What do you mean it doesn't automatically power down? If the battery runs out, does it just shut off and you lose all data?
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OWC or Apple Replacement Battery?
- Thread starter LarryJoe33
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That sounds like a big issue to me, big enough to avoid iFixit batteries...
I has this happen the first time when I had fallen asleep with the computer on. Woke up and found it had shut down. Used it on the battery power a few days later to test this and I never got the low battery warning, even when it got down to 2%.
That (the first thing) probably just means something was preventing standby/safe sleep or that the battery ran out before sleep reached the standbydelay timer (default is 70min for pre-retina MBPs). Once it reaches that timer it creates a sleepimage of your RAM, but not before.
So you would have a very different result on startup, but at the time of PMC shutting down to protect the battery from excessive discharge, nothing different is happening. In which case nothing to be worried about.
You can set your standbydelay timer lower if you want.
Well it works fine for me these days for the little time I still use it. The original battery had about 40 cycles on it after three years and it was shutting down at about 60% with no warning. Now at least. it goes all the way till it needs to be recharged.
I hope you got this squared away because Apple no longer supports that battery. My Anker replacement has tanked. Are there ANY good batteries for this thing?
This thread is very old but still useful. No, three years ago or whenever I started this thread, the Genius bar was unable to work on my machine because it was considered vintage. Read a few pages and you will see the route I/we have taken, which includes Apple brand e-bay batteries, OWC, iFixit as well as Amazon cheapos.
I’m not sure if this is still relevant but when i was using a early 2011 MBP my OG battery died in August 2012 replaced had it replaced by apple and that one lasted until early 2014. After that one i went with an OWC battery and that one lasted me until i upgraded my MBP in early 2017 and if i can remember right it was still over 100 percent health and 300 cycles. I recommended the OWC to a couple of people and they had good luck with them.
I've replaced a lot of Apple laptop batteries because I've spent about 50% (now more) of my professional life working in Apple-Centric education sector. Keeping the laptops working as long as possible is often a goal. Used quite a number of different 'cheapies' as experiments, but in the end I've found that there are only 2 brands that are worth spending money on. You can go with either an original Apple battery or a NewerTech battery. Anything else and you might as well just light the money on fire, you'll be downright lucky to get a year of usable battery life, and the battery life you do get will be less then the original from the moment you install it.
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I have to say this may be true. I have recently tested 3-4 batteries from eBay and all of them came with the notorious error on the diagnostic screen. Finally following your advice I decided to order from REWA. I did not receive an email confirmation of my order so after 2 weeks I contacted PayPal. I immediately got a response over WhatsApp from REWA and they were in contact with me up until I installed the battery. This was the first battery so far which came without an error at the diagnostic screen. The battery itself was not expensive (around 45$), but the shipping was around the same price as the battery itself. The manufacturer appears to be TOP and the manufacturer's date is 2015/03/30. I still need to check how it is charging/discharging, but so far it looks promising. It is an A1494 battery for late 2013 mid 2014 MBP. Design Capacity is 8880mAh and the current capacity is 9984mAh.
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Hi Vince, so how does it perform. I bought Ifixit in the past total crap, heard only good stuff from OWC/Newertech
I've purchased OWC/Newertech batteries many times in the past and mostly had good experiences, but also bad ones too. My shortest lived battery came from there and my longest lived battery came from there too. One of them also swelled up. Batteries are a crapshoot.
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Thanks that's indeed a bummer spending 100 bucks and then receiving a $20 battery sucks (thank you Ifixit) ... how about the Rewa story that those are "real OEMs", anyone can confirm the longevity of those ?
This is a quality product. I can confirm after testing so many "new" ****** batteries.
im looking for a replacement battery for my mbp late 2013 (11,3). I see that you bought the exact battery model I would need.
How has been your experience so far with this Rewa battery? Any cons?
So far so good. This was the only battery from many tested that did not come failed on delivery.
Just that? ohh ok, didnt know. I thought you used some kind of software or special tools.
Thanks again
Great thread. So to summarize based on the results of this thread and what I've found, this seems to be the possible options for replacement batteries:
* iFixit: High variance in batch quality. There are also reports of weird things like the manufacturer changing after a few cycles from iFixit back to SMP which makes me question the quality of their BMC. They claim to do extensive battery testing [1] but it doesn't seem like that's doing anything to prevent bad batteries.
* NewerTech (OWC): Possibly less variance than iFixit in terms of quality, but still no guarantee of a good battery and likely not as long-lasting as apple OEM.
* 2Power (DuracellDirect, UK): Haven't seen too much about this online, and there are both good and bad sentiments for the few comments that do exist.
* REWA: At least one good comment about it on this thread, and far from being a random chinese no-name company REWA is decently well known in the apple repair scene. There is a video of the QC process for their iPhone batteries [2]. I suppose since all these come out of China anyway you may as well buy from them and cut out the middle-man.
* LMP: This is a company I have not seen mentioned at all, and it seems their products are mainly available in Swiss countries? There is one teardown [3] which has good things to say about the quality of their BMC. I found one reddit post about someone who used this battery, and when I reached out he mentioned that the first replacement lost capacity quickly after ~3 months but the second replacement has held on so far (~6 month).
* Ebay: Best avoided for retina mbp batteries? I'm very skeptical that there are any genuine apple batteries on there considering that no gray-market versions are available they are only available as part of the top-case to aasp, and removing it from a donor laptop is not a clean process.
