How many cycles does a laptop battery last?

Between 300 and 1,000 full charge cycles, depending on which battery your laptop has. Apple rates every MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro made since 2009 or 2010, up to the current M5 models, for 1,000 cycles, and says the battery is designed to keep up to 80% of its original capacity at that count. HP rates its standard notebook batteries for 300 cycles and its long-life batteries for 1,000. Dell's XPS 15 9500 manual rates both of its battery options for 300. In years, Dell tells typical users to expect shorter runtime after 18 to 24 months. Neither number is where the battery dies, only where it is expected to have faded.

What counts as one charge cycle

A cycle is a battery's worth of energy used, not one trip to the charger. In Apple's words, a charge cycle happens when you use all of the battery's power, but not necessarily in a single charge. Use half the battery one day and half the next, recharging in between, and that is one cycle, not two. Four top ups from 75% to 100% are also one cycle, so plugging in often does not burn through cycles faster. The counting works the same way on a phone, and what actually wears a phone battery down walks through it for a battery you charge every night.

HP describes a cycle more loosely, as the period when a battery drains below a certain level and is then recharged, and says the count is read from the battery's own firmware. The count belongs to the battery, not the laptop.

Every maker's rating in one table

Laptop makers rarely put a cycle figure on the box. These are the ones published in support documents and manuals.

For a laptop whose maker publishes no figure, judge the battery by its remaining capacity, explained below, rather than against a number.

Why 300 and 1,000 are both true

Search the question and you get two answers: "about 300 to 500 cycles" and "1,000 cycles". Both are right, for different batteries.

They are different products. HP sells two grades of battery and names them by the count: 300 for standard, 1,000 for long-life. A budget laptop and a business laptop from the same company can sit on either side of that line.

They are different eras. Apple's own table shows the jump. Its laptops from 2006 to 2008 were rated for 300 or 500 cycles, and everything since has been rated for 1,000. Much of the 300 to 500 advice still online was written about batteries of that age.

Neither is a lifespan. Notebookcheck made this point when Dell's 300 cycle rating for the 2020 XPS 15 drew complaints: the figure is not the total number of charges the battery can deliver but the number before its capacity drops to about 80% of new. Apple says the same thing from the other side: you can keep using a battery past its maximum cycle count, but you might notice a reduction in battery life.

So: 1,000 cycles is what the better batteries are built for, and what every current Mac is rated for. 300 is the standard grade. If a Windows laptop's spec sheet does not name the battery grade, assume the lower figure, a point worth adding to the laptop buying checklist under battery.

Turning cycles into years

How long the rating lasts depends on how many cycles you do, which is easy to estimate. Someone who runs a laptop from full to empty once every weekday does about 260 cycles a year. At that rate a 300 cycle battery reaches its rating in a little over a year, and a 1,000 cycle battery in nearly four.

Most people do fewer. Two or three cycles a week, typical of a laptop that spends part of the day on a desk charger, puts a 300 cycle battery at its rating in roughly two years. That fits Dell's 18 to 24 months for typical users. A laptop that never leaves its desk barely cycles at all, which is why the capacity figure below is a better test than the count.

How to read your own cycle count

On a Mac. Hold down the Option key and click the Apple menu, then choose System Information. Under Hardware, select Power. The cycle count is listed under Battery Information, along with the battery's condition. Compare it with the figure for your model in the table above.

On Windows. Open Command Prompt or PowerShell and type powercfg /batteryreport. Microsoft describes it as a report of battery usage over the lifetime of the system, saved as an HTML file in the current folder; the command prints the path. Open it in a browser. The Installed batteries section lists three numbers that matter: design capacity, full charge capacity and cycle count. Some laptops leave the cycle count blank, in which case the two capacities tell you the same story.

Turning capacity into a percentage. Divide full charge capacity by design capacity. A battery designed for 56,000 mWh that now holds 44,800 mWh is at 80%. That percentage is the figure Apple's and Dell's thresholds are both written in, and it is more honest than the cycle count, because it shows wear from heat and age as well as from use.

HP laptops have one more route: HP's diagnostics read the count from the battery firmware, and HP may ask you to run that test before deciding a warranty claim.

When to replace the battery

Apple and Dell draw the line in different places. Apple says that for best performance you should replace the battery at its maximum cycle count, where it was designed to be at about 80%. Dell's reasons to consider a replacement include runtime below 50% of original capacity, a health status of Fair or Poor, unexpected shutdowns while the battery still shows charge, and a battery over two to three years old in heavy use.

They are not contradicting each other. 80% is where wear becomes noticeable; 50% is where it becomes a problem. Between the two, replace when the runtime no longer covers your day. If you are deciding whether the laptop deserves a new battery at all, check first how long your laptop will keep getting security updates: a fresh battery in a machine that stops receiving fixes next year is money spent in the wrong place.

A new battery restores runtime. If the laptop is also sluggish, that is usually a separate problem, and finding the real bottleneck comes before deciding the machine is finished.

When these numbers stop applying

Third party replacement batteries. The ratings above are for the maker's own batteries. A replacement from another supplier carries whatever rating that supplier publishes, often none.

Your conditions, not Apple's lab. Apple's footnote says its testing was done under ideal conditions, and that capacity varies by use, configuration and charging behavior. Two laptops at the same count can be at very different capacities, which is why the percentage is the better test.

Laptops that are always plugged in. Dell says it is perfectly safe to use a laptop while plugged in, and that its laptops stop charging once the battery is full, but it recommends running on battery occasionally.

Phones and tablets. Different batteries, different ratings. The phone figures and the signs a phone battery is done are in when to replace a phone and when to keep it.

What to do with the answer

Read your cycle count and capacity today and write both down. Check again in six months: the difference shows how fast your battery is wearing in your hands, which beats any rating.

If you are under the rated count and above 80%, the battery is behaving as designed. Use a charger that matches what the laptop asks for; how USB-C chargers negotiate power explains why a low wattage charger can leave a laptop barely charging under load. If your laptop has a charge limit setting, Notebookcheck's suggestion of charging between about 20% and 80% is one way to stretch the battery.

If you are past the count and below 80%, decide based on your day. If the runtime still covers it, keep going. If not, replace the battery or, on an old enough machine, the laptop. If the laptop is being retired instead, wipe it properly before it leaves your hands, and if it is going into a drawer as a spare, remember that an SSD left without power does not keep its data forever.