort?

Have you looked at Activity Monitor to see if something is running in background (malware or peer sharing)? — Dan
Hi @danj - first of all thanks for your comment.

Most of the time I just use my Macbook for web browsing (reading articles, facebook, etc) - so no heavy gaming or any usage of my 8GB and i7 processor.

I did check the Activity Monitor, but I don't find anything suspicious (with high % usage).

Is it possible there is something running on low % CPU usage but with high battery usage?

Thanks in advance. — Nic
Given the rate of discharge I would have expected something standing out in Activity Monitor.

You could try creating an external bootable disk (USB thumb drive) to see if it runs longer under a clean OS. I wouldn't touch your internal until your sure it runs better off of the external. Keep in mind your system will be slower! As the USB I/O is not as fast as the internal SATA port. This is only to see if the there is something going on within the OS. — Dan
@danj I created a ubuntu live cd and when "testing" ubuntu the battery is stil draining very fast.. From 90% to 50% in +/- half an hour.

So I guess it isn't OS related but battery related? — Nic

Dan @danj Rep: 479.1k Self employed contract worker 35 329 971 · Answer 1 · 2016-05-13T03:37:53-07:00

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Dan @danj

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Posted: May 13, 2016

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Given what you've tested I would say the battery is very suspect! You should be getting around 8 hrs of simple Web browsing at best, heaver graphics will lower this. I get around 5 hrs on my laptop doing VPN connections which are more compute intensive.

Here's a few Apple T/N's that might help lengthen the run time:

As additional reference: EveryMac - Unibody MacBook Pro Q&A.

If you still can't get more out of this system I would recommend you get a replacement battery (a better quality one) as the start point.

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Anthony @anthonyj Rep: 1.1k The Mac Studio 9 3 2 · Answer 2 · 2016-05-12T12:19:20-07:00

Anthony @anthonyj

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Posted: May 12, 2016

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I would say 45min to 1hours for a 2010 Mbp is average. Yosemite and safari will be your best allies for Battery saving. El Capitan and Google chrome will literally suck your life dry. Swapping the battery with an aftermarket brand can cause this problem too. If it is aftermarket go with Anker, they make the batteries for macbook pros.

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1 Comment:

Just tried to do an SMC reset, rebooted my MacBook and charged it to 100%.

It was 100% 40 minutes ago, now only 10% without ANY activity (just displaying the desktop).. Could a PRAM reset work? I'd find it very strange that the battery could already be death, never used it intense....

May 13, 2016 by Nic

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