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How Much Battery Life Should Drain in Sleep Mode?

S

shutup25

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 25, 2015
2
0
Hey guys, forgive a potentially stupid question, but I just bought a new 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, and I noticed today that after about 13 hours in sleep mode, the battery had lost 13% battery life (1% per hour).

Is this normal? Apple Support said this was norma. They checked my Energy Saver settings and Battery info and said everything looked great, and that I could always just shut down the laptop entirely if I didn't want to experience any battery loss.

Does this jibe with your experience? Should I have any reason for concern? I don't really have anything to compare it to, as my laptop prior to this was one extremely old and the battery life had been absolute crap for years.

Thanks!
 
shutup25 said:
Hey guys, forgive a potentially stupid question, but I just bought a new 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, and I noticed today that after about 13 hours in sleep mode, the battery had lost 13% battery life (1% per hour).

Is this normal? Apple Support said this was norma. They checked my Energy Saver settings and Battery info and said everything looked great, and that I could always just shut down the laptop entirely if I didn't want to experience any battery loss.

Does this jibe with your experience? Should I have any reason for concern? I don't really have anything to compare it to, as my laptop prior to this was one extremely old and the battery life had been absolute crap for years.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Roughly 1% per hour. Your numbers are quite normal.
 
shutup25 said:
Hey guys, forgive a potentially stupid question, but I just bought a new 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, and I noticed today that after about 13 hours in sleep mode, the battery had lost 13% battery life (1% per hour).

Is this normal? Apple Support said this was norma. They checked my Energy Saver settings and Battery info and said everything looked great, and that I could always just shut down the laptop entirely if I didn't want to experience any battery loss.

Does this jibe with your experience? Should I have any reason for concern? I don't really have anything to compare it to, as my laptop prior to this was one extremely old and the battery life had been absolute crap for years.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I notice a drop also on my new 2015 13" rMBP. However I also own a 13" Macbook Air and I don't notice the drop in battery life like I do in the pro. I don't know for sure why the Macbook Air battery does better in sleep than the Pro.
 
tech324 said:
I notice a drop also on my new 2015 13" rMBP. However I also own a 13" Macbook Air and I don't notice the drop in battery life like I do in the pro. I don't know for sure why the Macbook Air battery does better in sleep than the Pro.
Click to expand...

Your post confirms my experience is also like yours. Nonetheless I'm very pleased with their stability and reliability.
 
tech324 said:
I notice a drop also on my new 2015 13" rMBP. However I also own a 13" Macbook Air and I don't notice the drop in battery life like I do in the pro. I don't know for sure why the Macbook Air battery does better in sleep than the Pro.
Click to expand...

It has a lower base clock speed
 
Airboy1466 said:
It has a lower base clock speed
Click to expand...

That has nothing at all to do with why the air drains less battery in sleep mode.

During sleep mode RAM remains powered. MBA's use LPDDR3 RAM, where the LP stands for "low power". The retina Macbook Pro uses regular DDR3 RAM.

That's where the difference lies, most likely.

Edit: I should say, used to use regular DDR3, I just fact checked myself and the new models also use LPDDR3.
 
snaky69 said:
That has nothing at all to do with why the air drains less battery in sleep mode.

During sleep mode RAM remains powered. MBA's use LPDDR3 RAM, where the LP stands for "low power". The retina Macbook Pro uses regular DDR3 RAM.

That's where the difference lies, most likely.

Edit: I should say, used to use regular DDR3, I just fact checked myself and the new models also use LPDDR3.
Click to expand...

thats the only difference is clock speed
 
shutup25 said:
Hey guys, forgive a potentially stupid question, but I just bought a new 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, and I noticed today that after about 13 hours in sleep mode, the battery had lost 13% battery life (1% per hour).
Click to expand...

No, that is not normal. 1% per hour is about right for normal sleep, but newer Mac portables like yours have a low power sleep mode called stand by mode that kicks in after three hours. Once in standby mode your Mac will last up to 30 days on battery power.

Here are some things that can prevent the machine from entering stand by mode and cause the issue you are seeing.

It also must not have any external connections (such as Ethernet, USB, Thunderbolt, SD card, displays, Bluetooth, and so on).
Click to expand...
 
Hibernation described as shut down

Weaselboy said:
… stand by mode …
Click to expand...

Thanks.

In that article, Apple's use of the phrase 'shut down' to describe hibernation is unusual; I haven't seen that before. I wonder whether the company plans to make less use of the word 'hibernation' in consumer-oriented documentation.
 
Notice this as well with mine could it be that I had air mail running in the background also safari?
 
grahamperrin said:
Thanks.

In that article, Apple's use of the phrase 'shut down' to describe hibernation is unusual; I haven't seen that before. I wonder whether the company plans to make less use of the word 'hibernation' in consumer-oriented documentation.
Click to expand...

I think what they are saying there by shut down is if you leave it in stand by long enough (~30 days) the battery will completely deplete and the computer will shut down. I don't think they mean to describe stand by mode as shut down the way I'm reading it.
 
Hibernation

Weaselboy said:
… I don't think they mean to describe stand by mode as shut down the way I'm reading it.
Click to expand...

Neither do I.

Apple's statement:

"… shut down. You can recover your computer to its pre-standby state and any unsaved work should not be lost. …"​

That sounds like resume from hibernation.

(Complete loss of power without hibernation would not allow a true return to pre-standby state.)
 
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