New MacBook Pro battery life

Which model Macbook Pro did you purchase and which options did you purchase with it?

battery life is always lower than the stated and that goes for every device. its the theoretical maximum. thats pretty good battery life actually.

Did you turn off bluetooth? Top bar next to WiFi.

Battery calibration is highly recommended.

Apple has adjusted battery life tests to be real world before Penryn. They used to be inaccurate.

3.5 hours is probably correct. I usually half or multiply the official estimate by 0.6.

You can't use a machine at the lowest brightness unless you work in pitch dark conditions.

always take like atleast 20% off of what they say, ad did you make sure to switch the graphics to integrated?

Use your battery for a few more charges before you make the final judgment.
On my old MacBook, I went from around 4.5 up to around 5.75 hours with BT off, WiFi off, and low screen brightness, after about 20-30 battery cycles.

You don't need to drain the battery down or anything, but keep using the battery to make sure all the Li-Poly cells are getting activated.

So far, I am getting about 4 hours tops with same settings and "onboard" video activated. It does take forever for my battery to charge also. I am going to do a battery calibration after a few more cycles and see what I am at in about a week.

Buy a replacement battery so you have like 10 hours!

this is so disapponting. I always bragged about the mbp's battery life. I was really looking forward to 4-5 hours of battery, minimum.

are you energy saving (lower powered GPU) or the higher performance (high powered GPU)? Maybe that solves your problem?

I turned on the low powered GPU (which is quite powerful in itself) and then turned the screen to my preferred setting (fairly dim).

I get 5 hours and about 30 minutes of browsing/work out of mine. I tested it to see exactly how much I could get out of it.

I also turn off auto-brightness. This makes the screen brighter in bright light which will obviously cut down on batt time.

I also make sure during the day that the backlights on the keyboard are completly off.

A lot of little adjustments will go a long way.

Cor all this complaining, I know you've all paid for a new laptop but in comparison my powerbook battery lasts for 4 minutes!

zhensun said:

It is on the lower powered CPU. I'm going to keep going through more cycles of charges and see if it gets better. The time remaining on the battery jumps like crazy. One sec it was 3:38 left on 89% and then it said 1:24 on 86% and then back up again.

Do you guys think its the laptop or the battery?

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Bring up Activity Monitor and set it to All processes sorted by CPU. Check to make sure that something like backup ( TM ) or mdworker ( indexing ) is not running and consuming your cpu/battery.

If it doesn't get any better just bring it into the store and see what they have to say.

LinMac said:

I turned on the low powered GPU (which is quite powerful in itself) and then turned the screen to my preferred setting (fairly dim).

I get 5 hours and about 30 minutes of browsing/work out of mine. I tested it to see exactly how much I could get out of it.

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not bad !

I'm kind of pissed they lowered the capacity...but who isn't? I don't run off of battery power much so it doesn't matter. What kinds of programs were you running? They do the tests surfing the internet and playing itunes I believe.

masse said:

I'm kind of pissed they lowered the capacity...but who isn't? I don't run off of battery power much so it doesn't matter. What kinds of programs were you running? They do the tests surfing the internet and playing itunes I believe.

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Do you just run off the power AC power adapter? If so, do you leave your battery in or take it out?

I hope when mine arrives it is more of the 5:30 mentioned than the 3's and stuff. It's kinda worrying that there is such a variance... Im hoping the people with low readings are just doing something silly like running programs in the background or something.
My thinkpad does 5 so I will be dissapointed with much less than that.

I get 1 Hour on my new mbp the 1999 model didnt try calibration, maximum brightness and playing games like WOW.

Kane.Elson said:

I hope when mine arrives it is more of the 5:30 mentioned than the 3's and stuff. It's kinda worrying that there is such a variance... Im hoping the people with low readings are just doing something silly like running programs in the background or something.
My thinkpad does 5 so I will be dissapointed with much less than that.

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I have 4.30 and Im doing nothing but surfing. Calibrated battery with 99% health, lowest brightness.