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Ma2k5

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Dec 21, 2012
2,573
2,552
London
This is probably the area which is most of concern to me.

Here is the capacity breakdown:

Old rMBP 13: 74.9 whr
Old Mb Air 13: 54.0 whr
New rMBP 13 (15w CPU, air replacement): 54.5 whr (same)
New rMBP 13 (28w CPU, touchbar): 49.2 whr (34% reduction)

Old rMBP 15: 99.5 whr
New rMBP 15: 76.0 whr (23.6% reduction)

Now, I am expecting some improvements via efficiency from the new CPU, but looking at competitors, the improvements are not dramatically more, we are not talking hour differences.

  • Although the Air replacement rMBP 13 has the same capacity, it will have a much shorter lifespan due to screen resolution. I think they should have looked at increasing the battery capacity to keep going one of the main attractions of the Air
  • A 34% reduction on the 13" touchbar model is very unexpected. Considering it has to also power a touch bar, this could be a huge talking point on release when benchmarks are compared
  • The new 15" suffer a 23.6% reduction but also again, has to power a touchbar. In addition, there is no longer an iGPU version of the 15".
Do you think Apple made the correct decision with their battery changes?

Also I cannot see how they created their listed battery run-times on the site, as they are so inconsistent. Somehow, the 13" non-touchbar, lower powered CPU, with a higher battery capacity, has the same "Up to 10 hours" moniker as the 13" with touchbar, higher powered CPU and lower battery capacity. Something smells fishy.

The 13" with touchbar is the most concerning to me. The competition (XPS/Spectre etc) which host a 15w CPU usually have mid/high 50's whr, so with a 28w and a better than 1080p screen, I was hoping they would keep their 74 whr or even increase it. The 12" MacBook has 41.4 whr which isn't far off and that is only powering a Core-M and a smaller screen.
 
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