When you buy a used MacBook from a private seller, the battery is a guess. You see a model name, a price, a few photos taken in someone’s kitchen. Whether it still holds a charge, you find out when the box arrives. Every guide on the internet tells you to check the cycle count before you pay. Good advice, if the machine is in front of you. It usually isn’t.
So we do it the other way round. Every Mac in our shop has its own numbers on its own product page: how many charge cycles it has been through, how much of the original battery capacity is left, when we tested it, what grade we gave it, and whether Activation Lock and remote management have been cleared. Not the model’s numbers. That machine’s numbers.
If we have two of the same model in stock, you’ll see both. At the time of writing there are two MacBook Pro 14″ M4 units on the same page, one at 27 cycles and one at 19. You pick the one you want and the passport on the page changes with it.
Where the numbers come from
Every machine comes across the intake bench in Amersfoort before it gets a listing. A technician erases it, runs it through our 52-point checklist, reads the battery cycle count and health straight from the system, checks the SSD, and confirms that nobody’s Apple Account or company MDM is still hanging on to it. Those results go into the machine’s Device Passport, which sits on the product page for as long as the listing exists. Nothing is typed in from memory or copied from a spec sheet.
How to read them
Apple designs these batteries to keep around 80% of their capacity after roughly 1000 cycles. That’s a design target, not a wall. Below 100 cycles the machine has barely been used. Somewhere between 100 and 400 is a normal working life. Above 800 you should start pricing in a battery replacement at some point, though the machine will run fine until then.
Health and cycles are two different things and you want to look at both. A low cycle count with mediocre health usually means the machine sat unused for years; batteries age on a shelf too. A high cycle count with good health means it was used a lot and treated well. We currently have a 2020 13″ Pro with 873 cycles and 85% health. That’s a machine that has done serious work and still has plenty left in it.
What we can’t tell you is how the battery will behave in your hands. Heavy video work on battery power ages it faster than office work on a desk. The numbers tell you where it is today, not where it will be in two years.
Questions we get about this
Can I see the battery numbers before I pay?
Yes. They’re on the product page, per unit, above the buy button. If you can’t find them, something is wrong. Email us.
Are these the numbers of the exact machine I get, or of the model?
The exact machine. Every unit has its own serial number, its own listing and its own passport. If a model has several units in stock, you choose which one you’re buying.
What if the battery turns out weaker than the page said?
Then we got it wrong and you send it back. 24 months of warranty on every machine, business purchases included, and 14 days to return it for any reason at all.
Who reads the numbers, you or the previous owner?
We do, on the intake bench, from the machine itself. We don’t take a seller’s word for it and we don’t copy them from a model listing.