Question about low battery capacity (~66/67%) after just 77 cycles

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

I’ve got my Framework 16 in batch 5 (i received it on December 23rd, 2025) and have been using it daily as main pc since then.
I set the battery cap to 80% via BIOS about a few days/a week after I got it and I always plugged it to power when it reached around 5% and unplugged it as soon as it reached 80%.
Today I opened better-control and i noticed that it marked my battery capacity as 66.9459%, so to make sure i checked via upower and there it returned the same capacity.
Is it normal for the capacity to be this low after just 77 cycles? according to the shop, the battery description says

Designed to be long-lasting and simple to replace if you ever need to. Battery typically retains 80% capacity after 1,000 cycles of use.

I also tried to remove the 80% charge limit to see if the low capacity was caused by that but now it’s been at 99/100% for around 10/15 minutes and the reported capacity increased but not very much, it went up to 67.474%

here’s the output of upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 after i removed the 80% cap:

  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               NVT
  model:                FRANDBA
  serial:               004B
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sun 25 Jan 2026 06:19:03 PM CET (23 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               charging
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              56.7652 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         57.3534 Wh
    energy-full-design:  85.0007 Wh
    voltage-min-design:  15.48 V
    capacity-level:      Normal
    energy-rate:         40.6505 W
    voltage:             17.706 V
    charge-cycles:       77
    time to full:        52 seconds
    percentage:          99%
    capacity:            67.474%
    technology:          lithium-ion
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charging-symbolic'

Is this normal or there’s some issue with the battery?

I’m on Arch Linux (Kernel: Linux 6.18.5-arch1-1)
BIOS Version: 03.04 (Release Date: 11/06/2025) (this data according to sudo framework_tool --info)
Framework 16 AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU with integrated graphics (no dGPU, just the expansion bay)

2

you can limit the battery charge by changing that in bios so then laptop will automaticly stop charging at 80% instead of you manually unplugging it, since then you can keep charger in and laptop will mostlikey run on the charger than the battery.

When you charge and discharge that is part that wears the battery out more than keeping it at 100% or 80%.

3

I did indeed state that I always did that, I had just turned it off now to see if this could have been a cause of the low capacity

4

you did mention that you also unplugged it at 80% so don’t do that if you have it set at 80%.

5

is it worse to unplug it at 80% when the limit is set?
so do you suggest keeping it plugged even when at 80% when the limit is set or i’m understanding wrong?

6

reason with limit function is so you can set 80% charge limit so when it reaches 80% laptop will stop charging and use charger as it’s power source, so then you can keep using laptop on the charger and only unplugg it when needed to move around.

7

oh, i thought that when it reached the 80% limit, it would stop charging for a while and then start charging again when it drops to 78/79%

8

That depends on charger strength, if you have 240w it will not do that, but using a weaker charger like 180w will probably do that on heavy load use. since it’s weaker than the 240w.

9

I do have the official 240W charger I got in the same package as the laptop

10

is yours the ryzen ai 300 series? then you will get 240w charger, while previous cpu model came with 180w charger since framework didn’t have any 240w charger at the time.

So let it charge to 80% then let charger stay connected and only disconnect it if you’re taking it some where like backyard or to coffe place or w.e where you don’t need the charger at the moment.

11

yes, I have the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 model (i placed a pre-order around september and received in on December 23rd)
edit: just checked and the preorder was made specifically on September 9th

also not sure if that’ll make a huge difference but I also have a secondary monitor powered by the laptop (it uses around 18W according to its manual)
but I also probably will never reach the full power load as I don’t play much (just sometimes Minecraft or Hytale)

12

well it will improve the battery, since the less you discharge and charge the chance is capacity could go upwards and capacity slowly returning back to 85mwh capacity again if lucky.

But disconnecting it and discharging it alot will keep battery going down than up. Since it wears on the battery when it charges, discharges alot more than now and then when needed. :slight_smile:

13

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll set the limit back to 80% and always keep it plugged even when it reaches 80% whenever I can and I’ll see if the capacity will improve over time

14

Well you may not see it in that way, what i mean is when don’t discharge and charge it for some time and after maybe a week or two you decide to use it on battery and start charging it at 15% that might make capacity go back up a bit. Since I have had laptops where capacity dropped to 92% but when I didnt charge it for a week or so and I choose to do that it went from 92% to 99% in battery health and capacity that was lost was returned partly. But it will drop again when you discharge and charge often again :confused:

15

If you leave the battery limit at say 80% for a while, the battery self calibration goes a bit off. When this happens, just charge to 100%, leave it there for a few hours, it will recalibrate, you can then drop it back to 80%.
That should correct the problem you are seeing.

1 Like
16

yeah, so if I keep it plugged when it reaches 80%, it’ll start using the charger and so the battery won’t charge & discharge many times (I’d unplug & plug just once a day since I unplug it during the night when I don’t use it) and so will hopefully improve its capacity over time, no?

17

Depends if unlucky it’s done enough wear that it wont gain any capacity anymore :confused:, but this should shorten the wear and make it drop slower than it did before.

18

Surprised no one’s mentioned it, but the battery management system won’t have a good idea of your full capacity if you never charge it near to the full capacity. You should turn off the limit every once in a while and charge it up.

Macbooks and my Motorola phone do exactly that when you have the battery protection features turned on.

19

The battery calibration is way off. There’s no way for the battery to be charging 40W at 99% percent. Fully charge the battery by turning off the limit and charge for at least five more hours

1 Like
20

By setting the SOC to 80% you increase the lifespan of the battery. But discharging it to SOC 5% will hurt the battery. Having it sit at SOC 80%, the BMS will fairly quick loose its actual SOC % and capacity. That is why it requires periodic charging to SOC 100%..maybe once every couple of weeks. So to make it clear, its the electronics that get out of whack after a while.

But discharging the battery to 5% will without a doubt damage the battery and reduce its capacity. And its not the manufactures fault, as in Framework in this case.

Example: My older Lenovo Legion which is now 5 years old is only charged to SOC 60% the majority of the time and never discharged below SOC 25%. After 5 years, it still has a capacity of SOC 97% (reported).