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I have a question that came to me with my new M1 MBP, running Monterey 12.5

The laptop warns me I need to plug in at 10%. My previous laptop, a late 2013 MBP with Mojave, warned me at 5%. Once upon a time I was told by a friend that is an electronic engineer to recharge a battery as late as possible (say 1% of charge remaining), but that was a long time ago, and said advice might not apply to modern (2022) batteries. In any case, I used that advice (drain the battery as much as you can) for the old laptop, and it still managed about 1 hour of netflix streaming unplugged by the end of its life..

So, what is the best 'remaining charge' level to aim for before plugging in to maximise battery longevity?

user1256923
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1 Answers1

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Strictly speaking the "best" remaining charge level to reach before plugging in to maximize battery longevity would be around 40%, and then charging it up to about 50% or 60%.

This isn't really practical however, and the actual benefits become less noticable the closer to 50% you keep your charge level.

Keeping the charge level between 20% to 80% will significantly increase the number of useful charge cycles you get from a lithium battery.

Once upon a time I was told by a friend that is an electronic engineer to recharge a battery as late as possible (say 1% of charge remaining)

This would apply to nickel-cadmium chemistry batteries, which haven't been used widely in laptops for a couple of decades.

Side note: Apple often over reports charge levels by a few %. When you take your laptop off charge from full it will report as 100% for a few minutes so when you see 99% charge level reported that's likely to be closer to 96% actual charge.

Scottmeup
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