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Battery Life 2017 TB Models

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BlackMamba14

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 14, 2011
181
15
What have been your early impressions with the new Kaby Lake MBP in terms of battery life?

Held off on the 2016 models with all the threads complaining about battery. Thanks
 
Nik said:
Nothing changed. And before anyone claims that something changed. No, nothing changed.
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True that the batteries are all the same and I don’t believe Apple (may be wrong here) changed battery life specs. It may change a little bit though depending on the model and what kind of tasks someone would use them for. One specific scenario would be the 13” MBP if you do a lot of 4K stuff. Other than tasks related to the 13” iGPU though, battery life should remain close to what it was before.
 
BlackMamba14 said:
What have been your early impressions with the new Kaby Lake MBP in terms of battery life?

Held off on the 2016 models with all the threads complaining about battery. Thanks
Click to expand...

From what I heard - it's exactly the same. The only difference I saw was in Dave 2D Lee's review on YT that says 4K videos and Netflix last longer, but everything else is the same.


Also, the 2016 battery situation was waaaaay overblown. When the dust settled, everyone agreed that the battery life was comparable to previous models and also better than most of the competition (Dell XPS, for example).

While battery life could always be better and is not exactly advertised 10h, the reality is there isn't anything much better (or better at all) on the market currently. In fact, the 2016 and 2017 MBPs have better battery life than most notebooks. So, if you were holding off because of it, it's probably safe to buy either the 2016 or 2017 MBPs.
 
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amitdoc2b said:
One poster said he is getting 79 mins more battery on the 2017 vs the 2016 MBP TB
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I believe the referenced poster also moved up to the top end 560 GPU from the 455, and also referenced that the increase was with respect to Netflix video. The 560 shouldn't have to work as hard to play video, meaning it would likely be a significant contributing factor to any extended battery life.
 
CaptRB said:
Let's be smart here. If Apple could reasonably claim improved battery life, they would.

It's the same.

End of story.


R.
Click to expand...

I figured Apple was trying to save face from the previous generation's lower than anticipated battery life, so the new model brought it up to par to the 10 hours Apple claimed last year.
 
I'm no math magician but a newer, more efficient CPU paired with the same hardware (and battery size) should result in some battery life gains even it's minimal, no?
 
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amitdoc2b said:
I figured Apple was trying to save face from the previous generation's lower than anticipated battery life, so the new model brought it up to par to the 10 hours Apple claimed last year.
Click to expand...


After the updates, the MBP did fine on battery tests. Both my 13" and 15" touchbar models exceed Apple claims.
The battery "issue" is a dead horse. The new models may have some tiny gains, but they'd be pretty minimal.


R.
 
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CaptRB said:
After the updates, the MBP did fine on battery tests. Both my 13" and 15" touchbar models exceed Apple claims.
The battery "issue" is a dead horse. The new models may have some tiny gains, but they'd be pretty minimal.


R.
Click to expand...

You are getting more than 10 hours? Please elaborate on your usage? (specific to 13")
 
Just got mine (15"), so far after 5 hours of use just browsing, music, watching videos, downloading apps the battery is still at 53% so doing pretty good for me so far
 
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amitdoc2b said:
I figured Apple was trying to save face from the previous generation's lower than anticipated battery life, so the new model brought it up to par to the 10 hours Apple claimed last year.
Click to expand...

Sigh. It never had lower than anticipated battery life, save for the first few weeks where there was a bug with GPU power states. All reviews and benchmarks have actually always substantial improvements from the previous gen. Some myths are just really persistent, aren't they?
 
I bet it did improve incrementally. Apple is famous for not advertising small, but possibly important improvements. We won't know until more people get them in there hands and more tests are done.


CaptRB said:
Let's be smart here. If Apple could reasonably claim improved battery life, they would.

It's the same.

End of story.


R.
Click to expand...
 
"Let's be smart here. If Apple could reasonably claim improved battery life, they would."

Sry but the 2016 no matter what you did you cannot obtain 10h..so in 2016 they should said that MBP have up to 8hours !
Now, we get 9-10 h easily, so yes, with kaby lake and macOS High Sierra we easy get 10 h with light usage and brightness at least 60%
And lets not mention the improved in battery for 4k content
 
GDF said:
I bet it did improve incrementally. Apple is famous for not advertising small, but possibly important improvements. We won't know until more people get them in there hands and more tests are done.
Click to expand...

I think battery life is a very key and integral parameter in a laptop purchase. It is not some faster RAM or a second source SSD to be glossed over. If Apple had things to say about the battery, they would have bragged about it.
 
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I had my 2017 at 92% when I went to sleep (around midnight) I woke up at 6am and it was at 32% rewoke up at 11 it's at 27%, I'm on high sierra
 
QueenTyrone said:
I had my 2017 at 92% when I went to sleep (around midnight) I woke up at 6am and it was at 32% rewoke up at 11 it's at 27%, I'm on high sierra
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A beta OS is not indicative of anything, usually power management is garbage at least until 3rd or 4th beta.
 
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I love folks trying to keep the myth alive...

YES, the 15" 2016 MBP will get 10 hours or more.

20170223_095028_resized.jpg
20170226_221458_resized.jpg


Obviously the pics above settle the silly folk who don't own one.

WHAT you do is 99% of battery life. If I need to use 90% of screen brightness to run Photoshop and edit, I'll be lucky to get 5 hours. I've been working on a screenplay since 9 am. It's now 1:28 pm and I have 5:22 remaining.

So what you're doing is the big picture and somehow people think that 10 hours should be the bottom line no matter what you're doing. How bright are your keys? Are you using the touchbar a lot? Plugged into devices? What apps are open? It ALL factors in. Even with basic tasks battery life fluctuates depending how much typing and trackpad use is going on. My 2015 15" MBP had worse battery performance across the board, regardless of what I was doing.

My 13" does not do as well and I usually get 7-8 hours. But both machines have very good battery life so who knows how these myths continue.

I bet the 2017 has a bit better life, but obviously not a big enough difference to matter much. I expect the next cycle to see a more substantial leap.


R.
 
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QueenTyrone said:
I had my 2017 at 92% when I went to sleep (around midnight) I woke up at 6am and it was at 32% rewoke up at 11 it's at 27%, I'm on high sierra
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Honestly I don't know what you are trying to pull here, but I look back your post history and things just don't add up. 1st I read you diss on the 2016 Macbook pro is a bad design just not long ago. Then you said you ordered the 2017 before review is even out, but you are going to hate it. Then it just so happen it arrived on Friday and on the same day you said you exchanged "4" of them and on the "5th" one, and some how all 5 of them has cosmetic issue. Not only that, you managed to do all that in a single day and have spare time to test 4 of them to confirm that there were no keyboard issue instead of going straight to exchange. After going through all that, you even upgraded your Mac to High Sierra, and decided that you wanted to unplug your brand new, recently upgraded to beta OS Sierra without charger over night, woke up at 6am just to check battery life without ever thinking about plugging it in and go to sleep so you can wake up again to check the battery life???
Oh WOW! What a epic story you got there!!!
 
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