Expected battery life early 2913 rMBP

[mentaluproar]

Just a week or two ago, I got the service battery indicator. Coconutbattery says its between 73-75% design capacity. Keep this in mind.

I was running fusion 360 and working on something between classes. I started with a full charge and ended with about 7% on the battery. Total time up was probably just under 2 hours.

I know my battery is worn, and the dGPU is hungry, and fusion isn’t a lightweight application, but not even 2 hours unplugged? Is that to be expected? I’m considering replacing the battery on this macbook or jumping ship to PC if apple doesn’t do something about their awful keyboards in the fall. But with any computer, is under 2 hours on fusion 360 something I should expect?

 

[jerryk]

80% and below is Apple's trigger to replace the battery. So your battery is definitely past it's prime.

I don't do CAD stuff so have no idea of the load that Fusion 360 puts on the system, but I assume it is high if it is doing a lot of calculations. Are the fans running a lot? Work = Heat = fans indicating power consumption.

 

[robvas]

It's ~5 years old. How many charges on it?

That thing would have went 8 hours doing wifi surfing when it was new. So 4 hours with heavy use sounds about right if the battery was 100% and new.

 

[mentaluproar]

512 charge cycles on this. I can replace the battery myself but I’m still on the fence if weather or not to bother. Apple’s keyboards are so bad I’m looking at ways to switch to PC when the time comes.

It’s easy to overwhelm this machine in fusion 360. The fans kick on sometimes if I’m doing heavy timeline work or rotating large, complex models. The dGPU is always in use when fusion is running.

 

[jerryk]

512 charge cycles on this. I can replace the battery myself but I’m still on the fence if weather or not to bother. Apple’s keyboards are so bad I’m looking at ways to switch to PC when the time comes.

It’s easy to overwhelm this machine in fusion 360. The fans kick on sometimes if I’m doing heavy timeline work or rotating large, complex models. The dGPU is always in use when fusion is running.

If the dGPU is working hard you are going to be consuming a lot of power. The battery is rated at 99 watt-hours. CPU has TDP of 45W so that can almost eat the battery itself in 2 hours. Add the GPU and that is the battery in a capacity in a couple of hours.

 

[mentaluproar]

It’s a shame. That same chip runs fusion much better in Windows. It seems to work harder in MacOS.