Battery life on M1X PRO vs M1X MAX?

[Starfyre]

What is the battery life like on the M1X PRO vs M1X MAX? Do core counts also compromise/tradeoff on battery life?

I am on a 16in MBP, not really liking the weight and the obscene power wattage requirements of the new 16 inch requiring >96W power bricks... there seems to be a lot of 'maximizing battery life' rhetoric, but how good is it really?

 

[MrGunny94]

What is the battery life like on the M1X PRO vs M1X MAX? Do core counts also compromise/tradeoff on battery life?

I am on a 16in MBP, not really liking the weight and the obscene power wattage requirements of the new 16 inch requiring >96W power bricks... there seems to be a lot of 'maximizing battery life' rhetoric, but how good is it really?

We also getting 96W Power Brick on the M1 Pro when you upgrade to 10 core CPU....

 

[JPack]

The 16-inch model comes with a 140W power adapter. The presentation slides indicate a 30W CPU with 55W GPU. I don’t think the Pro and Max will differ too much in energy use.

 

[UltimateSyn]

The 16-inch model comes with a 140W power adapter. The presentation slides indicate a 30W CPU with 55W GPU. I don’t think the Pro and Max will differ too much in energy use.

Sure do hope you’re right. If there’s no negative trade-off to battery life then I’ll be happy about my M1 Max 32-core GPU / 32GB / 2TB config.

 

[shuaic]

I ordered 14-in mbp and I'm a bit worry about battery life...

 

[ADiddy88]

I ordered 14-in mbp and I'm a bit worry about battery life...
View attachment 1870035

I noticed that as well. That's quite the decrease in battery life, despite having a bigger battery!

 

[badlydrawnboy]

The new Verge review said the battery life on the 16" Pro is 16 hours, but only 10 hours on the 16" Max. They said the extra GPU cores suck up a lot of battery life even when they aren't being used. I assume the same is true about the 14" Pro vs. Max. I ordered a Max, but will likely return it for the Pro for this reason. I don't really need the extra power if it's going to mean 40% less battery life.

 

[Sanpete]

The new Verge review said the battery life on the 16" Pro is 16 hours, but only 10 hours on the 16" Max. They said the extra GPU cores suck up a lot of battery life even when they aren't being used. I assume the same is true about the 14" Pro vs. Max. I ordered a Max, but will likely return it for the Pro for this reason. I don't really need the extra power if it's going to mean 40% less battery life.

That's not how I heard the review, but I wasn't paying close attention because they were just throwing around a lot of loose talk. What they did say is that the Max draws more energy when not in use, but I don't think they said how much. Certainly not that much, probably not enough to notice. They didn't compare battery usage in any systematic way.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

That's not how I heard the review, but I wasn't paying close attention because they were just throwing around a lot of loose talk. What they did say is that the Max draws more energy when not in use, but I don't think they said how much. Certainly not that much, probably not enough to notice. They didn't compare battery usage in any systematic way.

What I said above came from the written review, not the video. They explicitly said the Max got 10 hours whereas the Pro got 16 hours.

 

[Sanpete]

What I said above came from the written review, not the video. They explicitly said the Max got 10 hours whereas the Pro got 16 hours.

They reported how long they lasted under what they called similar testing, but there was no real effort to actually control the similarity from what I could tell. Not a reliable indicator of what to expect based on the difference in processors. Not smart of them to make it appear they're suggesting such a large difference was due to that without having some very good reason for it. Looks like very little if any of the usage they report for the battery testing would involve using the extra cores, and it's a wild theory to think the extra cores use that much power when not in use.

 

[james948]

Hoping it’s possible to disable cores when not plugged into power. Perhaps someone will make an app.

 

[adamk77]

Here is another data point from another reviewer (video is set to start at the location where he talks about the battery life).

TLDW; during the review he ran the same tests on all three Macbook Pros (M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max) and saw no difference in battery life between the Pro and the Max.

But he was running CPU and GPU intensive tasks. The Max finished quicker so it used more power for less duration, whereas the Pro drew less power for a longer duration. They seemed to cancel out, at least in his test scenario.

I'm interested in seeing what the true idle consumption is and how the extra GPU cores affect the battery life. Nearly 50% less battery life just sitting idle doesn't feel right to me.

 

[julesme]

That's not how I heard the review, but I wasn't paying close attention because they were just throwing around a lot of loose talk. What they did say is that the Max draws more energy when not in use, but I don't think they said how much. Certainly not that much, probably not enough to notice. They didn't compare battery usage in any systematic way.

It’s pretty clear in the text that the Verge believes battery life to be significantly shorter when configured with the Max (only 10 hours vs 16 hours for a MBP configured with the Pro chip). I agree with your point about how The Verge did not conduct a scientific test: they simply used the computers all day long for a variety of tasks. It’s possible that the Max powered laptop was subjected to a more strenuous set of tasks (like more video rendering, etc). They also did not specify the brightness level.

I really wish we could get the Verge to go back and do a more scientific test, because this is an important issue for a lot of users.

 

[thomasec]

Does anyone know of outlets/videos that have tested this so far? This seems like something Apple should have clarified.

 

[julesme]

Does anyone know of outlets/videos that have tested this so far? This seems like something Apple should have clarified.

I'm just realizing that no one really tested this - Gizmodo is one of the only outlets that tested a 14" with M1 Max and 32 cores, and it seems to have experienced worse battery life vs. many other reviewers who tested 14" with the M1 Pro.

