My 2013 rMBP only gets 45 minutes of battery on FCP. The battery is fine, if I do some light browsing with no ads and video I can get 10 hours.
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Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro
- Thread starter fokmik
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My 2013 rMBP only gets 45 minutes of battery on FCP. The battery is fine, if I do some light browsing with no ads and video I can get 10 hours.
As expected.
Millennials want to have smartphone like batteries in their laptops... not for "PRO" work
That's weird, I usually get several hours. On the other hand, I only do editing in FCPX, the rest of the heavy lifting is done in Resolve, which actually destroys my 2013 MBP 13" (maybe I should look into proxy/cache managment, there are way more configuration possibilities in Resolve).
I'm slowly getting desperate. The user reports are as contradicting as they could be. When I look at the raw data, the 15" MBP should be by far superior to it's competition when it comes to processing power/watt. But then, some people report 2-3 hours battery lifetime, others more than 10. Some people claim software updates resolved their issues, some say nothing improved at all.
All I want is to use the 2016 15" MBP in the same way as I did my old rMBP, just with the added power benefit. I'd gladly pay the money right now, but as long as there's no consensus on the battery life, I'm hesitant to throw my money in. For now, I can live with the struggle through Resolve. But as soon as the new GH5 hits the market, I'll have to jump over to a machine capable of 4K editing.
External monitors use the dGPU in the macbook, which drains the battery fast. Keep it plugged in when using one.
As expected.
Millennials want to have smartphone like batteries in their laptops... not for "PRO" work
I think people are severely overreacting to the battery issues. I have NEVER been happy with my 2011 Macbook Pro and 2013 rMBP battery life while doing video editing. It is always a very low number.
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Why not buy one, use it for a few days, and return it if there are issues?
Hmmm, I don't know, it's a good advice, but somehow it seems like a cumbersome process to me. I'd have to order it, here in Austria I'd have to wait at least 3 weeks until it's arrival, than I'd have to test it thoroughly for at least a week. If something's wrong, I'd have to return it and then wait until I'll get my refund. That's a lot of time spent in uncertainty.
Also, there're still the reports about the GPU issues which seem to appear at random, even after weeks. Although this seems to be a software issue, I'd like to be sure about that one.
Finally, I'm hoping to get a little bit of insight what Apples plans for 2017 might be before ordering. If there're some rumours from reliable sources addressing battery improvements, I'd like to wait it out.
Btw: I spent some time with it in the Apple store and I loved every aspect of the machine. It's the everyday usage that makes me concerned, issues that come up after weeks spent with the machine. That's why all of your reports are so valuable ... but contradicting
So you're saying you'll plug in an external monitor to the laptop, but are too inconvenienced to also plug in power?
To me, the valid case for measuring battery life is when you're on the go - Maybe in a coffee shop, maybe in a car - but at a place where nothing is connected to the laptop.
13" doesn't have a GPU. But I guess it will still drain a bit faster with monitor yeah.
Gotta say there is an elegance of plugging in your monitor via USBC.
Few days later .... why is MacBook always charged, I haven't plugged it in in days.
.... oh right.
Few days later .... why is MacBook always charged, I haven't plugged it in in days.
.... oh right.
It was just to test how fast the battery is emptying. I can test again without the monitor plugged in, nevertheless those are disappointing results.
As mentioned above I remember my late 2013 mbp faring much better that day when I forgot the charger. And at the time I was running 2 VMs in addition.
Huge improvement in battery life with 10.12.3 Beta (16D17a)!
Now getting at least double what I got with the earlier updates. 2016 13" MBP 2.9 TB.
It looks like withg light use (no WIFI) at least 11 hours maybe more. My normal use of WIFI, BT, three programs and some video work 7- 9 hours, while previously it was 3-4 hours.
Now getting at least double what I got with the earlier updates. 2016 13" MBP 2.9 TB.
It looks like withg light use (no WIFI) at least 11 hours maybe more. My normal use of WIFI, BT, three programs and some video work 7- 9 hours, while previously it was 3-4 hours.
I can say that when the dGPU is not in use my battery life is much better. Weird but my battery cycle count was 4 when I received the machine... Were they doing some "testing" at the factory?
