ice29
macrumors regular
Yes, but default for the 13" screen is 1280x800 scaled (as on the 2015 MBP) - this will get you better battery life than default on those 2016
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Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro
- Thread starter fokmik
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Yes, but default for the 13" screen is 1280x800 scaled (as on the 2015 MBP) - this will get you better battery life than default on those 2016
That is promising!
The reviews are at these links:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inch-touch-bar-macbook-pros-reviewed/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/0...the-2015-15-inch-retina-macbook-pro-reviewed/
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-Retina-15-Mid-2015-Review.144402.0.html
Given what you say, and my ignorance of how much power some of the programs you mention use, it seems to me you may be getting normal battery life. The only way to know for sure would be to try the same things on another machine known to get normal battery life. I know Safari is optimized for Macs, but Chrome isn't, and is known to become a battery hog quickly under various conditions. The others programs I don't know about. The Activity Monitor should give some indication of how much energy they use in its energy section
A big factor is how bright the screen is. How many notches up do you set it?
I've tried this on my 13" and don't notice any difference.
So I just changed my resolution to 1440 x 900 on my 15" and the text does look crisper in fact this looks really good. Too early to say about battery but I'm going to see how it goes with the next few days on this res.
Theophil1971
macrumors 6502
I bought the 2016 13" tbMBP (8/256) several weeks ago, and have had zero problems with it, and have enjoyed using it for work every day.
I've been consistently getting around 10-11hrs out of my battery since I bought the machine 3 weeks ago. This includes what , for me at least, is "normal" daily usage:
Last night I downloaded the 10.12.3 beta4 and installed it. The picture below shows a substantial increase in battery life, with the same type of usage. This was after 2hrs of uninterrupted work. I know it's just a current estimate... but it significantly improves on previous estimates (prior to the beta update), which all turned out to be pretty accurate in terms of how long the battery actually lasted.
Hopefully the 10.12.3 update, when finally released, will significantly improve people's battery life across the board!
I've been consistently getting around 10-11hrs out of my battery since I bought the machine 3 weeks ago. This includes what , for me at least, is "normal" daily usage:
- Web use (Safari) with 8-10 tabs open
- Writing (Pages)
- PDF annotation (PDF Expert)
- Keynote creation
- Messages
- Video playback (Safari, YouTube, Netflix, etc) - for an hr. or so a day
- Picture editing (Photos/Pixelmator)
- Video Editing (iMovie) - light use each day (30mins)
Last night I downloaded the 10.12.3 beta4 and installed it. The picture below shows a substantial increase in battery life, with the same type of usage. This was after 2hrs of uninterrupted work. I know it's just a current estimate... but it significantly improves on previous estimates (prior to the beta update), which all turned out to be pretty accurate in terms of how long the battery actually lasted.
Hopefully the 10.12.3 update, when finally released, will significantly improve people's battery life across the board!
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^^wow that's impressive with beta 4, so over 15 hrs, is that with watching videos for an hr or so a day?
Theophil1971
macrumors 6502
About 20mins of video in that 2hr period.
Don't get me wrong - these figures are always estimates that fluctuate quite a bit throughout a usage period. I suspect that these numbers will dip some...
I was getting 10-11hrs prior to the beta. I imagine that if things hold up, I might see somewhere between 11-13hrs now. 15 would be awesome! But I'm pretty skeptical of being able to attain that. Nor do I need to... a typical workday for me involves 8-10hrs max of work. I'd be plenty happy with the battery covering that period. Anything more is gravy.
Wow, that's really impressive. Even with the latest beta and browsing in Safari I'm on course to get 6. I'd be really happy with 8, so 10+ is fantastic.
[13 tbMBP (16/1Tb) here]
Hopefully my replacement will be as good as yours...
Can people with 16gb ram chime in if their battery is around 8 hours plus or around 6 hours?
Maybe the ram is the difference?
It's nothing scientific but my general impression is that yes, the RAM may be the culprit, based on the various results that were posted on this forum.
I have a i7/16gb/512gb 13" tMBP and I get 5-6 hours under light load.
SamVilde
macrumors regular
I have seen this so many times in this thread. Maybe it should be posted as a poll question. Would be curious to hear if 16GB is a problem on the nTB model also.
I have the exact same configuration as you and I'm consistently getting 8.5 - 9 hours under what I consider to be light to moderate load: Mail, Evernote, Outlook 2016, OmniFocus, intermittent web using Safari, some Word and Excel 2016, and a file sync service running constantly, brightness 11-12 "clicks" from the bottom. This week, I used my computer on battery over the course of three days, 1-2 hours at a time, sleeping in between and powered down overnight.
Bottom line is that battery life is fine for my usage pattern. I can easily get through more my workday without carrying the adapter and cords. It's not the added weight or bulk that bother me, it's the inconvenience of finding a plug when I need one. (I'm running beta 3 of 10.12.3, BTW.)
nTB 2016 13" 16gb 512ssd
4 to 6 hours normal use. Full brightness playing video 1 to 2 hours on average.
