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Is keyboard backlighting on? Is Siri still alive? If so kill her....Is Autobright still on? Turn those off and it will help as well.

Keyboard lighting always off, really not a fan of it tbh aha.

Siri has been disabled since I booted it up.

One thing I guess drains mine is I like high brightness, usually have it around 80% +
 
I went into an Apple store (Seattle) and I told a salesperson I liked the 13" form factor but was worried about short battery life on the TB models.

The reply was they didn't know what I was talking about... So does anyone on this thread have actual feedback from Apple?

The sales people probably have to pretend the stated numbers are accurate. I can't imagine they'd be permitted to do otherwise. I doubt they have much firsthand experience other than their personal machines since the display models are attached to power all the time.
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I'm getting about the same (5.5-6) consistently on my tb13 with 16gb / 512 doing wireless browsing, email with Spotify playing. No other apps open. Brightness around 60%.

Pretty disappointing...

I said to myself the life would probably be shorter with the meatier components, but it's pretty bad, especially considering that it costs more to get to hungrier bits. I guess the screen really is a big savings and now the relative difference made by the power draw of processor and RAM is that significant. I'm worried it's particularly the ram.
 
Keyboard lighting always off, really not a fan of it tbh aha.

Siri has been disabled since I booted it up.

One thing I guess drains mine is I like high brightness, usually have it around 80% +


Yeah I find that if I put that up past say 60% it drains the battery quicker. In most cases I don't want the screen past 50-60% or it starts to hurt my eyes. If I need more brightness I just push it up a smidge myself, instead of auto bright doing it for me.

at the end of the day this machine is fine for 8-9 possibly 10 hours of light use internet and watching videos, but as soon as you start to use it like you would a machine stationed at a desk the battery drains. Make sense to me for the way I use it since if I were working on something Id most likely want to be at a desk rather than in my recliner with a glass of wine.
 
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I think I'm experiencing about the same life with a maxed-out 13" 4-port. There's basically no way this model has 10 hours with the higher-end configs. I wonder if RAM is the culprit. Do the higher-clocked processors consume more energy?

The processor should scale down to lower clock speeds under light load from what I understand. My computer died again at around 6.5 hours last night. I tried recalibrating my battery per some recommendations and we'll how it does these next couple of days. Hopefully it will be better. I just unplugged and I barely have anything open and I'm getting 8.5 battery estimate.
 

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Based on my current use and what others are reporting, it looks like we should expect somewhere between 6-8 hrs, but this is with moderate and more realistic use case scenarios. I don't think its possible to get 10 hours or more under realistic circumstances. I've tried everything smc reset, recalibrated battery etc...

I work primary with about 70% brightness, one bar of keyboard brightness, bluetooth off and adblockers on browsers.
I have a browser open with multiple tabs regularly and a handful of apps open and according to the battery usage the largest battery drain is coming from safari consistently. I have a feeling if I weren't babysitting my computer's battery usages and worked under a much heavier load I wouldn't get more than 3 hours or so.
 
I think the 16GB memory—even being low-power (LPDDR)—is one issue. I notice that the battery drains at an alarming rate just when my machine is sitting asleep on the table. Apple cited the drain of non-LPDDR RAM as a reason to go with the 16GB limit across the line. Perhaps this is what we're seeing.

I think we really should applaud apple for giving the option of very high-end configs on the 4-port 13" model. For users that truly know they need the high-spec, they can have it along with the reduced battery life. The alternative would have been to disallow 16GB entirely on the 13" line and limit some users.

I may have even overstepped my own needs with the maxed-out version. For all the people complaining that these aren't pro computers, here's an opportunity to have one.
 
I think the 16GB memory—even being low-power (LPDDR)—is one issue. I notice that the battery drains at an alarming rate just when my machine is sitting asleep on the table. Apple cited the drain of non-LPDDR RAM as a reason to go with the 16GB limit across the line. Perhaps this is what we're seeing.

