Getting 4 hours battery on 2010 15 MBP 2.66 i7, normal?

[Luba]

I have my screen on full brightness, graphics on auto switching, 40% time DVD use and 60% web surfing. I could only use the 2010 15" 2.66 i7 MBP for 4 straight hours which is way below Apple's advertised time of 8-9 hours.

Are you all experiencing about the same battery time as me?

People I know with a 2010 13" MBP doing about the same activities as me are experiencing much longer battery time, around 7 hours.

Just want to know if I have a "bad" battery and whether I should bring it in to Apple to have them look at it. Anybody know what they would do? Guessing they would run some battery software test, and then tell me my battery is not defective.

 

[spinnerlys]

Have a look at Activity Monitor ( Applications / Utilities / *) and select All Processes*and sort by CPU to see what the culprit may be.

image below uses sorting by CPU as an example

 

[hleewell]

Isn't the core iX series supposed to be more power efficient than the Core 2 Duo? Anyway, this may go on to show that the older chip is more power efficient than the super-shiny "branded" core i5/7 chips. The new MBA which uses 1.86Ghz C2D can last as long as 11 hrs in normal web-browsing !!! Without flash of course. This is above & beyond the advertised max of 7 hrs of browsing.

 

[applepearpp]

the 8-9 hours battery life is under ideal condition such as no wifi, low brightness, no DVD in the super drive, etc. it's actually not bad you get 4 hours from doing what you describe. i don't think any machine on the market can beat that except, well, desktop.

 

[johndellis]

I have owned a i5 MBP and currently have a i7 High res(glossy) model.

On the i7, with bluetooth OFF, screen on 1, keyboard light off, and browsing non-flash webpage to page about every 30 seconds or so, the power meter will say it has between 7-9 hours. This is not real world usage though.

With brightness up to half, KB light on and doing real browsing, typing, etc... I get only 4-5 hours period. I think your times are about normal for the i7.

The i5 I had would get about 2 hours more.

 

[NOTORIOUS187]

Isn't the core iX series supposed to be more power efficient than the Core 2 Duo? Anyway, this may go on to show that the older chip is more power efficient than the super-shiny "branded" core i5/7 chips. The new MBA which uses 1.86Ghz C2D can last as long as 11 hrs in normal web-browsing !!! Without flash of course. This is above & beyond the advertised max of 7 hrs of browsing.

His battery life probably has very little to do with the processor and more to do with the graphics card. With DVD usage, the GT330m is likely being utilized, which kills the battery life. The old MacBook Pros had manual graphics card switching and so most users kept it on the 9400m which gave them excellent battery life, but the new MacBook Pros have automated switching which puts the GT330m on for "intensive" tasks such as DVD watching (even though the Intel HD chip should be able to handle it).

 

[Intenost]

His battery life probably has very little to do with the processor and more to do with the graphics card. With DVD usage, the GT330m is likely being utilized, which kills the battery life. The old MacBook Pros had manual graphics card switching and so most users kept it on the 9400m which gave them excellent battery life, but the new MacBook Pros have automated switching which puts the GT330m on for "intensive" tasks such as DVD watching (even though the Intel HD chip should be able to handle it).

Yea even having ShoveBox running (?!) switches to the GT330, also VMware and in many cases Google Chrome. Get http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/ and use it to see what apps may be pushing you to the GT330. That will really suck your battery, and if you can avoid it you'll be in a much better place. When I'm trying to save battery I don't use chrome, kill shove box, avoid VMware, and I can get closer to 6 or 7 hours.

 

[applepearpp]

my trick to saving battery is when i use chrome, i turn on and off flash plug-in.

type "chrome://plugins" and you'll be shown a list of plugins. i usually disable flash since most of the sites i browse use flash for the advertisement. when i want to watch youtube video, i just go there and turn it on. simple as that.

 

[dusk007]

I am wondering too. Maybe I have time during christmas to set up my MBP i5 again to stock configuration and check if that will do any good.
I get about 4-5h doing all kinds of stuff that shouldn't put much more workload on it than straightforward web browsing.
I always force Intel GPU. I usually decrease brightness 3-5 notches. On full it never gets me more than 4h. Although I do have multiple applications open sometimes, skype has the most background activity. The rest is just displaying source code or pdfs ...
4-5h usually gets me through my day but it really is very far off the advertised specs and they do say they get their advertised numbers with half brightness, wifi on and surfing the web.
I also read tests which show about 11+h idle battery lifetime. Mine reaches 8-9h max at lowest everything doing nothing but displaying a pdf. With wifi and doing any webserving I get 5-6h max and 6-7 only if I read pdfs at minimal necessary brightness. Keybaord backlight is always off, I never use.

 

[BGTHEMOGUL]

I got a 2.66gz 15.4" Core i7 Macbook Pro yesterday. I charged it fully and then unplugged it specifically to test how long the battery would last since this is my first Mac and I also always saw 8 hours advertised. I was actually impressed getting about 6 hours of constant use.

 

[Luba]

I went into System Profiler which said full charge capacity is 7000 mAh and that battery cycle count is 77. Sounds like I have normal (good) battery . . . anybody know what the full charge capacity of a brand new 15" 2.66 Ghz i7 is?

Or perhaps you could look in System Profile > Power > Battery Information and post your full charge capacity along with cycle count. If others with cycle count near mine and have similar full charge capacity, then I am happy.

 

[Luba]

Surfed around but can't find info on rated (what it's supposed to be) full charge capacity, but others are reporting charge capacity around 7000 mAh so I guess my battery is fine.

I went into System Profiler which said full charge capacity is 7000 mAh and that battery cycle count is 77. Sounds like I have normal (good) battery . . . anybody know what the full charge capacity of a brand new 15" 2.66 Ghz i7 is?

Or perhaps you could look in System Profile > Power > Battery Information and post your full charge capacity along with cycle count. If others with cycle count near mine and have similar full charge capacity, then I am happy.

 

[blackreplica]

Having your screen on full brightness and watching dvds is what is killing your battery

 

[carlyinoz]

I'm finding I'm getting 4-5 hours with my 15" i5 using Chrome, Photoshop & not much else. Whilst it's a million times better than my last laptop I was concerned that it was so far behind the 7-8 hours advertised that I took it to the Genius bar and they said it was normal.... meh

 

[snaky69]

The dvd watching is what is killing your battery times. If you insist on watching movies on the laptop, I would suggest ripping them to the hard drive and playing them from there, you'll probably squeeze another hour and a half out of that battery, the optical drive is a real battery drainer.

 

[auero]

It also depends on the browser your using. Google it and you'll find that many tests show Chrome uses the most memory. You're on full brightness so thats also killing it for you.

This is directly from the Macbook Pro page on Apple's website.

"Testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units. Battery life depends on configuration and use. See http://www.apple.com/batteries for more information. The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%."

Also, just because you don't SEE anything flash, doesn't mean its not running. A lot of content on regular websites looks regular but is actually flash.

I actually uninstalled flash and saw my battery life go drastically. I've found HTML5 replacements for what I need and if I need flash, I hit a shortcut on my keyboard and Chrome opens the website since its built into it.

Edit: Also, check your batter with Watts or Coconut Battery. You might need to calibrate it.