Battery experience with 14" M4 Max 16C/64GB/2TB?

[t2jd1967]

I was wondering if anyone has ordered and used this particular configuration (possibly with a different SSD) and what his or her experience is so far with battery life. I originally had bought a 14" M1 Max 10C/64GB/1TB that had a reasonable but not great battery life, running it default in low power mode. Unfortunately I lost that one after I left a business and subsequently bought a 14" M2 Pro 10C/16GB/1TB that was always intended as an intermediate buy. Battery life has generally been very good, again running it in low power mode.

I have now ordered and received, but not yet opened the box of, an 14" M4 Max 16C/64GB/2TB with the nano texture display. The one thing that causes me pause is that the battery life is rated quite a bit lower than the M4 Pro version. So with that in mind I have looked for reviews, but the M4 Max does not get tested a lot, with the reviews all going for the M4 Pro. Now I would have bought the Pro if Apple didn't cripple it with only allowing 48GB, but I don't have great hopes that Apple will deviate from this path even with a possible M5 model, so waiting another year means probably having to shell out for an M5 Max.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

P.s. As for not opening the box, that is a personal preference for only wanting to return a brand new product. I have extended return until 8 January (just checked with Apple to be sure), so can wait a bit before deciding.

 

[throAU]

I have this exact config. So far I am happy with battery life.

"General use" (browsing, YouTube, light usage, etc.) battery life seems approximately as good as my M1 Pro was. In 5-6 hours the battery ran down to 58%. Light use, I'm sure I'd get a work day out of it. That was in auto power mode - teams open, mail open, multiple safari tabs and YouTube playing. Screen brightness around 40-50 percent (comfortable indoors brightness, not trying to save power).

NOW.... if you push both machines hard (rendering, etc.), the max will burn more power as it has the capability to light up more cores. But it will get more work done in that time. And I would also wager that a Max running in low power mode will be more efficient by far than a Pro running in high power mode to try and keep up.

What is your anticipated workload? If you have some specific use case in mind and I have the apps, I can maybe test?

 

[t2jd1967]

I have this exact config. So far I am happy with battery life.

"General use" (browsing, YouTube, light usage, etc.) battery life seems approximately as good as my M1 Pro was. In 5-6 hours the battery ran down to 58%. Light use, I'm sure I'd get a work day out of it. That was in auto power mode - teams open, mail open, multiple safari tabs and YouTube playing. Screen brightness around 40-50 percent (comfortable indoors brightness, not trying to save power).

NOW.... if you push both machines hard (rendering, etc.), the max will burn more power as it has the capability to light up more cores. But it will get more work done in that time. And I would also wager that a Max running in low power mode will be more efficient by far than a Pro running in high power mode to try and keep up.

What is your anticipated workload? If you have some specific use case in mind and I have the apps, I can maybe test?

I do a combination of development work and analysis.

• PyCharm Professional with Copilot
• DataGrip with at least 4GB of heap space
• Docker
• Postgresql 15
• Python (sometimes over 8GB of memory used)
• Safari
• Mail and Calendar
• Teams
• Excel (sometimes with large spreadsheets)
• ffmpeg (video scaling and encoding)

The M4 Pro with 48GB might be sufficient, but I have run out of memory quite a lot on my current machine, having to shut down applications just to keep going. I have resorted to PgBouncer, but that hasn't been an ideal solution.

Ideally I would like to know what the battery life is like with low power mode on. Initially on my M1 Max it was lagging a bit with scrolling, but a MacOS update solved that. And on the M2 Pro I have never had a slow response with running on low power mode.

 

[throAU]

Yeah fair enough the only things I have on that list are the apple apps and teams, excel.

 

[ISKOTB]

I was wondering if anyone has ordered and used this particular configuration (possibly with a different SSD) and what his or her experience is so far with battery life. I originally had bought a 14" M1 Max 10C/64GB/1TB that had a reasonable but not great battery life, running it default in low power mode. Unfortunately I lost that one after I left a business and subsequently bought a 14" M2 Pro 10C/16GB/1TB that was always intended as an intermediate buy. Battery life has generally been very good, again running it in low power mode.

I have now ordered and received, but not yet opened the box of, an 14" M4 Max 16C/64GB/2TB with the nano texture display. The one thing that causes me pause is that the battery life is rated quite a bit lower than the M4 Pro version. So with that in mind I have looked for reviews, but the M4 Max does not get tested a lot, with the reviews all going for the M4 Pro. Now I would have bought the Pro if Apple didn't cripple it with only allowing 48GB, but I don't have great hopes that Apple will deviate from this path even with a possible M5 model, so waiting another year means probably having to shell out for an M5 Max.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

P.s. As for not opening the box, that is a personal preference for only wanting to return a brand new product. I have extended return until 8 January (just checked with Apple to be sure), so can wait a bit before deciding.

I had a 16" so the battery was much better, I now have 14/M4/PRO for about a month now and the battery was not good at all but notced a much better improvement after the recent OS update 15.3.1

 

[throAU]

I believe 15.3.1 has fixed issues with power management as i no longer have crashes after sleep/wake on my m4 max after unplugging a dock. WOuld not surprise me if other power related issues are fixed.

 

[Mity]

I do a combination of development work and analysis.

• PyCharm Professional with Copilot
• DataGrip with at least 4GB of heap space
• Docker
• Postgresql 15
• Python (sometimes over 8GB of memory used)
• Safari
• Mail and Calendar
• Teams
• Excel (sometimes with large spreadsheets)
• ffmpeg (video scaling and encoding)

The M4 Pro with 48GB might be sufficient, but I have run out of memory quite a lot on my current machine, having to shut down applications just to keep going. I have resorted to PgBouncer, but that hasn't been an ideal solution.

Ideally I would like to know what the battery life is like with low power mode on. Initially on my M1 Max it was lagging a bit with scrolling, but a MacOS update solved that. And on the M2 Pro I have never had a slow response with running on low power mode.

Did you stick with the Max or did you get a Pro? I use many of the same programs and I also like to keep apps open along with reference material. What is your RAM utilization like?