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2016 MacBook Pro Denied Recommendation From Consumer Reports Due to Battery Life Inconsistencies

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Apple's 2016 MacBook Pro has failed to receive a purchase recommendation from Consumer Reports due to battery life issues that were encountered during testing. Battery life reportedly "varied dramatically" from one trial to another.

According to a new report that covers the new MacBook Pro, the machine is the first of Apple's MacBooks that has not received a Consumer Reports recommendation.

The MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.

For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours.
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Consumer Reports says that a laptop's battery generally varies by less than five percent from test to test, but because of the "disparate figures" found in the MacBook Pro test, an average battery life consumers might expect to see could not be determined.

For that reason, Consumer Reports used the lowest battery score, which prevented the MacBook Pro from getting a recommendation. "Consumer Reports finds that all three MacBook Pro laptops fail to meet our standards for recommended models," reads the report.

Some customers who bought a 2016 MacBook Pro began complaining of ongoing battery life issues with the machine shortly after purchasing, which ultimately led Apple to remove the "Time Remaining" battery life estimate in the macOS Sierra 10.12.2 update.

While removing the indicator didn't fix battery life issues, some other tweaks may have been implemented at the same time, as there have been reports of better battery life following the update.

Apple claims that its own internal testing has seen the MacBook Pro performing up to the company's standards, providing up to 10 hours of battery life when watching iTunes movies or browsing the web.

Apple declined to provide a comment to Consumer Reports, but had this to say: "Any customer who has a question about their Mac or its operation should contact AppleCare."

Article Link: 2016 MacBook Pro Denied Recommendation From Consumer Reports Due to Battery Life Inconsistencies
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/22/macbook-pro-no-consumer-report-recommendation/
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Reactions: robotica and Vanilla35
Good. I don't have an issue with my 15" tMBP, but as the media presses Apple, they will have to either optimize the heck out of their software or stop the wafer thin obsession. Good for the future either way, although nothing will make some here happy, ever.
 
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Reactions: Stars&Stripes, tooloud10, outsidethebox and 58 others
Well crap - now I'm torn. I generally do the opposite of what Consumer Reports recommends as I've had horrible experience with their recommendations in the past, but I had already passed on the new rMBP. Looks like I might have to reconsider it. As for the testing, the results from Consumer Reports seems very odd and I suspect that something is flawed in their testing methodology (unsurprising) as it just doesn't seem like someone would see such a drastic variation in battery life like that.
 
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Reactions: riomp300, DJ_S, metabob and 18 others
Not surprising in the least. Can we finally put to bed the notion that this is in any way shape or form intended for, or marketed at, true professionals?

Edit: I'm sure Phil Schiller will issue a boilerplate tweet shortly...
 
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Reactions: lesiu, NY Guitarist, BruiserBear and 22 others
Interesting, so the consumer testing team claim the exact OPPOSITE to what people on here say and they recommend Chrome. I would even say Chrone is a resource hog, it uses the discrete GPU on my Mac. It's certainly a turnaround if Chrome uses less resources then Safari. Not very good Apple.

Still sad the battery life is so unbalanced. But this report will only make a difference in America.
 
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Reactions: djgamble, Val-kyrie and Atlantico
Can we stop calling this a "MBP Battery" issue?

Obviously some piece of sw is draining the battery.
Could be macOS, a driver or any 3rd app that simply behaves bad.

So far I'm not seeing this behaviour on my 15" MB Pro so the hw is obviously not the problem.

Edit: the report actually made quit clear that Safari is the killer. With Chrome "we ran two trials on each of the laptops, and found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs.".
 
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Reactions: DJ_S, metabob, MacSimpson and 9 others
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