17" vs 15" battery life

[unagimiyagi]

Hello,

Has anyone done head to head tests of the 17 and 15 inch macbook pro with regard to battery life?

Are they comparable to within 15 minutes of each other? Everytime I go into the store, the 17" seems to have a higher initial time remaining than the 15" models, even if they are inaccurate.

 

[spinnerlys]

As far as I can tell, the 17" has double the battery capacity of the 15" MBP, thus it lasts longer.

I had the 2008 15" Unibody MBP with approximately 5000mAh battery capacity (before the battery was non-user-replaceable) and could get three hours with it.
My 2009 17" Unibody MBP has 13000mAh battery capacity and I can easily get four hours, even with the 9600M dedicated GPU. I usually get five to six hours with moderate use like browsing and text editing and such at half brightness.

 

[sadcamper]

Wouldn't the display's power requirements come into play as well? Thus making the 17"'s battery more powerful to keep up with it's higher power requirements?

...speculating, I have no idea about such things.

 

[djasterix]

They are almost the same, as far as I know. My 15" i5 is 6 to 7 hours, my friend's 17" i7 is about the same...

 

[runebinder]

Have no experience with the 17" MBP, but getting around 7 hours out of mine with general web browsing and word processing, brightness at 4 notches, WiFi on, Bluetooth off.

 

[robotmonkey]

Only one that has improved battery is the 13 inch.

 

[CT1stMaxedOut09]

So what if you were to get the i7 chip in the 15" MacBook Pro? Would the battery last a shorter period of time due to the fact that you are upgrading the chip?

 

[Reapur]

So what if you were to get the i7 chip in the 15" MacBook Pro? Would the battery last a shorter period of time due to the fact that you are upgrading the chip?

Testing has shown that 15 inch with i5 vs i7 will yield roughly 30 min less useable time with the i7.

the 17 inch MBP has a massive battery in it, dimming the screen and only using wifi will get you close to 7 hours of use with browsing (not using flash apps)

Ive done it on mine and its awesome. Just remember to dim the screen down under half.