Is it really 2 hours less than the MBA? Battery life is most important to me. An additional 2 hours with the MBA is game changing if true. Of course mileage will vary but if the MBA truly has on average two hours better then that is what I’d go for.
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How’s the battery life compare to the current MBA?
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The base 2019 MBP (approx 10.5 hrs) actually has better battery life than the 2019 MBA (approx 10 hrs) in multiple reviews, but any other MBP does fall short in battery as you noted. I think it's because of the more efficient processor in the base MBP versus the rest of the MBP lineup this year.
From my experience 10.5 hours is pretty impossible to reach in normal use after battery has little aged after couple of months. My MBP 2019 1.4 gets around 6 hours (+/- 1 hour) at most when just running Safari and keep YouTube playing music on one of the tabs. But my unit has already 36 charge cycles (100% battery health) and it is almost 4 months old. It was little better when it was new. I had briefly MBA 2018 and I'd say it has much longer practical battery run time on the same tasks, but yeah it is slower when ever you need actual CPU raw "torque".
And to add that 6 hours practically means you have to drive battery pretty much empty, which is not good for it, so when I want to keep it in healthy range and charge it once it gets around 1/3, it means 6 hours minus couple hours, so it is practically "half day" battery at most.
And to add that 6 hours practically means you have to drive battery pretty much empty, which is not good for it, so when I want to keep it in healthy range and charge it once it gets around 1/3, it means 6 hours minus couple hours, so it is practically "half day" battery at most.
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It also depends on your settings, the 10.5 hours I mentioned was based on certain settings by the reviewers. For instance, the brightness was less than half the nits and I believe involved continuous web browsing rather than music or youtube videos. I'm not sure what your brightness was, but the MBP outlasted the MBA in that given situation.
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Well I have tested both using pretty equal settings. Maybe running some static benchmarks or just letting it sit idle on desktop or maybe running simple notepad you can see MBP running longer on battery, but when actually using the machine and just surfing the web, the MBA wins. Like I said practical running time on battery is around 6 hours +/- 1 hour (machine about 4 months old and battery has already 37 charge cycles, so it is worn by now. Reviews are usually made with brand new units).
Surely MBA is much slower when you do something that benefits from faster CPU. Difference can be almost like night and day, for example full TimeMachine backup took many times longer on MBA than MBP. So if main thing is the long battery operating time, then MBA wins hand down in IMHO.
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