For the 14" owners, what's your battery life like so far?

[wilberforce]

Battery life on my 14" base model seems fine. My wife has been using it intermittently during the day, and I in the evening (lightroom, photoshop), and typically have about 20% to 30% left. Better than my 2015 MBP.
When I was stress testing it, it obviously would not last the day, maybe 5 or 6 hours. No complaints, as I am not expecting battery life miracles from a 14" laptop.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I've had about 6.5 hours of "screen on" time according to the battery preferences pane, and I'm still at 51%. Fairly light work, but did do a fair amount of editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. No video calls. Lots of web browsing, email, office type of work. Watched some videos in YouTube.

If the battery life continues like this, I'm 100% satisfied.

 

[Jacoblee23]

I got through three work days of light use of mainly safari music app and etc. Finally have to charge it tonight. Very satisfied.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I know this shouldn't come as a shock, but i think a lot of it depends on what programs you use, and whether or not they're optimized. Microsoft Teams (not optimized for M1) in particular chews up battery for me. I have the 14" M1 Max (24 Core 64GB), and I'm down to 40% after ~3 hours of use doing the following:

Zoom video call - half hour
Teams video calls - hour and a half
heavy spreadsheet + database work

Since I finished the video calls, my battery percentage hasn't moved in about 20 minutes. Hopefully this is helpful to someone, but happy to answer any questions or provide additional data points.

Have you tried low-power mode on your 14" M1 Max with similar application usage? I'm really interested to see whether this provides a good experience when doing "medium intensity" productivity tasks, and gets within the 8-10 hours battery life.

 

[chengengaun]

Adding some of my observations - they are not scientific at all but hope it gives a better sense of what kind of battery life to expect - so far I am very satisfied. My 14” is configured with M1 Max with 32-core GPU and 64GB of RAM.

Moderate/Heavy use: After unboxing the Mac, I immediately started configuring it, installing apps and transferring files. I have lots of small files in OneDrive so that takes a toll on OneDrive and Spotlight. I also set low_pri_throttle_enabled to 0 in the hopes of speeding up indexing and other tasks. Screen brightness was between 7 and 8 clicks. The CPU usage varied between 30% and 100%. The battery went from 80% to 20% in 3 hours (60% drain).

Light use: I unplugged the Mac at 12 noon yesterday and did not plug it in again until 3pm today. In between I registered about 9.5 hours of screen time, using mainly Safari (watching YouTube at 4K), Finder (ftp etc.), BBEdit (light editing), and listening to Music and Podcasts. The CPU usage was mostly between 5% to 30%. The battery went from 100% to 30% (70% drain) and indicating about 4 hours remaining just before I plugged it in.

Other observations: Zoom seems to be chewing through battery like on Intel Macs.

 

[nightoftune]

So maybe we can shed more light on the topic when i have mine this week. I have the M1 max with 24 GPU and 32GB RAM. I will also test light use and light use on low power mode. Maybe we see how much the max differs from the pro and how less power 32GB takes.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Other observations: Zoom seems to be chewing through battery like on Intel Macs.

I can't recall if I mentioned this here or in another thread, but I've noticed the same thing. It has a bigger impact on my 14" Pro battery life than anything else. I'm going to try in Low Power Mode next week and see if that makes a difference.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

On low power mode this morning, about 70 minutes of "screen on time", still at 95%. Not that big of a difference from normal power mode, but noticeable I think.

 

[slplss]

As long as it lasts longer than my current 2016 13" (15 minutes, tops), I'll be happy

Impressive, my MBP 2010 doesn’t last more than 5.

 

[ururk]

Impressive, my MBP 2010 doesn’t last more than 5.

Sometimes it'll even do 20 (now I'm just bragging).

I got my new work 14", it's amazing how freeing it is - I have so many behaviors I have to unlearn surrounding charging, etc... at least for the next few years. And, bonus, when it comes time to replace, it's actually (easily) removable. What will those crazy engineers at Apple think of next?

 

[slplss]

Sometimes it'll even do 20 (now I'm just bragging).

I got my new work 14", it's amazing how freeing it is - I have so many behaviors I have to unlearn surrounding charging, etc... at least for the next few years. And, bonus, when it comes time to replace, it's actually (easily) removable. What will those crazy engineers at Apple think of next?

I haven't really used now for years (for obvious reasons) but 14" base model with 1TB is arriving in early Dec., really curious how will Paralells handle ARM Windows (and how will ARM Windows handle Intel apps). Enjoy yours!

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I've been on battery (screen on time) in "low power mode" for 6.5 hours, and am at 50%. I should get 13 hours. 100% satisfied, definitely keeping this. Definitely my favorite laptop ever.

 

[Eddie8]

I've been on battery (screen on time) in "low power mode" for 6.5 hours, and am at 50%. I should get 13 hours. 100% satisfied, definitely keeping this. Definitely my favorite laptop ever.

What cpu/gpu are you running?

 

[Fomalhaut]

I've been on battery (screen on time) in "low power mode" for 6.5 hours, and am at 50%. I should get 13 hours. 100% satisfied, definitely keeping this. Definitely my favorite laptop ever.

What is your machine spec? Pro 10-core with 16GB RAM?

 

[TSE]

I am running a 14", 32-Core M1 Max, 64 GBs of RAM and can absolutely undoubtedly confirm that running it in low power mode dramatically increases the battery life.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I am running a 14", 32-Core M1 Max, 64 GBs of RAM and can absolutely undoubtedly confirm that running it in low power mode dramatically increases the battery life.