After reading through these forums. 16gb models seems to have more diminished battery life. It's since been returned, but going through other models 16gb Ram 2015 13", MacBook and 2016 ans 2015 15". I like the 2016 13" build the best. I wanted a laptop with 16gb of Ram for video, hmm... Reading through these forums, on average, it seems the 8gb has about 2+ more hours of battery life over the 16gb.
Interesting idea about the 16Gb models suffering from worse battery life than the 8Gb models. Of course Apple didn't offer a 32Gb option due to the effect on battery life of the extra hardware, but assuming that the 8 and 16Gb models have the same memory controllers I'd expect the battery life of each to be similar
It does take more power to have 16 GB RAM, especially when you're actually using more than 8 GB of it, but with low-powered RAM the effect on battery life won't usually be very big.
That's what I initially thought, that's actually why I went for 16GB, even though 8GB would probably have been fine. But given my own experience and those of other 16GB MBP owners, I've started to have doubts...
It might just be that the 16gb have something different about the build. Not just about the specifics and physics of Ram usage on a normal system. No one knows the answers but my 16gb got less hours than a 8gb base model and all we can do is guess the answers.
macintoshmac
Suspended
So looks like Schiller was right in saying 32GB in MBP wasn't feasible for battery concerns. Poor guy got ridiculed from people, talking truth about his product, just because people thought they know more than the makers of the product.
Schiller was talking about the need to use desktop DDR4 RAM in order to get to 32 GB. Skylake and Kaby Lake can only use 16 GB low-powered RAM, but they can use up to 32 GB desktop RAM.
I will leave a link here to the post I just made in another thread, showing my Activity Monitor energy tab (its the 15" MBP)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/over-6-hours-battery.2027513/#post-24194190
[doublepost=1484428385][/doublepost]
He was right of course, but for a different reason. MBP uses special (and much more expensive) RAM that was designed for mobile applications, it consumes less power, but unfortunately, it doesn't come in high densities meaning that there is simply not enough space in the laptop to get to 32GB (and no, there wouldn't be enough space if they didn't make it thinner either).
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/over-6-hours-battery.2027513/#post-24194190
[doublepost=1484428385][/doublepost]
He was right of course, but for a different reason. MBP uses special (and much more expensive) RAM that was designed for mobile applications, it consumes less power, but unfortunately, it doesn't come in high densities meaning that there is simply not enough space in the laptop to get to 32GB (and no, there wouldn't be enough space if they didn't make it thinner either).
SamVilde
macrumors regular
Schiller was right because there are currently no Intel processor chip available that supports more energy efficient LPDDR4 memory. Skylake and Kaby Lake processors only support DDR4 memory and that drains energy much faster LPDDR4 memory. So Apple chose to use more energy efficient LPDDR3 memory (up to 16GB) with Intel's Skylake processor because they wanted to still claim up to 10 hour battery life. Many are complaining about battery life now. Just imagine the battery life complaints had they gone with less efficient DDR4 memory (up to 32GB).
https://www.google.com/amp/www.macw...-and-a-lower-price-tag.amp.html?client=safari
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/28/new-macbook-pros-no-32gb-ram-battery-life/
So Apple is waiting for Intel to deliver Cannonball processors which have the capability to use more efficient 32GB LPDDR4 memory. Unless Intel can rev up their production schedule, we might be another year away from Cannonball. However, just as they do for their iOS devices, I wish Apple would seriously consider producing their own processors for their Mac computers instead of having to be dependent on slow moving Intel. That dependency delays Apple from delivering even more powerful but still expensive notebooks.
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Thats exactly what I said, albeit of course not as detailed as your post. And I'm not complaining about anything. In my experience, the battery life is much better than any other laptop I've used.
Just an update on my 4th day with my 2016 15" MacBook Pro. I'm not sure if it's just the battery settling in or knowing my pattern or me changing the screen resolution yesterday to 1440 x 900 or stopping notifications while sleeping but my battery has increased dramatically. I unplugged yesterday from a full charge at around 6:45 pm used it for about 5.5 hrs last night, put it in sleep mode, woke this am at about 54% battery left, used it about an hour today watching HD you tube videos and safari websites while listening to my iTunes library. Screen at 75% brightness volume about 40-50% (this is the loudest speakers I've ever heard on a laptop). Put it back to sleep mode for a few hours. I woke it from sleep about 6:30 pm been using it about 30 mins and I've got 38% battery left. Activity Monitor shows time on battery 24:27 and time left on battery 3:45.
So I have got over 24 hrs since I charged and still have 38% left. Basically I've been on the laptop (on and off) a total of about 7 hrs and according to how I'm using it with 38% battery left it says I can go 3:45 so that's about 10 hrs and 45 mins I will get on this charge till I get to zero. I can't complain at all about battery and this is only the 4th day.
I'm still not crazy about the noisy keys. No high pitch at all, I check them each time I get on, there just more noisy in the middle than the outer ones.
So I have got over 24 hrs since I charged and still have 38% left. Basically I've been on the laptop (on and off) a total of about 7 hrs and according to how I'm using it with 38% battery left it says I can go 3:45 so that's about 10 hrs and 45 mins I will get on this charge till I get to zero. I can't complain at all about battery and this is only the 4th day.
I'm still not crazy about the noisy keys. No high pitch at all, I check them each time I get on, there just more noisy in the middle than the outer ones.