Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[hululu]

What app is that?

Battery Logger on the mac app store

 

[marcel500]

Hey all - just had my second call with Apple. They asked me to run the following script below to check if the hardware is faulty. I did it as instructed and got more than 17 hours out of my battery (u are not allowed to touch anything during the run). After I sent over the file to them they told me it is definitely not a hardware problem, clearly a software problem.

Thank you for your patience. As discussed during our call please follow the steps below:
1) Please charge the battery to full / 100%
2) Set the display brightness to 50%
3) Ensure Wi-Fi is on and Bluetooth is off
4) Remove any external devices.
5) Make sure nothing is running on the machine and it is set not to dim the screen. Turn display off after: Never
6) Disable sleep and screen saver.
7) Disable any background processes such as Time Machine backup or third-party background applications, file sharing, internet sharing, and so on.
8) Close all other windows / applications except Terminal.
9) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit Return:
pmset -g rawlog >> ~/Desktop/pslog.out

Run it for yourself and see if you get more than 15 hours out of the battery to exclude the potential of a faulty hardware.

 

[hululu]

Hey all - just had my second call with Apple. They asked me to run the following script below to check if the hardware is faulty. I did it as instructed and got more than 17 hours out of my battery (u are not allowed to touch anything during the run). After I sent over the file to them they told me it is definitely not a hardware problem, clearly a software problem.

Thank you for your patience. As discussed during our call please follow the steps below:
1) Please charge the battery to full / 100%
2) Set the display brightness to 50%
3) Ensure Wi-Fi is on and Bluetooth is off
4) Remove any external devices.
5) Make sure nothing is running on the machine and it is set not to dim the screen. Turn display off after: Never
6) Disable sleep and screen saver.
7) Disable any background processes such as Time Machine backup or third-party background applications, file sharing, internet sharing, and so on.
8) Close all other windows / applications except Terminal.
9) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit Return:
pmset -g rawlog >> ~/Desktop/pslog.out

Run it for yourself and see if you get more than 15 hours out of the battery to exclude the potential of a faulty hardware.

been there done that


in regular use, whats your battery life that you get?

 

[marcel500]

been there done that


in regular use, whats your battery life that you get?

5.5 hours... But I have to admit that the new public beta improved my battery life...

 

[Jolly-boo]

Got my Pro yesterday. Updated to the latest Sierra version. Battery went by fast.

Today, however, battery saw huge improvements. Watched a movie for a bit over two hours (EDIT: NOT ON THE Pro, on another screen. Used this as a duration measure). Battery dropped down to 83%. Did light Safari and Evernote writing. Light stuff, obviously. Watts usage never went past 10 I believe. I don't quite understand these Battery Health readings. Current usage 7 hours, but Safari usage 2 hours? I'm on Safari right now ...

 

[hawkeye_a]

Ordered a 13" tbMBP.

Just a thought regarding the battery life issues which have been reported.

I've noticed that in many reports, people were complaining about the 'time remaining' which was displayed in the menu bar. I wonder if the laptop would have actually lasted for the advertised time despite what the displayed time remaining was.

Are there any reports regarding *actual* battery life being 3-6 hours? (ie the laptop actually shuts down due to lack of power)

Cheers

 

[audirs5]

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.

Because last time someone didn't take charge of their issues, they got booted out (maps anyone).

 

[Littleluk]

Ordered a 13" tbMBP.

Just a thought regarding the battery life issues which have been reported.

I've noticed that in many reports, people were complaining about the 'time remaining' which was displayed in the menu bar. I wonder if the laptop would have actually lasted for the advertised time despite what the displayed time remaining was.

Are there any reports regarding *actual* battery life being 3-6 hours? (ie the laptop actually shuts down due to lack of power)

Cheers

See my post one page earlier. I cannot get past 6 hours in normal use (that is 3-4 Chrome tabs, Outlook E-Mails and some Excel work).

I don't know what to do or how to get the power consumption down from 8-10 watts. It's really bothering me. Using Safari is slightly better, but those 10% are not worth for me to consider a browser that I hate (and have used ever since without problems on all my other devices!)

 

[Likwit]

13" tbMBP here: after installing 10.2.3 beta 2 today, battery life seems to have changed dramatically for me.
Before, I couldn't get an estimate above 4 hours while on 50% brightness, 2 tabs in safari no other tasks at all.
Now, however, I´m on 53% battery left, after 4:20h of light to medium usage. (brightness 50%, keyboard backlight low, constant browsing in safari with around 5 tabs, 25min youtube videos, 15 minutes Ableton live)
Remaining time estimate in activity monitor: 4:51 hours (has been 17 hours for a short time )

I'm not sure about the accuracy of these numbers, but I feel kind of relieved.

 

[hawkeye_a]

See my post one page earlier. I cannot get past 6 hours in normal use (that is 3-4 Chrome tabs, Outlook E-Mails and some Excel work).

