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Battery Life of Brand New MacBook Model

R

ryan101

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 26, 2012
139
31
Hi All,

I bought a MacBook Pro about 2 days ago. It's the 15" model with publicised 8 hour battery life. I was pretty happy when I heard this. I want to know how Apple come to these numbers. So they say 8 hours battery life while playing a video on publicity material, does that mean that you have a video playing and you do nothing else?

I was using doing normal internet browsing and replying to some emails the other day, so I use MS Office and Outlook, and I don't think I got just about 4 hours battery life. I can't be sure but I am now beginning to time it under different scenarios to see how long the battery lasts. I have a bad feeling it's going to be well below or even half of what Apple advertise.

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of this? Is anyone else feeling a bit disappointed or ripped off like I am?

What is realistic when you are doing normal work like Office Applications and browsing.

One other thing, when I went to the Apple store I asked them when the next MacBook product refresh was going to be? They said a refresh happened 2 weeks ago, so the models currently in are about 2 weeks old. Is this correct?

Thanks all.
 
From the footnote of the Tech Specs page of the website :

Testing conducted by Apple in July 2014 using pre-production 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units, pre-production 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units, and pre-production 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i5–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The HD film playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 720p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The standby test measures battery life by allowing a system, connected to a wireless network and signed in to an iCloud account, to enter standby mode with Safari and Mail applications launched and all system settings left at default. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See www.apple.com/uk/batteries for more information.
Click to expand...

For what its worth I do get the stated battery life, as did my previous late-2011 model.

If you are using say Chrome instead of Safari or websites with plugins like Flash, Java and Silverlight they will adversely affect battery life.
 
Just as with car gas mileage - the purpose of the standard battery life quotes is to let you compare different models, in actual usage there are many variables which will cause YMMV effects. I can get indications (and actual times) of between 7.5hrs (light web browse, no flash, Safari, screen brightness at 50%), through to 2hrs (importing images into Aperture and preview creation). This is on a cMBP with 92% battery capacity and a circa 5-6hr original battery life quote IIRC - difference down to the SSD and careful usage to get the long duration.
 
4 hours of battery for simple internet and office work - that seems rather light to me.

I can't think of any other tasks that are the least stressful to the battery. I'd give apple a call, and/or exchange it since its brand new.
 
2 days old - it is possibly still spotlight indexing....

Anyhow the best guide is the Activity Monitor - Energy Usage tab...
 
simonsi said:
2 days old - it is possibly still spotlight indexing....
Click to expand...

2 days to index a brand new laptop that has almost nothing on it. I'm not so sure about that. Even so, that should account for such poor battery life.

Using the activity monitor is a good suggestion.

OP by chance are you using Chrome instead of Safari? That's known to be problematic with OS X.
 
Hi All,

Thanks for your advice. I do have plenty of applications installed like CS6 but they were completely shut down. The only thing that I can think of that's using up battery power is Dropbox which was still synching. I don't know if Dropbox is a big battery drain or not. I also mainly use Chrome.

When I set up my new Mac I used the option to restore my data, applications and settings from another computer. I am hoping that this shouldn't have any effect. One other thing my previous MacBook Air also didn't get close to living up to its advertised battery life.

I am also checking that no applications are running on start up.

By the way it's an i7 with 16GB RAM that shouldn't really make any difference right?

I will give it another week and monitor and if necessary I will contact Apple.
 
Last edited:
ryan101 said:
Hi All,

Thanks for your advice. I do have plenty of applications installed like CS6 but they were completely shut down. The only thing that I can think of that's using up battery power is Dropbox which was still synching. I don't know if Dropbox is a big battery drain or not. I also mainly use Chrome.

When I set up my new Mac I used the option to restore my data, applications and settings from another computer. I am hoping that this shouldn't have any effect. One other thing my previous MacBook Air also didn't get close to living up to its advertised battery life.

I am also checking that no applications are running on start up.

By the way it's an i7 with 16GB RAM that shouldn't really make any difference right?

I will give it another week and monitor and if necessary I will contact Apple.
Click to expand...

Chrome is the problem.

Chrome is the worst browser on OS X, it's a massive resource hog. Even Firefox performs better.
 
Hi Guys,

I wiped and reinstalled the OS, to give myself a clean slate. Also I din't bother importing the data, apps and settings this time. I am now already finding a big performance boost, although I just did it today. I have also started using Safari. I am finding that I can used most of my add ons on Safari. I always used to not used it in the past because of add ons not being always available.

I will monitor it this week and let you know.
 
Mine gets a real world 7 hours. Mail, Safari, Twitter, iTunes. Just general use.

I can use this rMBP more like an iPad, where you don't think about when you'll next charge it, than a traditional laptop that stays attached to a charger so it's always at 100% should you need it.
 
MattZani said:
Mine gets a real world 7 hours. Mail, Safari, Twitter, iTunes. Just general use.

I can use this rMBP more like an iPad, where you don't think about when you'll next charge it, than a traditional laptop that stays attached to a charger so it's always at 100% should you need it.
Click to expand...

Thanks. If I get 7 hours I would be over the moon. As I have the 15" it's advertised as 8 hours.
 
That depends what software and program you are using..The battery capacity is fixed. screen and cpu occupy 60~80% power, more internet page you browsing, more current the screen needs, no mention if you play a game... also the temperature effect.

ryan101 said:
Hi All,

I bought a MacBook Pro about 2 days ago. It's the 15" model with publicised 8 hour battery life. I was pretty happy when I heard this. I want to know how Apple come to these numbers. So they say 8 hours battery life while playing a video on publicity material, does that mean that you have a video playing and you do nothing else?

I was using doing normal internet browsing and replying to some emails the other day, so I use MS Office and Outlook, and I don't think I got just about 4 hours battery life. I can't be sure but I am now beginning to time it under different scenarios to see how long the battery lasts. I have a bad feeling it's going to be well below or even half of what Apple advertise.

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of this? Is anyone else feeling a bit disappointed or ripped off like I am?

What is realistic when you are doing normal work like Office Applications and browsing.

One other thing, when I went to the Apple store I asked them when the next MacBook product refresh was going to be? They said a refresh happened 2 weeks ago, so the models currently in are about 2 weeks old. Is this correct?

Thanks all.
Click to expand...
 
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