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3 month old U-MBP only getting 1.5 hours of battery life....WTF???

sn0warmy

sn0warmy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 26, 2009
630
75
Denver, CO

(click to enlarge)


(click to enlarge)

I turned my computer on at 4:05pm. I made sure it was charged to 100% before I unplugged the power supply. It is now 5:15pm and my battery is already at 14%.

The ONLY programs I have had running are:
- iTunes
- Safari
- Firefox (not being used, just on)
- Mail

Other things to note:
- Energy Saver set to: "Better battery life" instead of "Higher Performance".
- Display brightness set at 13/16


I'm getting less than 1.5 hours of battery life while just searching the internet and listing to music. This is absolute BULL****!!:mad:

IMO Apple owes me a new battery. But I'm confident that if I walk into the Apple store with this issue they are going to tell me to **** off.

EDIT: After reading a lot of replies, a lot of people seem to think the brightness of the on board display can cause the dramatic drop in loss of battery life. I refuse to believe that an LED backlit screen, at 13/16 brightness, can cause a loss of over 2.5 hours of battery life.

However, I will put that to the test.

I am now at work and have my laptop plugged into an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse:

(click to enlarge)

I'm going to let the battery charge to full (1 hours left of charging) then run it on battery power. I'll see if having the onboard display turned completely off will solve my problem.
 
There's no way that your battery discharged that fast if it was at 95% health without heavy heavy CPU use.

Check activity monitor out and make sure nothing looks suspicious.
 
I've added an image of my activity monitor to the first post. It looks normal to me.

According to that, I'm only using like 15% of my CPU.
 
No, however I do see the flash plugin currently running.

If you were watching online flash videos on youtube/hulu...etc flash uses a ton of CPU.

If you weren't watching any online videos I'd recommend getting adblock for your browsers.
 
Yeah, no videos were running. I'm downloading adblock as we speak. Thanks for the heads up. I'll see if that makes a difference.
 
No problem, you'll have to get it for both safari and firefox separately though just to warn you.

The biggest drain after high CPU usage would be the brightness but honestly, with wifi on and 13/16 with just web browsing you should be able to get 3.5 hours.

95% health is totally normal and nothing to worry about and shouldn't be causing your problem.
 
sn0warmy said:
battery.jpg

activity.jpg


I turned my computer on at 4:05pm. I made sure it was charged to 100% before I unplugged the power supply. It is now 5:15pm and my battery is already at 14%.

The ONLY programs I have had running are:
- iTunes
- Safari
- Firefox (not being used, just on)
- Mail

Other things to note:
- Energy Saver set to: "Better battery life" instead of "Higher Performance".
- Display brightness set at 13/16


What is the deal?:confused: I Bought this $2,400 notebook after reading directly from Apple's website that the battery should last "5 hours". In reality, I would even be fine with 3-4 hours, under these same conditions.

But less than 1.5 hours of battery life while just searching the internet and listing to music is absolute BILL****!!:mad:

IMO Apple owes me a new battery. But I'm confident that if I walk into the Apple store with this issue they are going to tell me to **** off.

Is there anything I can do about this?:(
Click to expand...


Billsh*t I tell you! Billsh*t!
 
apunkrockmonk said:
The biggest drain after high CPU usage would be the brightness but honestly, with wifi on and 13/16 with just web browsing you should be able to get 3.5 hours.
Click to expand...

I'm just being picky, my the biggest drain after the CPU is the GPU.

And 1.5 hours of battery life is pretty tough to get at. My 3 year old 17" could prob get by 1 hour playing WoW on battery.

sn0w post a screenshot of 'All Processes' in Activity monitor (in the drop down menu) and sort it by CPU.
 
^ he said better battery life = 9400

@ OP switch activity monitor to all processes, see if there is a system process that is going batsh:t
 
3 month old mac? It says in your picture the mac is 9 months old- What gives???? Was it refurbished?

I have had poor battery life lately myself on my new Macbook Pro- mine is really less than 3 months old- I am going to check into it- but I have only had probably 10-15 cycles at the most in that time-
 
Well the Mac would still be under Apple Care... Go into the Apple store and tell them the whole truth and ask why your battery only lasts 1.5 hours when you are only using light applications like iTunes, Mail, Firefox etc... AND you have it set to better battery life.

It can't hurt to see what they say, they might even give you a new battery :D
 
flyfish29 said:
3 month old mac? It says in your picture the mac is 9 months old- What gives???? Was it refurbished?

I have had poor battery life lately myself on my new Macbook Pro- mine is really less than 3 months old- I am going to check into it- but I have only had probably 10-15 cycles at the most in that time-
Click to expand...

His mac has been made 9 months ago in China and it had been laying in a store or somewhere else for 6 months untill he bought it, 3 months ago.
 
Brightness

Turn your brightness down. The 5 hour battery is only with Bluetooth off and 'apparently' the brightness down to level 8. I'd recommend level 4 if you seriously want to get 4-5 hours.
Apple will most likely run a test on your battery and if it checks out they may just send you on your way.
If you disagree with this I'd recommend reading the small print at the bottom of the disclaimer about the 5 hour battery. :)

'The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%'
 
^ I'm getting 5h easy with wifi & bt on and the screen on "level 7"

OP, bring it to a mac store and see if they can help
 
So I said I thought my own battery was acting odd- look what happened when I checked the power in system profile and coconut battery....what is going on here..

2 months old....cord plugged in, system profile says 96% yet fully charged....coconut battery says capacity is more, but it won't charge anymore.

I have not testing the time it stays awake- what is the best way to test the battery at home- a dvd or iTUnes movie, or just use it for a few hours while watching football. I don't live near an apple store (2 hours) I am not sure the local apple reselller will test the battery for me or not. I purchased it from the educator's store on apple.com
 

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This isn't a Unibody, but might give you a idea 3 1/2 years later where a MBP battery stands...
 

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Yeah, but do the math on my situation- if I lose 5% every 2 months I will be done in a matter of months....and that is after only 10 charge cycles....:rolleyes:
 
You guys need to use your batteries more... lol

System bought Jun 11th '09
 

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flyfish29 said:
So I said I thought my own battery was acting odd- look what happened when I checked the power in system profile and coconut battery....what is going on here..

2 months old....cord plugged in, system profile says 96% yet fully charged....coconut battery says capacity is more, but it won't charge anymore.

I have not testing the time it stays awake- what is the best way to test the battery at home- a dvd or iTUnes movie, or just use it for a few hours while watching football. I don't live near an apple store (2 hours) I am not sure the local apple reselller will test the battery for me or not. I purchased it from the educator's store on apple.com
Click to expand...

Unplug it, use it until you're at 94% or less, and plug it back in. It'll charge to 100%.

It doesn't charge if you plug it in with 95% or more in order to save wear and tear on the battery.
 
1000 cycles my @ss

:confused:what was all that crap in the keynote where they said the battery would last 1000 cycles before it would start to get weaker.....


from the look of this post everyone loses 100% capacity after the few months....
 
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