How to compare real-world battery life

[dizmonk]

So as I've mentioned, I've got my 14-day trial with the 15" MBA. I own the 14" MBP and am trying to measure the real-world battery life usage of both. Is there an app that would help? I know screen time kinda gets at the same thing, but here's what I'm wondering...

Is there an app I can run on both computers, which would tell me how many hours of real-world usage I get on each model? Does that make sense?

Thanks.

 

[Shirasaki]

Technically, you can run benchmarks in loop and see how the battery life is. However, that can only give indicative data. Best approach would be to actually use that device day in day out and feel the battery life yourself.

 

[jdb8167]

So as I've mentioned, I've got my 14-day trial with the 15" MBA. I own the 14" MBP and am trying to measure the real-world battery life usage of both. Is there an app that would help? I know screen time kinda gets at the same thing, but here's what I'm wondering...

Is there an app I can run on both computers, which would tell me how many hours of real-world usage I get on each model? Does that make sense?

Thanks.

Real world hours of usage will vary wildly based on your workload. Also based on how bright you keep the screen.

I use my 13” M2 MacBook Air for 8-9 hours a day on battery doing software development with ReactJS/NodeJS with the brightness at one notch below halfway. I usually have between 20%-40% battery remaining at the end of the workday. Much of my workload is just typing in a lightweight code editor but I also have servers running locally most of the time and command line tools for transpiling the code. I consider my day to day load to be moderate. Probably heavier than your typical office worker but not anything close to someone doing multimedia work.

 

[Saturn007]

Most reports are that the 15” has better battery life! Search here for relevant threads.

Even Apple reports that for wireless web browsing.

Power and Battery

14” MBP — Up to 12 hours wireless web
15” MBA — Up to 15 hours wireless web

Mac - Compare Models

See what makes each Mac laptop and desktop different. And find the one that’s perfect for your life, your work, and your budget.

www.apple.com

One test would be to use the 15” for several days, doing all your usual stuff, and simply see whether it lasts longer or feels like it does!

Given the reports around here that the 15” lasts several hours longer a day than certain M2 14” variants do, it should be pretty obvious, fairly quickly.

That is, if your 14” is one of the M2 battery chompers…

Do a search on MR for old threads on the 14” battery life to get a feel for what the battery life shortfalls are for certain models.

The other thing would be to charge them both to 100%, then spend several hours doing the exact same set of mixed tasks on each. By what % does the battery drop on each laptop in your custom test?

One wrinkle, of course, is that you need to make sure that any background processes, indexing, etc. are off on both laptops.

By now, the 15” should be done indexing, especially if you didn't install all your 14” documents on it. That background indexing can eat up CPU cycles and battery time!

Of course, the other crucial factors in such a decision are screen size, text sharpness, ease on eyes, speed, noise, and ports! Battery life could be secondary. Selling the 14” at a loss could loom large, too.