I don't know what to do or how to get the power consumption down from 8-10 watts. It's really bothering me. Using Safari is slightly better, but those 10% are not worth for me to consider a browser that I hate (and have used ever since without problems on all my other devices!)

I read your previous post. I've got the same configuration on the way.

From what i've read, the standard for testing includes:
-75% screen brightness (oops thought it was 50%)
-keyboard brightness: off
-turn off the dim/sleep/turn-off-display features
-wifi: on, bluetooth: off
EDIT: The above is wrong. for the conditions for testing refer to http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/ (Note 2 at the bottom of the page)


my additional opinion:
-try using only first party apps for the test?
-maybe charge the battery fully once, and loop a movie in iTunes until shutdown, and then perform the test on the next full charge?

Also, I dont know if this *could* be an issue, but does your network(wifi) connection keep dropping in and out? I know that causes my iPhone battery to loose power quickly? Also, FWIW, if you are constantly using the touchpad (just like the touchscreen on the iPhone) that willdrain the battery faster. (IMHO; there is a lot of opinion in this post, i am not a hardware/battery engineer)

Cheers
[doublepost=1482430601][/doublepost]

I'm not sure about the accuracy of these numbers, but I feel kind of relieved.

I'm sure there must be a program which can set the displayed time remaining to infinity. hehehe

 

[bjet767]

ut 27 W for one Macrumors tab with nothing else open is just ridiculous.

Ok checking the energy effect on the Activity Monitor and I found the following:

Both when active and in background Firefox uses over double the energy than Safari.

With Safari active total watts use of computer 8.7 watts.
With Firefox active total watts use of computer 8.7 watts

So even though there a larger energy effect from FireFox the watts used difference is negligible.

13" MBTB 10.12.3 Beta (16D17a) 75% screen brightness and keyboard backlight.
7:35 minutes of life at 100% right now and going higher.

The new OSX update seems to control CPU speed a lot tighter/faster thus improving time on battery.

 

[BondFancy]

After a couple cycles my battery life with light usage appears to be around 8-10 hours. Where light usage is safari, mail, youtube, and messages at 50% brightness. Very bizarre the other day messages caused my dGPU to turn on.

 

[DB4AW]

Poor 2016 MacBook Pro!

2016 MacBook Pro Battery Life Wildly Inconsistent, Consumer Reports Finds - Consumerist
https://apple.news/AE4Oz8uxrOvWS3lfl96Enww

Anyway, my 2016 MBP 15" model is finally arriving today. Based on prior posts, I've got battery logger and coconut battery to assist me in monitoring the battery life carefully. But during initial setup, I'll use AC power so that the MBP can complete any initial indexing, iCloud copying or whatever it needs to do. Hopefully, I won't have to return it.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Poor 2016 MacBook Pro!

2016 MacBook Pro Battery Life Wildly Inconsistent, Consumer Reports Finds - Consumerist
https://apple.news/AE4Oz8uxrOvWS3lfl96Enww

Anyway, my 2016 MBP 15" model is finally arriving today. Based on prior posts, I've got battery logger and coconut battery to assist me in monitoring the battery life carefully. But during initial setup, I'll use AC power so that the MBP can complete any initial indexing, iCloud copying or whatever it needs to do. Hopefully, I won't have to return it.

Excellent! Thanks for sharing. I'm very curious as to your findings. What are the specs of your machine?

 

[DB4AW]

Excellent! Thanks for sharing. I'm very curious as to your findings. What are the specs of your machine?

 

[chfilm]

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....

Im exactly in your shoes! It's especially disappointing, considering i came from a 13 hours macbook air. It really lasted that long. and now this.. will they fix it with software? Or should we return the machines?

 

[Woodcrest64]

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.

Thanks for sharing. It's gonna be really interesting to see what you get for battery life as you got all the top end specs. Beautiful machine. I'd recommend getting a a good micro fibre cloth to wipe the drool off while you use it

 

[fs454]

Thanks for sharing. It's gonna be really interesting to see what you get for battery life as you got all the top end specs. Beautiful machine. I'd recommend getting a a good micro fibre cloth to wipe the drool off while you use it

Does anyone know of a web browsing loop script I can run or something? I'd be down to try this overnight with a timer with my Late 2013 (80% health) 15" side by side for kicks, but I just don't have the time to run it down twice during the day while refraining from doing heavy stuff on it.


Absolutely love the notebook, and the Pro 460 is a screamer for the size and weight. Battlefield 1 looks and plays pretty unbelievably in Boot Camp, too. What I do think may be an interesting twist is if third parties start making replacement batteries - I was the first to open mine up before iFixit got their hands on a touch bar model, and I noted that there are fairly large gaps around the battery cells, especially the ones in the center near the trackpad. Maybe this is to give them space to expand, but there was certainly no space like this in the pre-touchbar Retinas so there's some interesting empty real estate to play with for those daring enough later in the laptops lifespan.

 

[Woodcrest64]

Does anyone know of a web browsing loop script I can run or something? I'd be down to try this overnight with a timer with my Late 2013 (80% health) 15" side by side for kicks, but I just don't have the time to run it down twice during the day while refraining from doing heavy stuff on it.


