Battery on Full Charge

[theBigD23]

When charging my MacBook to a full charge, I start out at 4 hours 30 minutes and then it slowly creeps up to about 5 hours and 30/45 minutes. It doesn't really go higher than that. With a 9 hour battery life on the site, I expected more.

What do others see?

 

[Queen6]

A lot more, totally depends on what applications you have running, including those the in background. Core M`s architecture is all about efficiency. You can use Activity Monitor to see how applications impact power consumption, reduce transparency & turn off needless animation.

If enabled, I would consider turning off FileVault 2 as it doesn't really bring any benefit to the new MacBook. The SSD is now a component on the main Logic Board so removal of the physical drive is near impossible. Applying the firmware password alone will keep any unwanted guests out of your data. This will help to reduce the overhead on the hardware by a small percentage. FWIW my Retina MacBook is the only Mac currently running that is not encrypted with FV-2.


Q-6

 

[Joonza]

I've had mine for around two weeks, and I'm still only getting between 4.5 and 5 hours on a full charge, a far cry from the advertised nine hours. This is when running nothing but one Safari window with one or two tabs. Not impressed!

 

[Queen6]

Try this;

1. uBlock Safari extension
2. System Preferences - Accessibility - reduce transparency
3. System Preferences - Dock - deselect "Animate Opening Applications"
4. System Preferences - Dock - Minimise Windows using "Scale Efect"
5. System Preferences - Dock - deselect "Magnification"
   
6. Chrome users, switch to Chrome Canary as is far more optimised for OS X
7. VLC users, switch to Movist as is less resource intensive
8. Close applications, when not in use, you can deselect "Close windows when quitting an app" in System Preferences - General to bring them back to the same state when opened
9. Those that require AV, use ClamXav and set up sentry & scanning intelligently
10. Skip Flash period

May buy you a little more run time, I see a good 7 hours out of my 1.2. Check Activity Monitor to see whats burning the power, reduce background tasks if you can. At a dead idle with only Mail open my 1.2 reports 16+ hours; wiFi, Bluetooth, AV & VPN, display @ 50% realistically I expect and am seeing 6-8 hours dependent on usage.

Typically when am home much is turned on, however in the field I am often looking to extend the runtime to the maximum rMB or rMBP

I like my MacBook, it fits my usage very well as a secondary backup system in the field. Core M is still in it`s infancy and OS X is not truly optimised, hopefully 10.11 will rectify this to some extents. For many I feel Core M & OS X is not the best solution...

Q-6

 

[Newtons Apple]

When charging my MacBook to a full charge, I start out at 4 hours 30 minutes and then it slowly creeps up to about 5 hours and 30/45 minutes. It doesn't really go higher than that. With a 9 hour battery life on the site, I expected more.

What do others see?

The battery remaining display is dynamic. It will change with each change you make in use. Turn something off and the display will recalculate the amount remaining pretty quickly. If you only show like 5 hours left on a fully charged battery then something is going on in the background.

 

[jaaf]

I've had mine for a couple of days.

Currently at 93%.

Wifi, bluetooth on, screen 50%, safari with 2 tabs, Slack, Messages and Mail open. 1password, one drive and clean my mac running in the background.

Currently showing 14 hours 13 minutes. Though I can't see that lasting. I'm not actively using it, it's just sitting on the desk next to me.

 

[Joonza]

Thanks for your suggestions Queen6, I'll try those out later. I have the base model if that makes a difference.