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Is battery life as bad as CNET says?

A

AppleJuiceBox

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 18, 2015
80
1
There's a new video on YouTube by cnet called "Reasons to wait on the new MacBook" and in the vid, they say that in real world usage the battery only lasts 5h.

Is that true? Are you guys getting your 9h of battery or is it really near 5h? Because, not to be a dick or anything, but if the battery only lasts me 5h, it's not worth 1300$ (for me atleast)

http://youtu.be/VdWFY011NGs
 
This is such a subjective question and totally dependent on what people are doing. I get around 7.5-8 hours of life between charges with my usage. What I do varies by the moment and day. My brightness is at 50% and keyboard backlighting at lowest setting.
 
There's no way it only lasts 5 hours. I've only seen that number when people were insanely pushing it.
 
My first use of the full battery I got nearly 8 hours and had 15% left with two hours to go. I have my brightness down to about 40% or less sometimes though. I was using safari and word the whole time. Also downloaded steam and some other programs. And installed them.

I think the battery really depends on brightness and how hard the cpu is pushed.
 
A) I stopped caring for Cnet a long time ago.

B) Battery life is hard to quantify. The screen brightness, what kind of sites you browse, what browser you use, what apps you use, how many are running....They all affect batter life.

I'm able to go about 6/7 hours of my 15" rMBP for schoolwork, so I imagine I'll hit that 9 hours (-ish) benchmark. I also keep the screen brightness on roughly 50%, not because I want to save battery life, but because that's just bright enough for my eyes.

I'll admit though, for the type of product it is, I was expecting at least the iPad's 10 hour battery if not more.
 
AppleJuiceBox said:
Is that true? Are you guys getting your 9h of battery or is it really near 5h? Because, not to be a dick or anything, but if the battery only lasts me 5h, it's not worth 1300$ (for me atleast)
Click to expand...

Hourly ratings are moot because it is dependent on what you run. The best way I can put it is that it runs as long as my 2013 (or 2014, can't remember) MBA 11". That means if I'm doing a lot (VMware Fusion), it is 5 hours. If I'm not pushing it, it is 8-10 hours. It fluctuates based on what you run.

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Traverse said:
I'll admit though, for the type of product it is, I was expecting at least the iPad's 10 hour battery if not more.
Click to expand...

The iPad doesn't get 10 hours if you push it. Same with the rMB. If you just read/browse the internet, both get 8-10 hours.
 
AppleJuiceBox said:
There's a new video on YouTube by cnet called "Reasons to wait on the new MacBook" and in the vid, they say that in real world usage the battery only lasts 5h.

Is that true? Are you guys getting your 9h of battery or is it really near 5h? Because, not to be a dick or anything, but if the battery only lasts me 5h, it's not worth 1300$ (for me atleast)

http://youtu.be/VdWFY011NGs
Click to expand...

Total 100% incorrect. That is unless you're intentionally trying to max out the processor with heavy usage. I've been using the rMB for over a week everyday, I can easy say the average battery lasts about 7-9 hours depending on what I'm doing.

If it's just web browsing and music it's an easy 9-10 hours.

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Traverse said:
Probably. For some reason, Chrome is considered the be-all, end-all browser for geeks and power users alike. I personally don't see the big draw to it. It will take a few hours from your battery as mentioned in this Verge article: Chrome is still a threat to your MacBook's battery
Click to expand...

I used Chrome when it first came out, but I have found Firefox to be my favorite browser by far.

Firefox > Safari > Chrome > IE (I'd stick Mozilla in there, but is it still around or did Firefox replace it?)
 
I second Hankster, I've pushed about 8 hours out with about 14% remaining. The battery life really isn't bad.

HOWEVER, that is only half the story.

With the stock adapter, the notebook charges FAST [some have said about a % a minute, I think it's a little faster] Which means if you can at some point set it up to charge during lunch, etc, you'll likely come back to a full machine.

Also, with a USB C to USB A adapter, you can charge it just about any place that has USB. . . portable battery chargers, other people's notebooks [I leeched off my wife's [formerly my] 15" MbP the other night for several hours]

As a matter of fact, it's charging via my iMac as I type :)

It's SLOWER to do it that way, but there are a lot more options compared with a more traditional notebook.
 
I haven't checked CNet but I must say that yes, mine is nowhere near 8-9 hiurs of browsing. I'm probably going to exchange it.
 
Like some already said, battery life is an extremely subjective thing.

There are so many factors that influence battery life. Including environmental, such as temperature and humidity.

I'm jumping right into this 1.3 MacBook from an 8 year-old Dell Inspiron, where the original battery lasts on average 1 hour. So even if the new MacBook lasts me 4 hours, it's going to literally feel like eternity.
 
I'm on my first full battery charge. It's showing 100% and estimated time remaining of 5:15 with the screen at 50% and the keyboard turned down to 40%.

We'll see how long it actually lasts.
 
JKNorth said:
I'm on my first full battery charge. It's showing 100% and estimated time remaining of 5:15 with the screen at 50% and the keyboard turned down to 40%.

We'll see how long it actually lasts.
Click to expand...

Remember, it take a day or two for the system to finish indexing and for the system to get accurate readings. (Also, that time remaining isn't always the best measure.)

You can also try a PRAM reset which I usually do after major OS updates or new systems.
 
Traverse said:
Remember, it take a day or two for the system to finish indexing and for the system to get accurate readings. (Also, that time remaining isn't always the best measure.)

You can also try a PRAM reset which I usually do after major OS updates or new systems.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but it sorted itself out. Looking like closer to 9 hours now. It really is holding up well. I disconnected from power around noon, used it off and on briefly, now it's 8:42 with 84%.

I'll be curious to see how long it can run PowerPoint connected to a projector. And if Apple had the AV adapters in stock, I'd be trying that out Monday.
 
JKNorth said:
Thanks, but it sorted itself out. Looking like closer to 9 hours now. It really is holding up well. I disconnected from power around noon, used it off and on briefly, now it's 8:42 with 84%.

I'll be curious to see how long it can run PowerPoint connected to a projector. And if Apple had the AV adapters in stock, I'd be trying that out Monday.
Click to expand...

I'm glad to hear that.

Powerpoint uses a lot of energy for me, but part of that is because it triggers the dGPU without fail. :/

Since the rMB don't have a dGPU, I'll be curious to see if that ends up in the "Apps using significant energy" section.
 
I'm getting 8 hours easily with word/excel work and web browsing along with listening to music.
 
Around 10 hours predicted here... Dropped ~10% 1 hr 10 minutes... not bad at all... Web browsing and Pages

I think lots of early reports of low battery life (5-6 hours etc) come from it being a new notebook that people tend to play with a lot more compared to their usual usage...

Its so dependent on usage and light conditions (the screen can drain battery fast if its 80-100 %
 
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