I think we really should applaud apple for giving the option of very high-end configs on the 4-port 13" model. For users that truly know they need the high-spec, they can have it along with the reduced battery life. The alternative would have been to disallow 16GB entirely on the 13" line and limit some users.

I may have even overstepped my own needs with the maxed-out version. For all the people complaining that these aren't pro computers, here's an opportunity to have one.
This is a shame because the marketing ends up being a bit misleading: up to 10 hours, up to twice as fast, up to 130% faster graphics, and so on. But you can't have them all at once! They'll take the battery life of the low end model and the performance of the high end model.
 
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No longer true with Chrome 53 which dramatically improved battery efficiency. I find the current Chrome and Safari to be about the same on battery life (although I still use Safari on my MacBook Pro more due to its cool touchbar features).

Sorry, but it's actually Chrome 55 that will improve inefficiency. It's released Dec. 6:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/13/google-chrome-55/
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I'm getting about the same (5.5-6) consistently on my tb13 with 16gb / 512 doing wireless browsing, email with Spotify playing. No other apps open. Brightness around 60%.

Pretty disappointing...

I'm at about the same myself...
 
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I think the 16GB memory—even being low-power (LPDDR)—is one issue. I notice that the battery drains at an alarming rate just when my machine is sitting asleep on the table. Apple cited the drain of non-LPDDR RAM as a reason to go with the 16GB limit across the line. Perhaps this is what we're seeing.

I think we really should applaud apple for giving the option of very high-end configs on the 4-port 13" model. For users that truly know they need the high-spec, they can have it along with the reduced battery life. The alternative would have been to disallow 16GB entirely on the 13" line and limit some users.

I may have even overstepped my own needs with the maxed-out version. For all the people complaining that these aren't pro computers, here's an opportunity to have one.


Do we know how many modules there are in the 16 compared to the 8? I am on an 8GB 13 now, and moving to a 16GB model. I will be able to comment on the difference in battery life once I get the 16GB model since every other spec I kept the same. But doesn't it battery usage get used more the more modules you have? Like how many watts per stick if you will..Is there a way we can measure memory usage in this currently? Lemme look in AM and see.
 
Sorry, but it's actually Chrome 55 that will improve inefficiency. It's released Dec. 6:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2016/10/13/google-chrome-55/
I will attest that the RELATIVE difference between Safari and Chrome with adblockers is the same if not better on Chrome. I don't know the exact differences between 53 and 55, but either there is some improvement, or it wasn't that bad before, or Safari ain't that great. I've seen Safari do wild swings with power, so it could be the latter.
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Do we know how many modules there are in the 16 compared to the 8? I am on an 8GB 13 now, and moving to a 16GB model. I will be able to comment on the difference in battery life once I get the 16GB model since every other spec I kept the same. But doesn't it battery usage get used more the more modules you have? Like how many watts per stick if you will..Is there a way we can measure memory usage in this currently? Lemme look in AM and see.
I'm guessing it's not THAT big of a difference between 8 and 16. I have a 16 and I've gotten better battery life than those with 8. I think the other factors play more into this, and it'll be very hard to see a difference and replicate test conditions exactly the same. Just my guess.
[doublepost=1480449021][/doublepost]On another note, I did request that the mods merge and sticky these battery threads. No response 24 hours later. Maybe 700+ responses on the other thread doesn't meet the threshold (but Touchbar discussion does)?
 
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Do we know how many modules there are in the 16 compared to the 8? I am on an 8GB 13 now, and moving to a 16GB model. I will be able to comment on the difference in battery life once I get the 16GB model since every other spec I kept the same. But doesn't it battery usage get used more the more modules you have? Like how many watts per stick if you will..Is there a way we can measure memory usage in this currently? Lemme look in AM and see.

