Dim the display on battery power?

[Bri in Mtl]

Curious as to how many folks use the "Slightly dim the display while on battery power" feature.
Also, how much energy does one save enabling the feature?

 

[hamiltonDSi]

I did that when Macbook Pro's had a removable battery and power management was not that great.
Now, with Haswell and huge non-removabla batteries I get great battery life.

 

[GGJstudios]

Curious as to how many folks use the "Slightly dim the display while on battery power" feature.
Also, how much energy does one save enabling the feature?

Screen brightness is a major factor in battery life. Dimming the screen can add hours to the life on a battery charge. There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

​

The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it.

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[5to1]

You should really get into the habit of altering display brightness to be slightly above ambient light conditions. It will not only give you longer run time on battery, but in the long term it will also be better for your eyes.

 

[happyfrappy]

You don't save much battery juice on screen dimming unless you're a student where you've decided to use OneNote/MSWord Notepad+recorder, during the PowerPC days on a 12" PowerBook G4 in ~3.5 hr lectures I could record+light type/sketch diagrams and still push 4 hours out of the battery.

With LED backlighting in modern notebooks, if you roll the backlight down to ~2-3 dots its easier to get 95% close to Apple's "rated battery life". Lower the brightness to a single dot, no keyboard backlight, wifi+bluetooth off and dimming you'll squeeze the most out of your battery. With cMBPs HDD sleep is bad for students if you're typing/sketching/auto-save every 5-minutes/recording a lecture.

...on my old 13" 2010 MBP I averaged 5-6 hours but a 2012 15" MBP 7.5 hours is my average. Keep in mind more RAM can be helpful as you don't hit virtual memory(HDD) which allows pushing the battery limits. If I didn't upgrade from 4GB of RAM, battery life would take a hit.

 

[Barney63]

You don't save much battery juice on screen dimming unless you're a student where you've decided to use OneNote/MSWord Notepad+recorder, during the PowerPC days on a 12" PowerBook G4 in ~3.5 hr lectures I could record+light type/sketch diagrams and still push 4 hours out of the battery.

With LED backlighting in modern notebooks, if you roll the backlight down to ~2-3 dots its easier to get 95% close to Apple's "rated battery life". Lower the brightness to a single dot, no keyboard backlight, wifi+bluetooth off and dimming you'll squeeze the most out of your battery. With cMBPs HDD sleep is bad for students if you're typing/sketching/auto-save every 5-minutes/recording a lecture.

...on my old 13" 2010 MBP I averaged 5-6 hours but a 2012 15" MBP 7.5 hours is my average. Keep in mind more RAM can be helpful as you don't hit virtual memory(HDD) which allows pushing the battery limits. If I didn't upgrade from 4GB of RAM, battery life would take a hit.

I get 9 hours out of my 15" on 75% brightness and about 10 1/2 on 50%.


Barney

 

[happyfrappy]

I get 9 hours out of my 15" on 75% brightness and about 10 1/2 on 50%.

What applications are you running to squeeze 9 hours?

Running Logic X or Ableton 9 w/Amplitube puts a serious battery life dent into any MacBook Pro I've used, however 7.5 hrs is much better than an i5 Thinkpad T420 a friend uses Ableton on--5 hours w/6-cell battery

 

[2984839]

I found that the difference between 100% and 10% was about 5 watts on the 2.7 GHz Sandy Bridge i7. Good for about 36 minutes more battery life on a 37 Wh charge on OpenBSD.

 

[827538]

Curious as to how many folks use the "Slightly dim the display while on battery power" feature.
Also, how much energy does one save enabling the feature?

Personally I just dim it according to how bright or dark the ambient light is. A display like that should be enjoyed, the battery life is already pretty massive. Unless I know I'll be away from a plug for some time I don't really think about the battery life - flash will kill it faster than any backlight.
All I know is it uses a strip of 48 white LED's along the bottom of the display and then a diffuser to channel the light through the millions of pixels. iFixit has a tear down of the display.

 

[Qaanol]

I use it specifically so that I notice immediately if the power cable gets disconnected.

 

[maflynn]

I do it, as the display is probably the biggest battery drain, plus as the other poster mentioned - I know when it gets unplugged.

 

[Barney63]

What applications are you running to squeeze 9 hours?

When I'm on battery I tend to just be using Office, iTunes, Mail and Safari (no Flash, I use ClickToFlash).


Barney