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I have a macbook white unibody 2010 (A1342) that is now 17 months old. I'm wondering if my battery is still good? The battery's information is below.
Design Capacity: 5200mAh Current Capacity: 4578mAh (84% left) Mac model: 6,1 Age of macbook: 17 months Battery loadcycles: 187 Condition: Normal
Thank you!
Any Apple store or Authorized Service Provider can run a diagnostic for you within a few minutes to gauge the health of the battery for the official Apple answer to your question.
However, saving a trip and appointment and just looking at what you posted, it looks like it is in correct working order for the age.
The design capacity is the total charge the battery was produced for. If you ran this check on the day you bought the MacBook the current capacity should have been right around 5200. Just like a rechargeable battery in a phone, toy, etc. it never fully charges to its designed capacity over time. It is just the nature of rechargeable batteries. So now, your battery when fully charged will only charge to the current capacity.
Given that you have used it for 17 months. These results seem in-line.
According to this Apple KB Article, your model does not require any calibration.
They also publish some tips in this KB Article.
Here's a great app for checking the battery and it gives some great definitions and links to Apple as well.
Hope that helps.
Although the previous answer by @ivonesh is totally correct and has awesome links (+1 for that), your battery might be showing signs of early wear.
It's not a big deal, and it could still make it another 800 cycles and only lose another 4% of capacity, but do keep an eye on it. It's certainly within spec right now, but the loss in capacity seems to be higher than expected for 17 months and 176 cycles.
If you have coverage for three years, you might take it in before that ends to see where you stand in another 19 months. Also - if you can keep it cool (well below 85°F on average) that will reduce the losses all Lithium based batteries have due to time and temperature.
Keep using it, just be aware that once it starts to go, the capacity tends to fall off more drastically and not slowly like in the first years. Also, there's lots of good use still in a battery once it's below 80% full charge capacity - so that's not anything other than a sign it's aging and it's also the line in the sand where apple expects will cover a battery due to premature loss of capacity.
All batteries degrade over time, but bad batteries degrade much faster or fail before they can provide the 1000 cycles they were designed to last.
