Anyone who has always gone to Apple to have a new battery installed in their iPhone, iPad or MacBook because it is a bit more expensive there, but you can be sure of the quality, should now come to the point where you can do it yourself think twice.
Apple announces on its own repair website that prices for battery replacement will be increased by 25 to 33% from March. This applies to iPhones, iPads and MacBooks. An exception to the iPhone is the iPhone 14 – here changing the battery costs significantly more from the start.
In the US, the cost of replacing a battery has so far been $69 for the models from iPhone 13 to X, and $49 for the simpler models without a borderless display. For all devices, the battery replacement is now exactly $20 more expensive. This is an increase of almost 29% for the better models and even more than 40% for the simpler models.
With the iPad, all models are affected, with the exception of the latest iPad Pro devices, for which the repair costs $149 or $179 for the larger model. For all other models, the price for a new battery increases from $99 to $119 – that’s 20% more.
And even with MacBooks it is significantly more expensive. For the Air, the price increases from $129 to $159 (+23%), for the Pro from $199 to $249 (+25%). The Pro specifications also apply to the 12″ MacBook Retina.
That may be reasonable compared to the new prices of the devices. However, the battery replacement must be initiated if the devices have a much lower current value. Anyone who buys a used iPhone XS for around $200 will not invest more than half of the current value for a new battery from Apple. We assume that these people will turn to independent repair shops for environmental but in the current situation also for cost reasons. Or many will look for a suitable replacement part at replacement.ninja and carry out the replacement themselves. This is not impossible, especially for models with a home button.
The situation will also be interesting if you use new Android smartphones for comparison. Here you can get a new battery for a few hundred bucks – with a complete current smartphone around it. What impact the price increase will have on sustainability and brand loyalty remains to be seen. However, we are slowly moving into an area where you not only have to be able to afford to buy an Apple device, but also to be able to maintain it.
