Battery life 13" MBP 2020 - i5 vs i7

[MakeAppleAwesomeAgain]

I planning to buy the new 13" with 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage but I'm still deciding wether to go for the i5 or the i7. Most topics about these CPUs are performance related. Honestly I don't care at all, I'm coming from a MBA 2013 and even the i7 in my iMac 2017 performs roughly the same as the new i5 in single-core tests. Performance is a non-issue as the iMac is my main driver and the new i7 is only about 7% faster than the i5.

I do care about battery life though. Would there by any advantage in choosing the i7 over the i5? I assume the i7 draws more power as I read everywhere the fans are louder and spin up faster on the i7. On the other hand, it'll take the i5 more time to complete a task which means the battery is under load for a longer time.

Any advice, benchmarks or experience? Thanks!

 

[radley]

This is a question that I'm also considering.
Done a lot of reading on it.
I do care about the performance but also about battery and thermals as you mention.

I think I'm going to go with i5. .... there is no clear winner from what I've read and so it seems like I'd be paying £200 more just to tick the box of having the highest spec.

 

[Patcell]

This was my ultimate conclusion as well. I obsessed over whether or not to upgrade to the i7, but there I no clear evidence that it would be better in terms of battery life. Yes, it is a more efficient chip, but they take advantage of the efficiency by clocking it higher, so there shouldn't be any real-world (noticeable) difference. And the performance gains are minimal it seems...

 

[iRun26.2]

But if it is truly more efficient, then it uses less power to complete the same task (getting it done faster). To me, that implies improved battery life. The following video convinced me to go with the i7:

 

[radley]

I've seen that video before. I believe (from what I've read) that the on board graphics difference would make a real world difference in use... where as both MBP's that we are talking about here run G7 from what I've read. also it's not exactly Apples with Apples... pardon the pun.

 

[Patcell]

I've seen that video before. I believe that someone checked up the actual specs and there are other differences with the chips in those Dell's.... namely the on board graphics. Where as in the MBP the graphics are the same so the performance variance will be less. also it's not exactly Apples with Apples... pardon the pun.

True. The i5 in that comparison uses the G1 integrated GPU while the i7 uses the higher-end G7 graphics (as do both MBP options). They are very different chips.
The battery life conclusion may hold true, I’m not sure... I just couldn’t justify the $200 up-charge for really modest improvement in my use-case.

 

[iRun26.2]

The Geekbench scores are also different:

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2020) Benchmarks - Geekbench

Multi-Core: i5 = 4228, i7 = 4516 (7% improvement)
Single-Core: i5 = 1133, i7 = 1225 (8% improvement)

Maybe not worth it for some people but I want it.

 

[radley]

They are both G7 in the new MBP
The link from iRun26.2 shows it as doe some other places. Even though Apple just leaves the model numbers of the CPU's off their marketing.
Maybe I will go for the boosted one. Only the cost of a 2 cheap beers a month extra on the finance.

 

[meteoreos]

So there isn’t a difference in battery life/heat between the 13” i5 And i7 MacBook Pros?

 

[Patcell]

So there isn’t a difference in battery life/heat between the 13” i5 And i7 MacBook Pros?

Not likely to be an appreciable difference, no.

 

[Howard2k]

If battery life is important enough to be a differentiator then the i7 should better. The difference won’t be huge, but it should typically be better silicone and run any given take faster and/or cooler with a slight benefit to battery life.

i wish I’d saved it but there was a YouTube video with a pretty good demonstration.
For my use it doesn’t really matter, but if this was a professional use case I’m thinking I’d go with an i7.

 

[Rian Franco]

I planning to buy the new 13" with 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage but I'm still deciding wether to go for the i5 or the i7. Most topics about these CPUs are performance related. Honestly I don't care at all, I'm coming from a MBA 2013 and even the i7 in my iMac 2017 performs roughly the same as the new i5 in single-core tests. Performance is a non-issue as the iMac is my main driver and the new i7 is only about 7% faster than the i5.

I do care about battery life though. Would there by any advantage in choosing the i7 over the i5? I assume the i7 draws more power as I read everywhere the fans are louder and spin up faster on the i7. On the other hand, it'll take the i5 more time to complete a task which means the battery is under load for a longer time.

Any advice, benchmarks or experience? Thanks!

the battery between i5 vs i7 is not noticeable. but you are going to buy higher option of 32gb ram and 1TB storage so you need higher processor to match your option. i7 can handle multi tasking in less time to wait and smooth but i5 can handle also but you will wait more time. so the battery life and time you can compare it. the more you wait the more you use the battery.