14 inch battery life substantially less than 13 inch

[TheRdungeon]

Note that most of the battery life estimates Apple are giving is for a very specific task, notably playing back Apple TV content. The numbers given are 20 hours for the 13" and 17 hours for the 14". I would assume the 14 inch fares comparatively better in these estimates because of the dedicated decoder/encoder in the Pro chip. However, note that in wireless web browsing (I would argue a much more relevant real world use case) it is 17 hours for the 13" and 11 hours for the 14".

 

[HyperliteG4]

Likely the extra brightness and refresh of the screen coupled with the extra GPU cores

 

[Beau10]

What's even more interesting is the substantial size increase in the battery. I would have expected it to hold the same stats given that.

I for one am more than fine w/ this estimate as my daily driver has been a 16" that typically only gets about 5 hours if that.

 

[jerryk]

No surprise the new chips use more power. I wonder how noisy the system will be trying to cool down the top-end SOC.

 

[JPack]

The CPU alone is 30W. The GPU is 55W.

 

[SpotOnT]

Ouch. Ya, I guess that is why it has those giant feet - to try and increase air flow. Will be interesting to see how warm it gets when trying to use it in bed....

 

[tomswift99]

On the Apple website, they say in the fine print for both the 13 and 14 inch battery stats, "The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to eight clicks from the bottom."

But the 14 inch screen is rated at 1000 nits, while the 13 inch is 500 nits. I'm not sure how Apple scales the brightness on each 'click', but I assume that eight clicks from the bottom isn't the same brightness between the two units.

So wouldn't this be an unfair comparison, if the 13 inch battery life is being measured at a lower brightness compared to the 14 inch?

 

[EnderTW]

Ouch. Ya, I guess that is why it has those giant feet - to try and increase air flow. Will be interesting to see how warm it gets when trying to use it in bed....

No… lol 30W for a cpu and 55W for a gpu is very small for a performance computer. Just compare that to a i9 with a mobile 3080.

 

[SpotOnT]

No… lol 30W for a cpu and 55W for a gpu is very small for a performance computer. Just compare that to a i9 with a mobile 3080.

lol fair enough!

Ya…I am clearly a bit out of touch. Currently working on a 2011 MacBook Pro, where the CPU is 45W and the GPU is 15W….and I am thinking to myself, well shoot and here I thought Apple Silicon was supposed to run cool, cause lord knows my Macbook sure does a good job of keeping my bed warm on a cold winter night.

Seriously had no idea modern Intel Macbooks were drawing that much power!

 

[ignaciobarrena]

Battery life will depend heavily in these new machines on what you are doing.

The base 14" compared to the 2020 M1 13" Pro will get very similar battery life in most light tasks if not better (same 8 core CPU, Promotion Display, bigger battery...)

EDIT: Well I'm mistaken. The M1 2020 MBP has 4 low power cores and the new ones has only 2, so along with the bump up in resolution and brightness display that can make a difference. But I still think that If you only will do light tasks, battery life will be around 10-14h easily on the 14"

 

[jerryk]

Still better than the Intel MacBook Pros. And are people concerned about 10+ hours of battery life?

 

[MarkAtl]

Battery life will depend heavily in these new machines on what you are doing.

The base 14" compared to the 2020 M1 13" Pro will get very similar battery life in most light tasks if not better (same 8 core CPU, Promotion Display, bigger battery...)

EDIT: Well I'm mistaken. The M1 2020 MBP has 4 low power cores and the new ones has only 2, so along with the bump up in resolution and brightness display that can make a difference. But I still think that If you only will do light tasks, battery life will be around 10-14h easily on the 14"

For light tasks it'll likely be similar, but as you point out, it's now 6 (binned from 8) + 2 vs. 4+4.

 

[DHagan4755]

Still better than the Intel MacBook Pros. And are people concerned about 10+ hours of battery life?

Agreed. While we're still waiting for them to benchmark, etc. I'm thinking the entry level 14" is going to be on par with the entry level 2019 16" MacBook Pro in terms of performance. With probably better battery life than the 16" AND less heat. We'll see though.

 

[jerryk]

Agreed. While we're still waiting for them to benchmark, etc. I'm thinking the entry level 14" is going to be on par with the entry level 2019 16" MacBook Pro in terms of performance. With probably better battery life than the 16" AND less heat. We'll see though.

I just hope they have less fan noise. My 16" Intel MBP would sound like a jet engine at times. Having moved to a silent M1 Air with no fans I would hate to have another system that was as loud as the 16" Intel MBP under high loads.

 

[djrm]

On the Apple website, they say in the fine print for both the 13 and 14 inch battery stats, "The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to eight clicks from the bottom."

But the 14 inch screen is rated at 1000 nits, while the 13 inch is 500 nits. I'm not sure how Apple scales the brightness on each 'click', but I assume that eight clicks from the bottom isn't the same brightness between the two units.

So wouldn't this be an unfair comparison, if the 13 inch battery life is being measured at a lower brightness compared to the 14 inch?

I doubt this is the case. SDR content is predicted to still be 500 nits (as it has been) and thats all that can be adjusted using the brightness controls. The 1000 nits + comes when HDR content is displayed.