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How long does your Macbook Pro's battery last?

About 8.5 hours just typing a paper and listening to iTunes. I have wifi off, bt off, brightness at lowest. 17" 2.3 i7 with 8gb 1866 hyper x and intel 320 80gb ssd and 750gb optibay.

ando94 said:
Has anyone got a genuine fix for this?
My Macbook Pro was shipped with Lion, (even though i requested Snow Leopard)
and so far the battery life on this thing is HORRID.
It's nearly flat and I'm going up to like 3 hours.
I will test it today by fully charging and using it till its flat.
But my friends exact same computer (2011 MBP 2.0GHZ I7) which is running Snow Leopard is getting 6 hours of battery, 2 clicks under full brightness and he's on youtube and all that type of stuff whilst I'm stuck here on a NON flash website with 50% brightness and the keyboard on 1 click, and i get 3 hours?
apple need to sort its **** out otherwise they will be receiving this computer back.

not to mention my brothers 13 inch 2010 model gets like 7 hours with Full brightness and keyboard.....

I'm starting to think its all Lions fault .
the only option i can think of is reinstalling it with Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

If you posted your activity monitor and selected all processes, it could help us eliminate the culprit.
 
BizzyLeo said:
I think I've gotten between 3-4 hours on my battery setting the brightness to less than 50%. I'm wondering how everyone else has faired.

I have the new 13" Macbook Pro with the i5 processor, base model.
Also, what programs are you running that lead to your battery life?
Click to expand...

Like you, the new MBP 13" i5 and between 3 and 4 hours every day.
Mac Mail, Safari are open and occasionally Word. Very disappointed with battery life, but no idea how much you get from the new Windows laptops these days either? It's just not as portable as I'd hoped I'm afraid as it spends a lot longer on charger than I'd hoped

Always on WiFi though, otherwise no point in being unplugged, so don't know if WiFi makes the battery suffer a lot more?
 
Guess My question is mute ... I just bought a new MBP 13" battery off Amazon and I charged it full + 30 minutes and it only lasted 2hours and 47 minutes.. My old battery with 785 charges would go for just over 2 hours. I run high brightness and have 8GB ram with 750GB drive and use for virtual Win 7 & Fedora 13 plus web work. Still seems like low hours... MacBook Pro 5,5 , 2.26 C2D.... I have a dell E6420 I5 that gets 5+ hours but only has 4GB ram.

Is it the ram that eats up the battery or the brightness or both?
 
gboswellsac said:
Guess My question is mute ... I just bought a new MBP 13" battery off Amazon and I charged it full + 30 minutes and it only lasted 2hours and 47 minutes.. My old battery with 785 charges would go for just over 2 hours. I run high brightness and have 8GB ram with 750GB drive and use for virtual Win 7 & Fedora 13 plus web work. Still seems like low hours... MacBook Pro 5,5 , 2.26 C2D.... I have a dell E6420 I5 that gets 5+ hours but only has 4GB ram.

Is it the ram that eats up the battery or the brightness or both?
Click to expand...

In your case ram and battery life have nothing in common... it would only matter if you have too small amount of ram as than it would page out more and hence the harddrive would have to work more and eat your battery faster.

Turn your brightness lower is the way to go. And read this guide on battery calibration:


http://guides.macrumors.com/Laptop_Battery_Guide
 
gboswellsac said:
Guess My question is mute ... I just bought a new MBP 13" battery off Amazon and I charged it full + 30 minutes and it only lasted 2hours and 47 minutes.. My old battery with 785 charges would go for just over 2 hours. I run high brightness and have 8GB ram with 750GB drive and use for virtual Win 7 & Fedora 13 plus web work. Still seems like low hours... MacBook Pro 5,5 , 2.26 C2D.... I have a dell E6420 I5 that gets 5+ hours but only has 4GB ram.

Is it the ram that eats up the battery or the brightness or both?
Click to expand...

If that was your first time (or so) using it, I think many might suggest that Spotlight indexing could be a substantial factor contributing to the battery drain. It should be better after that, but I'm just relaying information I've come across from this forum in the past.
 