The Ultra-Powerful New MacBook Pro Is Top Notch (Sorry, Sorry, Trying to Delete)

The MacBook Pro is finally everything you want a pro machine to be.

gizmodo.com

Nearly all of the mainstream reviewers of the 14" M1 Pro seem to praise its battery life without mentioning the potential disparity between Pro vs Max.

Let's try to get to the bottom of this - a lot of people are deciding between either M1 Pro or M1 Max to go with the 14". In addition, there's also the option of choosing M1 Max but pairing it with a 24-core GPU to hopefully regain some of the battery life.

 

[helix21]

Genuinely thinking of cancelling my 24-core M1 Max 14” order because of this. It’s frustrating this wasn’t picked up by order reviewers. Two datapoints - verge and gizmodo both report significantly shorter battery life.

I wonder even if the 24 core GPU will actually even get better battery life or due to the way they are made (binning) it’ll make no difference?

 

[Fomalhaut]

Genuinely thinking of cancelling my 24-core M1 Max 14” order because of this. It’s frustrating this wasn’t picked up by order reviewers. Two datapoints - verge and gizmodo both report significantly shorter battery life.

I wonder even if the 24 core GPU will actually even get better battery life or due to the way they are made (binning) it’ll make no difference?

I'm considering the 24-core M1 Max. I would hope that the disabled cores consume no power, so that should mitigate some of the power consumption concerns.

This is a critical decision point for me. I haven't seen the large battery life disparities mentioned by the Verge in other review, so I hope it is due to either sloppy testing or an anomaly.

 

[helix21]

I'm considering the 24-core M1 Max. I would hope that the disabled cores consume no power, so that should mitigate some of the power consumption concerns.

This is a critical decision point for me. I haven't seen the large battery life disparities mentioned by the Verge in other review, so I hope it is due to either sloppy testing or an anomaly.

Aye, critical decision point for me too, like I suspect for many others. This is quite frustrating that Apple was not upfront about this, and have a quote to the Verge saying how that's "expected". I am used this in to Windows land - each dell XPS 13 spec would have wildly different battery life, but at least they are upfront about that.

I am worried because Verge usually are pretty spot on and thorough. The Gizmodo one I disregarded as an outlier initially. Let's see what others think here.

I am hoping the the 24-GPU M1 Max is the sweet spot because performance and battery life.

 

[giggles]

The Verge drops a bombshell like that but they base it on an unscientific test by 2 different people doing different stuff.

The WSJ Joanna Stern compares it more scientifically but only for the looping video test, not actual real world usage.

Most people wanna know what’s the battery life difference in light usage but nobody’s done that scientifically yet.

That said, if you want the Max you should already know why you need the Max. And that hit to battery life wouldn’t matter much. Otherwise, really, just go with the Pro. CPU performances are the same. Of course it will be the battery champion. Someone could even be tempted to go with the lower end 8-core M1 Pro on the 14” to get even more battery life. Let’s be real, the M1 was already enough for most people.

 

[ascender]

The new Verge review said the battery life on the 16" Pro is 16 hours, but only 10 hours on the 16" Max. They said the extra GPU cores suck up a lot of battery life even when they aren't being used. I assume the same is true about the 14" Pro vs. Max. I ordered a Max, but will likely return it for the Pro for this reason. I don't really need the extra power if it's going to mean 40% less battery life.

I've been watching a lot of reviews on YouTube and heard someone else saying the same thing - possible Matthew Moniz?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

My 14" Max 32-core arrives on Wednesday or Thursday. I'll put it through my normal paces... Photoshop, Lightroom, Brave.app, Slack, Spark (email), MS Office, Zoom, etc.

To get myself in line, I went ahead and ordered a 10-core 14" Pro. Estimated arrival date is 12/9-12/16. Boo!!

If the Max battery life is as poor as I fear, I'll bite the bullet and return it and wait for the Pro. The performance increase of the Pro over the M1 Air I have now will already be substantial. I'm not willing to go back to 6-7 hours of battery life in exchange for the incremental performance increase of the Max over the Pro, especially for the kinds of work that I do.

 

[miamialley]

My 14" Max 32-core arrives on Wednesday or Thursday. I'll put it through my normal paces... Photoshop, Lightroom, Brave.app, Slack, Spark (email), MS Office, Zoom, etc.

To get myself in line, I went ahead and ordered a 10-core 14" Pro. Estimated arrival date is 12/9-12/16. Boo!!

If the Max battery life is as poor as I fear, I'll bite the bullet and return it and wait for the Pro. The performance increase of the Pro over the M1 Air I have now will already be substantial. I'm not willing to go back to 6-7 hours of battery life in exchange for the incremental performance increase of the Max over the Pro, especially for the kinds of work that I do.

I really just want to see better tests of Pro vs Max. I keep falling back to Apple citing 21 hours for the Max. Why would they cite it if it weren't true? They have a good track record for reporting battery life. I’ve got a Max ordered.

 

[kwokaaron]

I also find it frustrating that no reviewers seem to have tested the power modes with the M1 Pro/Max. Crucially, does leaving it on automatic vs. changing it to low power mode make a difference in battery life?

 

[zarathu]

The basic M1pro has the most battery life. The more cores or even memory your add, the more these are a drag on energy usage, and the more battery life goes down. So says the people who have done the real world tests.

 

[miamialley]

The basic M1pro has the most battery life. The more cores or even memory your add, the more these are a drag on energy usage, and the more battery life goes down. So says the people who have done the real world tests.

Makes sense, but I'd like to see the test results to get an idea of exact performance.