Okay, so I've been in contact with Craig Federighi via an 8-email chain since I did a cross-country flight where my MBP lasted 3.5 hours at 25% brightness with nothing but Safari, Mail, and iTunes open. dGPU was for sure not engaged, and I had 3-4 tabs open in Safari. Reddit, Twitter, MacRumors forums.
He asked for a 400MB log dump from my computer and has been analyzing it and giving suggestions, but since then 10.12.2 came out and I was able to do another cross-country flight, which is the only place I'd realistically be doing light tasks on battery for hours on end. This time, at 3 hours of a little over 50% brightness usage (same apps as before otherwise), I was at 70% remaining. Coconut Battery reported a range of 6 watt to 10.5 watt power draw the whole time.
Seems like Apple is only publicly saying that they removed the time estimator, but I bet they tweaked the skylake CPU power management quite a bit. Remember when Microsoft did Skylake in their Surface Pro 4 / Surface Book for the first time and it took them nine firmware updates to fix its power consumption and sleep issues? It's gotta be something like that. I asked Craig in my followup email if there were power management changes, but who knows if he'll divulge. Very reassuring though that he was down to personally assist and dig in to see if there was a wider issue.
He asked for a 400MB log dump from my computer and has been analyzing it and giving suggestions, but since then 10.12.2 came out and I was able to do another cross-country flight, which is the only place I'd realistically be doing light tasks on battery for hours on end. This time, at 3 hours of a little over 50% brightness usage (same apps as before otherwise), I was at 70% remaining. Coconut Battery reported a range of 6 watt to 10.5 watt power draw the whole time.
Seems like Apple is only publicly saying that they removed the time estimator, but I bet they tweaked the skylake CPU power management quite a bit. Remember when Microsoft did Skylake in their Surface Pro 4 / Surface Book for the first time and it took them nine firmware updates to fix its power consumption and sleep issues? It's gotta be something like that. I asked Craig in my followup email if there were power management changes, but who knows if he'll divulge. Very reassuring though that he was down to personally assist and dig in to see if there was a wider issue.
`
He never replies personally, especially not to engineering troubleshooting issues. He has a team of engineers who manage his email account and reply to messages which have "issues" in the email body.
The same goes for Tim Cook's email. Whenever you email him about bad experience, you will get a call from executive customer relations team who will try to resolve your issue.
He never replies personally, especially not to engineering troubleshooting issues. He has a team of engineers who manage his email account and reply to messages which have "issues" in the email body.
The same goes for Tim Cook's email. Whenever you email him about bad experience, you will get a call from executive customer relations team who will try to resolve your issue.
They sign the emails "- craig" though? I feel like it's clearly stated when you get the relations / engineering team. I emailed Schiller originally, but got an independent reply from Craig later that evening. Just like this here:
Signed the same way, and replying to mail originally sent to a different exec. I'm sure they have a team culling through the masses of stuff they get and shooting off notable ones to whom they belong, but I highly doubt they're also acting as him all the time. It was mentioned in my correspondence that he's got his team looking through the log, but not that there was a team directly acting as him.
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I didn't monitor it as explicitly as I did on tonight's trip, but the few times I checked I was above 16 watts on the initial, poor battery journey. All while my CPU was essentially idling according to menumeters. The system seems to be much more eager to power-manage the CPU under low load situations. I don't see a performance decrease at all, but a major wattage decrease. Actually pretty crazy that I'm browsing the web and the entire system including LCD backlight, CPU/iGPU, RAM, SSD are coming to a grand total of 8 watts, but it can ramp up at a second's notice if the power is needed.
As for 10.12.3 beta, I may do it. I usually don't fix what ain't broke, but my AirPods will absolutely not work with my tMBP without major glitches every 10-15 seconds. Hoping that maybe they resolved this in the beta.
OK I upgraded to 10.12.3 beta and am getting SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE BATTERY LIFE.
Idle: 17-20 W.
Right now, with only one Chrome tab open, typing this post: 27 W.
When I submitted diagnostics to Apple via Feedback Assistant: 40 W.
MBP 15 2016 w/ 460. No other processes or apps running. 75% brightness. No iCloud, Spotlight.
This. Is. Absurd.
Idle: 17-20 W.
Right now, with only one Chrome tab open, typing this post: 27 W.
When I submitted diagnostics to Apple via Feedback Assistant: 40 W.
