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Is this the sign of a bum new battery (possible, as it was a reasonably cheap replacement) or something hardware related? Coconut battery says "Charging with: 0 watts". Having it plugged in for over 24 hours with lid closed has yielded about 60% charge 2 different times now. Only 2 charge cycles on the battery. Multiple SMC resets done. Charger is a known good one. Nothing magnetized to the MagSafe charger or receptacle. OS is a fresh reinstall of 10.14.6 with all the updates, and essentially no other apps installed. Not really doing anything with this computer yet. Got it back from a family member who upgraded to an M1. Trying to get it into shape to either use or sell.
Before I blame this on the battery and ask for a replacement, any other suggestions? Any possible hardware culprits?
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Do you have the old battery? You can put that back in and see if it charges at all.
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What does the LED on the MagSafe connector say? Orange or Green?
Can it run off of the battery? A usable amount of time? Any chance that it's more of a calibration issue with the percentage, and that it actually charges and runs close to the expected amount of time. And sometimes letting run all the way down re-calibrates it, at least that was they way it was done for the removable batteries.
Over the years I've had times where letting it run down a bit running without the charger, and then connecting the charger gets it to charge at a higher rate.
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LED on MagSafe is orange. It will quickly blink green during the SMC reset process.
I did let it run down fully after the first charge (when it also got to about ~60%). It did respectably well, getting about 2 hrs with a nonstop YouTube playlist with sleep disabled. The charge % wasn't dropping as it should have before it cut off at around 50% and then died. But then I had trouble getting it to boot again even after multi-hours of charging until I did another SMC reset.
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I went through 3 cheap Amazon MBA 2013 batteries before I got one that took a charge. Three different sellers. One of them worked for a day before it stopped charging.
Interesting side-note: I took screenshots from the System Information panel and each one of them reported the same exact max charge, the same serial number and the same firmware.
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I had a 2011 MBP that did that. It wold eventually charge the battery if I let it sit with lid closed for 48 hours. I could run it with the charger connect and it worked fine, I could also run it on battery, but it was veeeery slow to charge.
from what I read on internet, there is a resistor that failed. I didn't want to deal with repairs. I sold it as is. Someone here bought it and was happy to use it as a "desktop" (always plugged in).
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just put the old battery back in. "Charging with 15.39 watts". I think the new battery is the culprit.
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If it worth putting a new battery in, then it is worth a decent battery. I don't look any further than NewerTech from our sponsors. they will pay for themselves in reliability and longevity compared to the Amazon/eBay cheapos
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