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Catastrophic battery life on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro

A

alexe

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 5, 2014
245
1,611
I'm observing terrible battery life on my new 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max. When I watch Netflix with just a couple of chat apps running in the background, I was down from 100% to 50% battery in a mere 2 hours. That makes for a total battery life of 4 hours for video streaming. It's almost the same when I'm browsing on the web.

The bottom of my MacBook is also quite warm even when the laptop has just been idle for hours.

When I check which apps consume significant energy, often there aren't any, it just says "No Apps Using Significant Energy". Nonetheless, the battery drains like crazy.

This could be a software issue or there's something wrong with my battery.

Has anybody else been experiencing similar issues?
 
Noticed the same when watching a few hdr videos on youtube. I think hdr is pulling to much power.
 
Maybe the battery needs some full cycles till its “stabilized”. I would suggest as the battery is new, dont drain it below 20%… for few first days of usage and few first charges.. and maybe try the low power mode…i dont expect you need full power while watching the movies…
 
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I have 14” and Have been playing with the laptop for the last few days. Just normal use and initial setup. Installed some apps, did a few benchmarks, some YT videos… and the battery is draining pretty fast.
Also have some issues with running some Windows based apps - very slow response compared to Windows.

I also purchased new Lenovo X1 Gen 9 (high specs) and trying to compare. Same initial usage - and the battery is pretty comparable.

I wanted to keep the Mac, but besides the iOS integration it’s not any better.
 
Strange. I've played movies on my 16in MAX 32GB and didn't see drainage anything close to that. I run a pretty lean computer though.
 
alexe said:
I'm observing terrible battery life on my new 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Max. When I watch Netflix with just a couple of chat apps running in the background, I was down from 100% to 50% battery in a mere 2 hours. That makes for a total battery life of 4 hours for video streaming. It's almost the same when I'm browsing on the web.

The bottom of my MacBook is also quite warm even when the laptop has just been idle for hours.

When I check which apps consume significant energy, often there aren't any, it just says "No Apps Using Significant Energy". Nonetheless, the battery drains like crazy.

This could be a software issue or there's something wrong with my battery.

Has anybody else been experiencing similar issues?
Click to expand...
What brightness setting? Was it HDR/Dolby Vision shows on Netflix? Were you using the speakers on the MBP?
 
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If a HDR movie pushes display to peak HDR brightness and you're multi tasking at the same time there is no miracle battery right now that will give you half a day of battery life. According to your guesstimate you have 4 hours of battery if you watched those same titles continuously.

For comparison, after I finish work and unplug the laptop I surf the news sites while watching YouTube and checking email and after 5 hours of this mixed multitasking use I'm doing to about 30-40% with screen brightness setting full. That's amazing for such a large and powerful machine.
 
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No. On the first day, after 8 hours or so of usage (processing audio, movie watching, surfing), I was down to 52%. I stopped paying attention to it at that point. I can't imagine how you're running yours down that quickly.
 
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fa8362 said:
No. On the first day, after 8 hours or so of usage (processing audio, movie watching, surfing), I was down to 52%. I stopped paying attention to it at that point. I can't imagine how you're running yours down that quickly.
Click to expand...
That's on the MBP M1 Max 16'?
 
jkim7 said:
What brightness setting? Was it HDR/Dolby Vision shows on Netflix? Were you using the speakers on the MBP?
Click to expand...

Maximum brightness, standard HD (no HDR), and yes, using the MacBook's speakers.

On my M1 MacBook Air I get way more battery life on doing the same things. I could easily watch 8 hours of Netflix on it. The 16-inch MPB needs more power, but also has a considerably larger battery, and Apple advertises it as beating the M1 MacBook Air on most of their standard metrics (hours of web browsing, hours of streaming, etc.). So I feel something can't be right.
 
Yeah I'm not getting that type of degradation.

I have the 16 Pro Max with 64gb/32 cores.

I'm getting about 8 hours having a few terminal windows open running scripts, vscode and xcode simulators etc.

Might be the HDR brightness on the mini led display but 2 hours at 50%? somthing isn't right.
 
Install iStat menus and track your actual processor load.

Just launch Netflix and put on a movie, after several minutes on Safari, it seems to draw about 13-14% load. Trying the same on Chrome is goes up to more like 24%, so consider that difference.

That said, my projected time of use never drops below 10 hours on Chrome on my 14" base. I suspect there must be something else on your machine hogging the processor.
 
alexe said:
Maximum brightness, standard HD (no HDR), and yes, using the MacBook's speakers.

On my M1 MacBook Air I get way more battery life on doing the same things. I could easily watch 8 hours of Netflix on it. The 16-inch MPB needs more power, but also has a considerably larger battery, and Apple advertises it as beating the M1 MacBook Air on most of their standard metrics (hours of web browsing, hours of streaming, etc.). So I feel something can't be right.
Click to expand...
Actually Apple advertises 1hr less for web browsing on the 16" vs MBA but does give the 16" 3hrs more than the MBA utilizing Apple's TV App.

Perfect example of your results may vary especially when introducing different display and processor tech.
 
The Verge review mentioned the battery consumption of the M1 Max. But this much battery consumption over a relatively short time is still weird.
 
  1. Max Chip eats more energy than the Pro one, even at Idle
  2. Your MBP is still new, increased background processes
  3. When running at 100% brightness, this costs extra
Wait 2-3 more days, reduce brightness a bit and try again. If it's still bad (and hot like you described) you can consider a return. A friend of mine (16" with Pro) just told me he is on one battery charge for 1.5 days already and still has some juice left. I believe him, as it matches most reviews so far.
 
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