Peter Franks said:
Like you, the new MBP 13" i5 and between 3 and 4 hours every day.
Mac Mail, Safari are open and occasionally Word. Very disappointed with battery life, but no idea how much you get from the new Windows laptops these days either? It's just not as portable as I'd hoped I'm afraid as it spends a lot longer on charger than I'd hoped

Always on WiFi though, otherwise no point in being unplugged, so don't know if WiFi makes the battery suffer a lot more?
Click to expand...


I am in the same boat as you.
MBP - 2011 base model (but l put in another 4gb of RAM, total 8gb).
Bluetooth off, WiFi on, browse net, Outlook and not much else and l would be lucky to get more than 3 hours out of it. I'm a little bit disappointed tbh.
 
spl456 said:
I am in the same boat as you.
MBP - 2011 base model (but l put in another 4gb of RAM, total 8gb).
Bluetooth off, WiFi on, browse net, Outlook and not much else and l would be lucky to get more than 3 hours out of it. I'm a little bit disappointed tbh.
Click to expand...

Yeh, it's disappointing when you think the 2011 models should be an improvement, especially when people on here are getting 7/8/9 hours from 2011 and older models also, with everything open, full brightness etc... I think it's really luck of the draw on these things as opposed to tweaks, with regards to our MBP. Turning down brightness on screen and keys etc, I've done but it really doesn't help much.
 
Just charged up the MBP (99% battery), pulled out plug and l've got ~4:16 minutes.
What apps are open; Safari, Outlook, NZB Vortex (downloading) and of course, Finder. Screen-brightness is 1 notch under half.


Time remaining does jump around a bit.
For example, if l leave the laptop and screen dims; time remaining shoots up to 5 hours, start using it, comes down to 4:04 (as l type this reply).

From the Apple.com.au website
http://www.apple.com/au/macbookpro/features.html#battery
A long-lasting battery. Charge less. Do more.
The new MacBook Pro delivers amazing battery life. And that’s with more powerful processors and faster graphics. An energy-efficient processor architecture with an integrated video encoder, along with automatic graphics switching in the 15- and 17-inch models, all help improve battery life. So you can expect to surf the web wirelessly for up to 7 hours on a single charge5. Or take your entire creative studio on the road for live performances or a location shoot. Advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging give you up to 1,000 full charge and discharge cycles — nearly three times the lifespan of typical notebook batteries.6 And because the MacBook Pro battery lasts up to five years, MacBook Pro uses just one battery in the same time a typical notebook uses three. That’s better for you and for the environment.


up to 7 hrs wireless web

Apple is using a new, more rigorous battery test that measures the results you can expect in the real world — like surfing your favourite sites in a coffee shop or catching up on the latest web videos. Even using this new test, MacBook Pro delivers amazing battery life. For your real life.
Click to expand...

If l am only getting almost half of what Apple are advertising, should l go back and see if Apple can do anything for me?
MBP purchased in May 2011 with Applecare.
Battery Stats; 42 Cycles, 92% Health (5322mAh).
 
I think Apple's tests are conducted with only Safari running. Also 'web browsing' refers to refreshing a page every 'x' seconds.

Depending on your usage, you can certainly deplete the battery much faster. For e.g. if you're just skimming web pages and going to new ones very quickly, or running 2-3 apps that estimate will decrease.

Under ideal circumstances, I can get 7 hours.
With 'real' work (multiple apps, lots of web browsing), its 4.5 - 5 hours.
With idle browsing (more reading, less loading pages), it even estimates upto 8 hrs.

Really though, 7 hrs is inaccurate. Its a 5 hr battery.
 
BizzyLeo said:
I've basically used mine for internet and email. Mostly everything I do is on the internet browser. So I'm wondering whether is should go back to Apple and have my computer checked. I notice that a lot of you guys getting about 6 hours have a 15 and 17" MBP. Do 13" MBP owners have less than 6 hours battery?
Click to expand...

I did under Lion..under SL no BT screen 40% 7.5ish provided there's no Flash..
 
BizzyLeo said:
I think I've gotten between 3-4 hours on my battery setting the brightness to less than 50%. I'm wondering how everyone else has faired.

I have the new 13" Macbook Pro with the i5 processor, base model.
Also, what programs are you running that lead to your battery life?
Click to expand...

Same thing,
My old 2010 13" used to run for 7 hours easily. this model (2011 13" with i5, in my case with C400 SSD and 8gb ram) maybe, maybe last 4 hours.
 
spl456 said:
Just charged up the MBP (99% battery), pulled out plug and l've got ~4:16 minutes.
What apps are open; Safari, Outlook, NZB Vortex (downloading) and of course, Finder. Screen-brightness is 1 notch under half.