MBP 15 2016 w/ 460. No other processes or apps running. 75% brightness. No iCloud, Spotlight.
This. Is. Absurd.
Strange, because I'm getting completly opposite results with the 13" MBTB. I check CPU, the energy readings and the watts when on battery has dropped significantly. Additionally the computer does not even get warm now which seems to indicate the older OSX was keeping my CPU running at a higher speed (if not max), so maybe that is the key here to the battery life problems.
Right now I am more than please, in fact overjoyed because the lack of battery life was making me think this 2016 was not really a good purchase for the dollar. I love the thinness, weight, keyboard, the TB is an OK thing and power of the CPU, but if the battery was only going to be 3-4 hours; well that was just not right.
Now it is the do all machine I had hoped for. Sorry to hear it's not working yet for others.
Oh, I really like the four USB C ports. I plug my power into whichever side the cord is cloests to, use it to charge iOS devices and the adapter with HDMI and USB A works great!
I still maintain that Chrome is a ridiculous power hog. I just did a test at 70% brightness and what had me at 9 watts on Safari with 3 tabs open was 14 watts doing the same thing in Chrome. Not scientific, but I'd be willing to try and set something more concrete up when it's not 1:30am. It's safari or bust for battery life IMO - although idling at 17-20w is nuts. From the math it's doing, looks like the notebook must use an average of 9 watts to achieve 10 hours of battery from 100%. Submitting diagnostic logs though is a demanding task, at least it was for me when Activity Monitor generated a 400MB file for me to send off to Craig. Using Feedback Assistant just now to generate logs put me at 30 watts. It's doing something pretty demanding here - I'm seeing like 50% CPU usage on my menumeters bar as it collects.
Agreed that Chrome is a power hog, but 27 W for one Macrumors tab with nothing else open is just ridiculous.
what do you guys think about this?
13" TouchBar, 10.12.2
Usage 6H (sleep almost 28H) also there was 4% left battery wise at the time of screenshot
Light usage : safari, youtube, itunes (local music non stream) and rarely firefox
Brightness : 50-75%
13" TouchBar, 10.12.2
Usage 6H (sleep almost 28H) also there was 4% left battery wise at the time of screenshot
Light usage : safari, youtube, itunes (local music non stream) and rarely firefox
Brightness : 50-75%
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I have the 13 Touch Bar in the base configuration (i5 / 8 / 256) and I have trouble getting over 5 hours of light usage.
Yesterday I tried using the computer as I used to on my old machine (Outlook, 3-4 Tabs in Chrome) with 75% brightness and I got around 5 hours out of it. I am averaging 8.5 - 10w every time I check. For a 2017 laptop this is almost completely unacceptable, I tend to travel a lot and expect a decent battery life in such light scenarios. Also, 4 hours of standby were 3%. Is that normal?
I understand that Chrome is a resource heavy application, but noticed Safari doesn't help much either. In fact, I'm writing this post in Safari and my machine consumes 8.2w.
Having just dropped 2000€ on a new machine, this infuriates me and I'm considering to return the computer. This is literally having less battery life than my age-old 2011 15" quadcore MacBook Pro.
Do you guys think coming updates will relieve the situation at least a bit? 7-8 hours would be acceptable considering all I do is write e-mails, show PowerPoints and occasionally surf the web. For heavy stuff, I am normally plugged in anyways. But 5 hours....
Yesterday I tried using the computer as I used to on my old machine (Outlook, 3-4 Tabs in Chrome) with 75% brightness and I got around 5 hours out of it. I am averaging 8.5 - 10w every time I check. For a 2017 laptop this is almost completely unacceptable, I tend to travel a lot and expect a decent battery life in such light scenarios. Also, 4 hours of standby were 3%. Is that normal?
I understand that Chrome is a resource heavy application, but noticed Safari doesn't help much either. In fact, I'm writing this post in Safari and my machine consumes 8.2w.
Having just dropped 2000€ on a new machine, this infuriates me and I'm considering to return the computer. This is literally having less battery life than my age-old 2011 15" quadcore MacBook Pro.
Do you guys think coming updates will relieve the situation at least a bit? 7-8 hours would be acceptable considering all I do is write e-mails, show PowerPoints and occasionally surf the web. For heavy stuff, I am normally plugged in anyways. But 5 hours....