Using an external monitor I'm seeing less than 4 hours on the 15 inch, 455, 2.7, regardless of activity. Even just one tab open on Safari results in this. All indexing has been completed. Seems Apple's claimed 10 hours only applies to integrated 530 graphics. If the dGPU kicks in, expect that to drop by 50 - 75%.
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4 hrs battery life with dGPU
- Thread starter SpecG
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That seems to be in line with what I would personally expect. I think most people have access to their power adapter when they plug in their external monitor, so this shouldn't be a huge issue, no?
No different on my 2015 model. Integrated graphics and light work = respectable battery life (6-8+ hours)
AdobeCC Programs/ FCPX / Ableton / Logic / Any big program that uses a lot of resources and dGPU = 2-4 hours
Understood. Being used to the one port scenario I was surprised to see a meagre 1440p monitor bring down the battery life so much.
Guess dGPU is anavoidable with anything attached. Leaves you wondering how the MacBook m5 does it without an issue though...
Power management plays a large role. I would imagine that the dGPU is configured with performance scenarios in mind, so if it kicks in, the power draw will be substantial. Besides, the VRAM requires a lot of power to run. And the reason why the dGPU kicks in with external monitors is because external video output is wired through the dGPU (AFAIK the iGPU can't output external video directly on these MBPs).
The MacBook behaves differently because it doesn't really care about how many monitors are being connected. The iGPU just needs to draw a bit more stuff, usually its neglectable. Most of the time, only a small fraction of the screen needs to be redrawn and modern OSes are fairly good at optimising this procedure.