Time remaining does jump around a bit.
For example, if l leave the laptop and screen dims; time remaining shoots up to 5 hours, start using it, comes down to 4:04 (as l type this reply).

From the Apple.com.au website
http://www.apple.com/au/macbookpro/features.html#battery


If l am only getting almost half of what Apple are advertising, should l go back and see if Apple can do anything for me?
MBP purchased in May 2011 with Applecare.
Battery Stats; 42 Cycles, 92% Health (5322mAh).
Click to expand...

That's the exact same time I bought mine,

Yes, we all get that, If you are working it will show couple of hours left, if I'm on anything like YouTube, it will show the bare minimum battery life left, can jump from 4 to 1. As soon as you stop and walk away, come back it will show 4 or 5 hours, but then touch email or Safari and it will be 1 or 2 hours in an instant. I think this is something we all experience,

I see the post above me here V4705 is also getting this with the i5 13". It seems to be fairly common with this year's model, I've pretty much resigned myself to it to be honest. I know if I go back to the store they'll test it and say it's fine, even though I know the battery really isn't. I've done the calibrating a few times till I realised it makes no difference whatsoever, possibly for the accuracy of reading battery life but I pretty much know if I need to go somewhere and use it, it'll be touch and go without the charger, which is a pain.

Wonder how this year's crop of MBA are holding up with battery?
 
15" 2.3. 6750M on, Chrome, VLC, maybe 1-2 hours of video, Adium, some chatting, Wifi on, basically normal usage plus video and Torrent seeding.

I get about 4 hours, 4.5 hours at most if I am a little more careful. Haven't tried to use HD3000 on the entire charge, but I can say that it's not improving much, at most 15 minutes or so. The 6750M unless gaming isn't a battery hog anyway...

Battery at 60 cycles at 102% health. ;D
 
Perhaps we expect too much

I guess we expect too much from the MBP batteries. It may be the graphics card. I'll admit that I'm not the most knowledgable when it comes to graphics cards, etc. But I also know that this i5 processor is supposed to be pretty powerful. I assume that that's another factor that could affect battery charge.
The way I see it is, if you advertise one number with a supposed compitent battery life test, then your result could be easily duplicated. I understand that not everyone is going to have the lucky number (7), but I would assume that I could expect something similair.
I have a friend with a 2009 MBP and he gets about 6 hours on one charge - according to him. I noticed Apple advertised that the previous MBP (before the i5 and i7 processors) could do about 10 hours on a single charge. Now they're reported to do about 7 hours.

All these comments have been great to read through. Thanks to everyone for your feedback!
 
I used to get about 7-8 hours on my 2011 13 inch until I put a seagate moments xt in it. Now I only get about 4-5 hours.
 
Depends what I'm doing really.
On campus when it's just pdfs and text with just mail & Skype in the background, I've seen it last anywhere up to 8 1/2 hours. Once photoshop/AE/FCP springs up and my 6770M gets going on the other hand..
 
Check CPU usage

I find that when I really need to make my battery last there are two things I need to worry about:

screen brightness - crank it as low as you can (and I usually don't like having it too low) it makes a big difference.

and CPU usage. - I would recommend either having activity monitor open in the background or using something like istat monitor to check your cpu usage. One of the main reasons (at least in my experience) why Lion has worse battery life is that scrolling especially in browsers takes up a lot more CPU. You can fix this a little by turning off intertial scrolling (even if it is very nice :(). When I'm on battery I often use the arrow keys to scroll instead of the track pad which if you monitor cpu usage there can be a huge difference depending on what website your viewing.

Monitoring cpu usage will in my experience usually pinpoint what is sucking up the battery.

On my 13inch MBP 2009 with the original battery (almost 3yrs old) i still get 4.5-5hrs if I'm trying (just avoiding cpu intensive things but still web browsing with other random stuff kept open in the background). Fairly satisfied for a 3yr old computer :)
 
My late 2009 MBP used to get about 1.5-2hrs at 1400 cycles (yes I realize that's a lot)

Changed the battery out and now it'll get about 4hrs on 50% brightness and just Safari and music and such. More intensive tasks obviously decrease that.
 
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