What is your estimate of extra hours or by percentage improvement? From other posts, it look like 2-4 hours on an M1 Pro, so maybe 1.5 - 3 hours on an M1 Max?

 

[Saturn1217]

I am running a 14", 32-Core M1 Max, 64 GBs of RAM and can absolutely undoubtedly confirm that running it in low power mode dramatically increases the battery life.

What's performance like in low power mode? Besides the drop to 60hz refresh rate is the decreased performance noticeable for general office/web browsing tasks?

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

14" M1 Pro/16 core GPU yesterday had me going for 8 hours, 5 of which were on a Zoom call. (yes, a very painful 5 hours) I don't even think the fans kicked in. Low power mode was enabled, but I didn't feel it at all.

I was so impressed. my 2019 16" MBP couldn't do Zoom to save its life while on battery. It would drain wildly fast.

Today, lots of web browsing + word documents + emailing + music + 2 hours of streaming video to 1080p projector connected by HDMI... right now at 58% battery. Time on battery in Activity Monitor says 7:13 hours. with 6:55 to go til it dies. AMAZING! Yes, low power mode enabled. But... still amazing especially considering the external display for 2 hours. My old 16" intel MBP would chug battery when the dedicated GPU kicked in. I am so glad I sold that thing.

 

[TSE]

What is your estimate of extra hours or by percentage improvement? From other posts, it look like 2-4 hours on an M1 Pro, so maybe 1.5 - 3 hours on an M1 Max?

I'm not sure, but today I used my computer to watch 4K Youtube, browse the web, check emails on low power mode for about 2.5 - 3 hours total sporadically throughout the day and it's at 74%.

What's performance like in low power mode? Besides the drop to 60hz refresh rate is the decreased performance noticeable for general office/web browsing tasks?

It's excellent and haven't noticed a difference today. I noticed the past few days that when I run my intense design programs performance suffers under Low Power Mode. But for Youtube, browsing the web, I'm sure things like MS Office and using anything that doesn't max out the computer it will be just great.

 

[HardBall]

I am an AI/ML researcher (I primarily do research in Reinforcement Learning settings, and some deep neuralnets), so my workloads are going to be pretty atypical. A good portion of the time (say around 40%) my laptop is loaded with ML training sessions, so that tends to be pretty hard on batteries.

I have only had it for 10 days or so, but currently I'm getting somewhere between 5 - 11 hours, depending on the day, mostly due to how much tensorflow/pytorch/scikit-learn training procedures I'm running on that day. This is an M1 Max with 64GB memory.

 

[nightoftune]

Ok now i am convinced that low power saves the M1 max in the 14 inch. You have the power when you need it but if not it still lasts a workday. Now only for science i will try low power and see how much it saves in percent.

 

[vinay427]

I am an AI/ML researcher (I primarily do research in Reinforcement Learning settings, and some deep neuralnets), so my workloads are going to be pretty atypical. A good portion of the time (say around 40%) my laptop is loaded with ML training sessions, so that tends to be pretty hard on batteries.

I have only had it for 10 days or so, but currently I'm getting somewhere between 5 - 11 hours, depending on the day, mostly due to how much tensorflow/pytorch/scikit-learn training procedures I'm running on that day. This is an M1 Max with 64GB memory.

I gather from your signature that this is the 14", so that's quite impressive. What is the current state of M1 optimization for TensorFlow/PyTorch/etc.? From what I can tell the Metal/GPU optimization still sounds like a work in progress for most programs except the few creative-oriented ones showcased by Apple, and I suppose this would be particularly beneficial for the M1 Pro/Max as opposed to the original M1.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

What is your machine spec? Pro 10-core with 16GB RAM?

14" Pro 10-core with 16 GB of RAM, yes. I would have ended up getting ~14 hours on low power mode yesterday. I said "would have" because that's an estimate—I used the computer intermittently from about 5:30 am to 7:30 pm and still had about 30% of battery when I shut things down for the night.

I suspect that low power mode added about 2 hours to battery life, with no discernible drop in performance in Lightroom, Photoshop, and other apps that I use regularly. I don't do much video editing so I haven't tested exporting video or anything like that.

I'll probably keep low power mode on permanently. If I need to do something intensive and I notice any difference, I can always plug in. And I also have an iMac for that. The MBP is my portable device so I want to maximize battery life.

 

[TinyMito]

14" Pro 10-core with 16 GB of RAM, yes. I would have ended up getting ~14 hours on low power mode yesterday. I said "would have" because that's an estimate—I used the computer intermittently from about 5:30 am to 7:30 pm and still had about 30% of battery when I shut things down for the night.

I suspect that low power mode added about 2 hours to battery life, with no discernible drop in performance in Lightroom, Photoshop, and other apps that I use regularly. I don't do much video editing so I haven't tested exporting video or anything like that.

I'll probably keep low power mode on permanently. If I need to do something intensive and I notice any difference, I can always plug in. And I also have an iMac for that. The MBP is my portable device so I want to maximize battery life.

I can see there is an opportunity for someone to develop a new app for the M1 Pro/Max chip with the switch on and off Low Power base on plugged in or not. It's like Intel all over again!

 

[vseera]

I can see there is an opportunity for someone to develop a new app for the M1 Pro/Max chip with the switch on and off Low Power base on plugged in or not. It's like Intel all over again!

I'd buy that app!