Absolutely love the notebook, and the Pro 460 is a screamer for the size and weight. Battlefield 1 looks and plays pretty unbelievably in Boot Camp, too. What I do think may be an interesting twist is if third parties start making replacement batteries - I was the first to open mine up before iFixit got their hands on a touch bar model, and I noted that there are fairly large gaps around the battery cells, especially the ones in the center near the trackpad. Maybe this is to give them space to expand, but there was certainly no space like this in the pre-touchbar Retinas so there's some interesting empty real estate to play with for those daring enough later in the laptops lifespan.

I don't know of a script off hand. The space or gap as you mentioned is believed to have been designed for this other battery Apple was working on but it failed a key test and wasn't ready in time. It was suppose to be larger and more powerful. Apple may be able to get this battery out next year especially with all the attention they've gotten over this year's model and its sup par battery life.

 

[lympero]

Chrome is known to kill battery and AFAIK number of tabs has a reasonably large influence on Mac battery life (especially with Chrome). I upgraded from a 15" 2012 rMBP to a 15" tbMBP and I've experienced a considerable jump in battery life. With about 10 tabs open (Safari), Apple's email app open, and music streaming from Apple Music on iTunes, I'm averaging around 8-9 hours of battery life. Perhaps this is simply due to the fact that I only use Apple's apps?

No this is due to the fact that you are not using your computer at all!

 

[fs454]

No this is due to the fact that you are not using your computer at all!

When I'm on battery, I'm for sure not trying to whip out Premiere Pro or FCPX unless it's an emergency. Long-haul battery situations for me are just like his - light browsing, music, mail etc.
[doublepost=1482472934][/doublepost]

I don't know of a script off hand. The space or gap as you mentioned is believed to have been designed for this other battery Apple was working on but it failed a key test and wasn't ready in time. It was suppose to be larger and more powerful. Apple may be able to get this battery out next year especially with all the attention they've gotten over this year's model and its sup par battery life.

I was just on Reddit typing out a post along the lines of "I think the tiered battery that Apple 'failed' to implement is total BS" but then I went back and looked at the images I took on day one when I tore my MBP down for science (and to confirm to this forum that there was no removable SSD):
http://imgur.com/a/24QhY

Pretty dramatic, to be honest, how big the gaps around the cells are and how generic the corner packs are. It really does look like they meant for something else to be there. I also believe that if this battery were ever to make it into a refresh, it'd fit with little issue into this one as long as you're willing to take the risk

 

[DB4AW]

Finally! Consumer Reports has Apple executives taking the reported 2016 MBP battery issues more seriously:

https://www.google.com/amp/appleins...-issues-says-phil-schiller/amp/?client=safari

Hopefully, it turns out that issues can be quickly addressed via OS and/or software updates just like the prior issues with the Radeon Pro graphics card were addressed. Otherwise, Apple needs to better explain exactly how they are getting a consistent 10 hours during their own "extensive" testing.

 

[suleman_kh]

Hey all - just had my second call with Apple. They asked me to run the following script below to check if the hardware is faulty. I did it as instructed and got more than 17 hours out of my battery (u are not allowed to touch anything during the run). After I sent over the file to them they told me it is definitely not a hardware problem, clearly a software problem.

Thank you for your patience. As discussed during our call please follow the steps below:
1) Please charge the battery to full / 100%
2) Set the display brightness to 50%
3) Ensure Wi-Fi is on and Bluetooth is off
4) Remove any external devices.
5) Make sure nothing is running on the machine and it is set not to dim the screen. Turn display off after: Never
6) Disable sleep and screen saver.
7) Disable any background processes such as Time Machine backup or third-party background applications, file sharing, internet sharing, and so on.
8) Close all other windows / applications except Terminal.
9) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit Return:
pmset -g rawlog >> ~/Desktop/pslog.out

Run it for yourself and see if you get more than 15 hours out of the battery to exclude the potential of a faulty hardware.

I tried this and I got 20 hours, see attached screenshot. But after some minutes of usage it dropped down to 4 hours. Sometimes I get 8 hours as normal, but sometimes it is saying 2 hours and after few mins of usage it goes up to 4 hours and then goes just down.

Is there any point contacting Apple??

 

[JohnnyGo]

I tried this and I got 20 hours, see attached screenshot. But after some minutes of usage it dropped down to 4 hours. Sometimes I get 8 hours as normal, but sometimes it is saying 2 hours and after few mins of usage it goes up to 4 hours and then goes just down.

Is there any point contacting Apple??

Ignore time remaining estimates. Let us know how much time you actually did use until the battery is depleted.

 

[deany]

Hope OP is ok
Not all posts have spec - can we harvest some info-

Device and spec:

Average battery time:

Approx standby time:

Programs used with approx time usage:

TM automatic back up ON/OFF:

Screen brightness approx %:

Approx date purchased:

Country:

Latest OS assumed

Please feel free to add more details