Is it expected for the battery capacity to fall by half with little usage? Nitro 5 (AN515-31)

atonement

My Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-31) just passed the 3 year mark. It's been used plugged pretty much all the time. Only time the battery gets any use is in case of a rare power cut. Temps. aren't an issue as even while gaming battery temps. rarely cross the early thirties, mostly in the mid-twenties. Battery life was good (7-8hrs,low brightness, undervolted, Turbo Boost off) for the first 2 years or so but rapidly degraded afterwards. Currently 3-3.5hrs. The battery stops charging randomly, usually in the 80-85% range. The charging light blinks orange constantly. I have tried the pinhole reset to no avail. Does Acer employ poor quality batteries? Or did I get a dud one?
Every manufacturer guarantees 80% battery health over 300 battery cycles. But in my case the battery health is down to 66% despite a pitiful 55 cycles as reported by the official Acer tool. Even that is an overestimate as the battery falls straight to zero from 15-25% causing the laptop to shutdown abruptly.
My previous laptop which ran much hotter didn't need a battery replacement before 4.5-5 years, over 300 battery cycles. Yet here in just 2.5 yrs the battery had degraded so much that it was very noticeable. Suffice to say this will be my last ever Acer. 
Warranty extension was a waste as it doesn't cover the battery. Replacement costs around $70-80 but if it's quality is as poor as the original then I won't bother. 

Please check the attached ss from the Acer battery tool which clearly shows how much the battery has degraded despite little usage. 

Thread was edited to add model name to the title

Easwar

Hi atonement,

# Try to update the battery driver

1. Hold windows key and hit letter X.
2. Choose the device manager option.
3. Go with the option battery.
4. Under the title battery.

5. Right click on that option ----> Update all driver under the title battery.
6. Choose "search automatically". 

Check this T/S and post the result. ​

atonement

Easwar said:

Hi atonement,

# Try to update the battery driver

1. Hold windows key and hit letter X.
2. Choose the device manager option.
3. Go with the option battery.
4. Under the title battery.

5. Right click on that option ----> Update all driver under the title battery.
6. Choose "search automatically". 

Check this T/S and post the result. ​

Tried it. Windows informed that the best drivers were already installed. I did upgrade to Windows 10 20H2 only a few months ago. This is definitely a hardware issue. Even worse Acer support can't get back to me with the price of a replacement battery more than a week later. 

Easwar

Hi atonement,

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/service-contact 

Book the unit for repair service,

https://customercare.acer-apac.com/CustomerSelfService/CaseBooking.aspx?CID=IN&LID=ENG 

atonement

After almost 2 weeks finally Acer customer care deigned to get back to me with a price quote. At INR 6.2k it's a tad expensive esp. as the original battery capped out despite minimal usage. 

atonement

Easwar said:

Hi atonement,

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/IN/content/service-contact 

Book the unit for repair service,

https://customercare.acer-apac.com/CustomerSelfService/CaseBooking.aspx?CID=IN&LID=ENG 

The 2nd link has been problematic in my experience. The Repair Status and Repair Request show for maybe half a second and then disappear. Disabling ad blocker, using a VPN or changing browsers makes no difference. Strange! 

atonement

Nevermind my above post. In desktop Chrome it worked well. Maybe issue in mobile browsers.

Easwar

Hi atonement,

Is your issue fixed.