@startergo How is the REWA battery lasting so far? What does the manufacturer in CoconutBattery indicate?
What I'm curious is what brand of replacement batteries 3rd party repair shops use. They would be in the best position to get a feel for which brands are of good quality. I tried searching to see if Louis Rossman had said anything but in one of his video comments he mentioned he just "skypes a guy in China who runs around to do his bidding." If any of you have friendly repair technicians nearby, maybe you can try asking?
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/34324/how-we-test-the-quality-of-batteries-we-sell-at-ifixit
[2]
[3] https://logi.wiki/index.php/MacBook..._.28Late_2013.2C_Mid_2014.29_Model:_LMP_A1582
* iFixit: High variance in batch quality. There are also reports of weird things like the manufacturer changing after a few cycles from iFixit back to SMP which makes me question the quality of their BMC. They claim to do extensive battery testing [1] but it doesn't seem like that's doing anything to prevent bad batteries.
* NewerTech (OWC): Possibly less variance than iFixit in terms of quality, but still no guarantee of a good battery and likely not as long-lasting as apple OEM.
* 2Power (DuracellDirect, UK): Haven't seen too much about this online, and there are both good and bad sentiments for the few comments that do exist.
* REWA: At least one good comment about it on this thread, and far from being a random chinese no-name company REWA is decently well known in the apple repair scene. There is a video of the QC process for their iPhone batteries [2]. I suppose since all these come out of China anyway you may as well buy from them and cut out the middle-man.
* LMP: This is a company I have not seen mentioned at all, and it seems their products are mainly available in Swiss countries? There is one teardown [3] which has good things to say about the quality of their BMC. I found one reddit post about someone who used this battery, and when I reached out he mentioned that the first replacement lost capacity quickly after ~3 months but the second replacement has held on so far (~6 month).
* Ebay: Best avoided for retina mbp batteries? I'm very skeptical that there are any genuine apple batteries on there considering that no gray-market versions are available they are only available as part of the top-case to aasp, and removing it from a donor laptop is not a clean process.
@startergo How is the REWA battery lasting so far? What does the manufacturer in CoconutBattery indicate?
What I'm curious is what brand of replacement batteries 3rd party repair shops use. They would be in the best position to get a feel for which brands are of good quality. I tried searching to see if Louis Rossman had said anything but in one of his video comments he mentioned he just "skypes a guy in China who runs around to do his bidding." If any of you have friendly repair technicians nearby, maybe you can try asking?
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/34324/how-we-test-the-quality-of-batteries-we-sell-at-ifixit
[2]
Some other possible brand of batteries to look at: one is BTI [1]. They've got decent sentiment on reddit, and they seem to have a wide variety of replacement batteries so they might be running their own manufacturing line. Couldn't find reviews specifically on their macbook batteries, but they've at least got partnerships with Staples, Microcenter, etc. so not a bad warranty policy.
Another is "Huarigor" which replacebase [2] (uk version of ifixit?) chose as the partner for their batteries. No reviews for this one either though, but if you're in the uk maybe worth a shot?
It shouldn't be hard to make a good battery, you just need to get good quality cells and pair it with a decent BMC. The issue with all these random Chinese batteries is that you have no idea about what quality bmc they're using and if the cells are even new.
Also @JPack since you appear to be quite familiar with the supply chain side, I noticed that the rewa batteries for the retina macbooks are A+ (compatible materials) as opposed to the S+ ones (original materials) on their iphone battieres. Does this indicate that for the rmbp batteries, rewa's batteries do not use original cells (i.e. LG or whoever makes them for Simplo) or BMCs?
[1] https://batterytech.com/product/info?pid=A1618-BTI
[2] https://www.replacebase.co.uk/huari...t-a1417-for-macbook-pro-a1398-2012-13-8880mah
Another is "Huarigor" which replacebase [2] (uk version of ifixit?) chose as the partner for their batteries. No reviews for this one either though, but if you're in the uk maybe worth a shot?
It shouldn't be hard to make a good battery, you just need to get good quality cells and pair it with a decent BMC. The issue with all these random Chinese batteries is that you have no idea about what quality bmc they're using and if the cells are even new.
Also @JPack since you appear to be quite familiar with the supply chain side, I noticed that the rewa batteries for the retina macbooks are A+ (compatible materials) as opposed to the S+ ones (original materials) on their iphone battieres. Does this indicate that for the rmbp batteries, rewa's batteries do not use original cells (i.e. LG or whoever makes them for Simplo) or BMCs?
[1] https://batterytech.com/product/info?pid=A1618-BTI
[2] https://www.replacebase.co.uk/huari...t-a1417-for-macbook-pro-a1398-2012-13-8880mah
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If anyone reading has a 2014 or 2013 mbp with oem apple battery, could you check to see if the output of "ioreg -rw0 -c AppleSmartBattery" contains RaTableRaw in BatteryData? If so, this would give us a good test to see if the BMS used by these aftermarket batteries uses a TI controller or not.
I know it's present on a 2019 MBP, but not sure about older machines.
Edit: Based on a PM with a member, seems like anything at or before mid-2015 does not report the resistance values. I wonder if the 2016 or 2017 do? That would still help to locate a decent manufacturer of these.
I know it's present on a 2019 MBP, but not sure about older machines.
Edit: Based on a PM with a member, seems like anything at or before mid-2015 does not report the resistance values. I wonder if the 2016 or 2017 do? That would still help to locate a decent manufacturer of these.
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