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Battery life in the new MBP
- Thread starter Mrs HBF
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SpyderBite
macrumors 65816
I'm getting about 7 hours out of my 2012 13" MBP. That is with Caffeine running (zero sleep or display dim). Casual use.. IRC, Firefox, Mail, Pages. Heavier use such as running Windows in bootcamp and playing swtor.. my battery life drops to around 5 hours.
Edit to answer your question: More hardware demands on the battery. The processors, etc. draw more power than their predecessors.
Edit to answer your question: More hardware demands on the battery. The processors, etc. draw more power than their predecessors.
TheMacBookPro
macrumors 68020
The battery size remained the same, Apple just changed their way of estimating the battery life. If you look at some reviews, the times they get frequently meet or even exceed Apple's claims, whereas before their claims were overinflated.
If you are referring to retina model... the retina display requires brighter back light and the small enclosure limits the size of battery.
TheMacBookPro
macrumors 68020
Actually, the rMBP houses a much larger battery than the regular MBP. ~100watt hours compared to 75 watt hours iirc.
The rMBP is also being advertised having a battery life of up to 7 hours. Read the reviews and you'll see the reviewers are talking about the 7 hours' battery life. Some are getting 4 hours of battery in their tests.
http://www.wired.com/reviews/2012/06/macbook-pro/all/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...531283672616.html?KEYWORDS=macbook+pro+retina (Disappointed with battery life)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/t...ion-state-of-the-art.html?_r=1&ref=technology
Why has Apple gone away from batteries lasting up to 10 hours?
The rMBP resolution doesn't come for 'free' power-wise. The higher res, more powerful backlight (yes it's dimmer, but light doesn't pass through as well as the lower res screens), even the IPS tech uses more juice than the previous MBP TN screens.
Apple had a whole explanation for why they restated their 10 hour battery life claims on their laptops. I think it was in 2011 when they unveiled the new Macbook Airs where they said that their 10 hour battery life claim wasn't accurate and that they were going to measure their battery life claims in a more accurate way, mimicing real life use. The Macbook Airs that were unveiled in 2011 also had an advertised 7 hour battery life. So according to Apple, it isn't a matter of their laptops getting less battery life, its more of a matter that their claims are more accurate now.
Whether you believe this is another thing ... but they did offer an "explanation".
As a poster already explained above, Apple changed their way of estimating battery life since the 2011 models. They now provide a more realistic estimate. Of course, you may be able to get more than 7 hours, but generally people will never see that sort of longevity. I personally almost always have full brightness on in the day, so my battery life is never that good.
TheMacBookPro
macrumors 68020
I'm easily getting 6.5-7 hours of wireless productivity out of mine, I can tell you that much.
I'm sorry but did you even read my post 😕
They merely changed the way they measured battery life to reflect real-life usage better.
More realistic? My battery life is between 8 1/2 − 9 hours. Seems that they have worsened the battery life to be advertising 'up to 7 hours' when their older 2010 model is getting this average user at minimum 8.5 hours.
Actually I wasn't. Others have. For me, I'm talking about the MBP 13" without the retina display.hi-there said:
Interesting. Thank you. I have to wonder how legit that explanation is considering my usage certainly is way over 7 hours.Vctr said:
Try not to confuse your situation with the majority. You won't find many people who get that sort of time with normal usage on their 2010 MBP, or any model for that matter. Personally, we have both a 2010 and 2011 13" MBP in this household and neither get 8 hours during normal use. They both probably get 4-5 hours. I've seen the battery indicator estimate as high as 13 hours before, but that was idling on very low brightness.
TheMacBookPro
macrumors 68020
Sounds like you've got a better-than-average machine then. I was definitely not able to get anywhere near that much battery life with average (wi-fi internet and MS Word on mid-level brightness) usage on my old 13" Pro. Nobody I know who has a 13" Pro can eke out more than 5 or 6 hours either.