Battery Health question

Hello,

I just have a quick question. Is there an official way to check battery health? I took my laptop into the Apple Store and they did a diagnostic. He did not use Coconut Battery or iStat, but instead he held down a few keys and it brought up a grey window with a bunch of settings. The Genius could do a PRAM reset and SMC reset without having to hold down all the keys.

davyvfr said:

I just have a quick question. Is there an official way to check battery health? I took my laptop into the Apple Store and they did a diagnostic. He did not use Coconut Battery or iStat, but instead he held down a few keys and it brought up a grey window with a bunch of settings. The Genius could do a PRAM reset and SMC reset without having to hold down all the keys.

Click to expand...

How to Check Macbook Battery Health | Mac OS X
A New Mac Tip Every Day: Shortcut to System Profiler!

Thanks, but I already knew that. I am looking for an accurate percent. The only way to do this officially is to restart the MacBook Pro and hold down "some" key to boot into a special diagnostic window. Does anyone know how to do this???

davyvfr said:

Thanks, but I already knew that. I am looking for an accurate percent. The only way to do this officially is to restart the MacBook Pro and hold down "some" key to boot into a special diagnostic window. Does anyone know how to do this???

Click to expand...

Many times when Apple "Genius's" run a diagnostic on computers…they're using special Apple proprietary software. So most likely…the diagnostic was not just a special combination of keys.

Regarding the battery. The information you get from apps. like "Coconut Battery", "iStat", and even the "Get Info" from the Apple menu…is pretty accurate. You have the original milliamp hours the battery was capable of when new…and you have the current milliamp hours when the now "partially-used" battery is fully charged.

So (for example) if the battery was originally capable of 6600 milliamp hours when new…and it now has 5500 milliamp hours at max charge…then the current battery health is (5500/6600) x 100 = 83.33%. It's really just simple math.

HTH,

- Nick