Thanks @skids929, this would be interesting to hear. Are you keeping all the other specs the same? Please keep us updated :)
 
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Yes everything will be the same, SSD at 512 and the CPU at 2.9. I wrestled around with getting a higher CPU even the i7. Given the battery issues and the fact I don't need it I stayed with the 2.9. I am actually very happy with the battery life I am getting on this 8GB 13 I am on now. Hoping the 16gb I get will perform the same, I am thinking it will.
 
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I will attest that the RELATIVE difference between Safari and Chrome with adblockers is the same if not better on Chrome. I don't know the exact differences between 53 and 55, but either there is some improvement, or it wasn't that bad before, or Safari ain't that great. I've seen Safari do wild swings with power, so it could be the latter.
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I'm guessing it's not THAT big of a difference between 8 and 16. I have a 16 and I've gotten better battery life than those with 8. I think the other factors play more into this, and it'll be very hard to see a difference and replicate test conditions exactly the same. Just my guess.
[doublepost=1480449021][/doublepost]On another note, I did request that the mods merge and sticky these battery threads. No response 24 hours later. Maybe 700+ responses on the other thread doesn't meet the threshold (but Touchbar discussion does)?

I agree why not merged and sticky?
 
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This is a shame because the marketing ends up being a bit misleading: up to 10 hours, up to twice as fast, up to 130% faster graphics, and so on. But you can't have them all at once! They'll take the battery life of the low end model and the performance of the high end model.
yeah you're certainly right about that. sucks that they "trick" us like that, for lack of a better word
 
I think the 16GB memory—even being low-power (LPDDR)—is one issue. I notice that the battery drains at an alarming rate just when my machine is sitting asleep on the table. Apple cited the drain of non-LPDDR RAM as a reason to go with the 16GB limit across the line. Perhaps this is what we're seeing.

I think we really should applaud apple for giving the option of very high-end configs on the 4-port 13" model. For users that truly know they need the high-spec, they can have it along with the reduced battery life. The alternative would have been to disallow 16GB entirely on the 13" line and limit some users.

I may have even overstepped my own needs with the maxed-out version. For all the people complaining that these aren't pro computers, here's an opportunity to have one.

Weren't there tests done to go against this very claim? Regardless of whether it's 8GB or 16GB, 1 16GB stick or 2 8GB's, the delta in battery life is not that significant.
 
So I've had mine now for a few days, heard of the tales of poor battery. Today was the first day I had to seriously use it the whole day out, with no battery. Got just under 6 hours on it using only Chrome, Word and iTunes. Kinda sucks because on the non touchbar model, I was getting easily 8 hours + if not more.

I haven't tried the SMC reset because tbh I don't really know anything about it all. I also don't want to reinstall OSX as that would mean reinstalling everything.

Any other reasonable suggestions chaps?

Just as a FYI.... Using a Late 2016 stock 13-inch rMBP without Touch Bar

I ran a heavy workload which drained the battery down from 100% to 1% after some 2.5 hours of use. If anyone intends to heavily use the 13-inch non-Touch Bar model during a normal 8-hr workday then they will need to charge once or twice during the daytime for sure.

My workload was

1) Continuous read/writing to the internal SSD. During the 2.5 hrs I read 3.5 TB and wrote 3.5 TB of data. I used AJA to do this.
2) I ran several Terminal commands in background in continuous loops performing 'finds' and 'ls' commands. There was a 2 sec sleep between each loop.
3) I ran four GeekBench 4 runs.
4) I ran a single pass of memtest.
5) I had Activity Monitor running all the time.
6) I periodically used Safari, Messages, Calendar, Calculator, Maps and had Time Machine on auto mode running.

Although the 2.5 hrs on battery was a bit disappointing, I have to say I was very happy with the fan not kicking into high gear. It only reached a max of around 4200 rpm (the max for this MBP is 7200) at times and to my ears the MBP was very quiet throughout the 2.5 hours.

Screen Shot 2016-12-03 at 3.03.29 PM.png
 
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