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Just letting you know: macbook pro 17" battery life is 4 hours

U

unagimiyagi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 9, 2009
905
229
Just thought that I'd let everyone know that I'm getting 4 hours of battery life on a brand new macbook pro 17", 2010 model.
i5 processor on integrated....

I am using it to surf at full brightness. There's no video. If there are any flash sites, they're limited to the ads that exist. I did not use a flash blocker....

Needless to say, in 2008 with my penryn mabook pro, albeit a 15 inch laptop, brand new under the same conditions I was getting maybe 3:45.

This is a far cry from 9 hours. I am forcing the laptop to use integrated graphics.

I'm not super impressed with the battery life and agree with macworld and engadget that the real world battery life is 4 - 4.5 hours, a full 50% less than Apple claims. I was expecting 5.5 under my current conditions. I believe that what's driving the battery life is the 95 wH battery itself, and there is nothing magical about the mac os x's operating system.
 
unagimiyagi said:
Just thought that I'd let everyone know that I'm getting 4 hours of battery life on a brand new macbook pro 17", 2010 model.
i5 processor on integrated....

I am using it to surf at full brightness. There's no video. If there are any flash sites, they're limited to the ads that exist. I did not use a flash blocker....

Needless to say, in 2008 with my penryn mabook pro, albeit a 15 inch laptop, brand new under the same conditions I was getting maybe 3:45.

This is a far cry from 9 hours. I am forcing the laptop to use integrated graphics.

I'm not super impressed with the battery life and agree with macworld and engadget that the real world battery life is 4 - 4.5 hours, a full 50% less than Apple claims. I was expecting 5.5 under my current conditions. I believe that what's driving the battery life is the 95 wH battery itself, and there is nothing magical about the mac os x's operating system.
Click to expand...

yeah i got that out of mine, at first. now i've had it for about 2 months and i've been using it for 6hours today, still have 23% left. or about 2 hours. :)

i was really disappointed at first as well, but seems to get better over time.

i do use clicktoflash though.
 
Im going to have to quote another user without quoting them here.
Until proven otherwise, the only thing that changes the battery life is the size of the battery itself.


and full brightness is probably your problem.
 
I have the 15-inch core i5 and they even said at the Apple Store this was a known problem and that Apple greatly exaggerates battery life. They said I was lucky to get 4.5 hours.
 
Apples liberal quotes on battery life are based on testing on " Minimal" Setting. What does that mean?? No bluetooth/wireless on, screen brightness lowered, running low use apps ect.

Try turning off Bluetooth (It may be on even though you don't use it) or wireless if you don't use it.
Turn down your brightness to 50% You can set it to auto change the brightness when you plug it to 100%
Something that saved a bit of battery life for me was turning off the dashboard. It also saved a bit of ram to! I don't ever use the dashboard so it didn't matter to me. If you want to take this route search for the Terminal code to do it on the internet!
 
geoffreyq said:
I have the 15-inch core i5 and they even said at the Apple Store this was a known problem and that Apple greatly exaggerates battery life. They said I was lucky to get 4.5 hours.
Click to expand...

According to Anandtech.com (respectable site) and notebookcheck.net (very thorough reviews) Apple has been better at estimating battery life than most other companies. Both of their testings showed fairly close to Apple's numbers, whereas the same testing procedure on other laptops showed much less than manufacturer claims. Also on notebookcheck.net they tested OSX vs. Windows 7 and OSX won by FAR.

I don't own a macbook yet (just ordered one last week) so I can't say for sure but my friend's macbooks (15" granted) are lasting a good 6-7 hrs.

Also full brightness will SURELY kill battery life fast. Screens and backlights (even LEDs) are one of the top energy consumers in a laptop. If you weren't doing anything computationally expensive, it was definitely the most power consuming device, especially on the 17".
 
Not Really....

It is to be expected some of their expectations to be overblown but i get 7-8 hours testing the contents of a dvd. ie seeing what family video it is.
 
I am not surprised with having the screen at a full brightness? Everyone knows that apples times are a bit high. but achievable if you run your laptop in there same testing conditions.

Have you calibrated your battery? I get about 8-9 hours regularly on mine but I do not have my screen on full brightness usually 4 notches from lowest, itunes playing browsing the web and watching the odd film. Doing some work in word, iworks. I think that is good time personally.

Simon
 
i have a 17" and at three brightness notches, i got 8 hours a few days ago when i needed it. i was surfing, writing an essay and listening to music. i'm thrilled with the battery life.
 
yeah turn brightness down to about halfway and you will notice a huge improvement in battery life.
 
Just to be clear: Apple says 8-9h with surfing the web on 50% brightness (with ONLY safari opened, no other programs running, and not watching video or flash or anything... just exp. reading articles) or writing a document in Pages at 50% brightness (also no other programs opened).

It is totally legit claim, since I indeed do get those times when I follow those settings.
 
The only way I can see 8-9hrs as advertised on my 15", I have to use it at one notch of brightness with AirPort off, Bluetooth off and forced integrated graphics doing almost nothing on it except looking maybe at a pdf.

Otherwise, I only get about 4.5hrs.
 
I could lower the brightness b/c I have an antiglare. But if I did not, I would not be able to use the laptop without nearly full brightness, b/c the reflections would be too much for me to deal with.

I think that my point was that for the way that I use the laptop, the 17" battery life is no better or worse than any windows laptop that I have used with an 85 wH battery. The main difference is that the form factor is much better.
 
unagimiyagi said:
I could lower the brightness b/c I have an antiglare. But if I did not, I would not be able to use the laptop without nearly full brightness, b/c the reflections would be too much for me to deal with.

I think that my point was that for the way that I use the laptop, the 17" battery life is no better or worse than any windows laptop that I have used with an 85 wH battery. The main difference is that the form factor is much better.
Click to expand...

Which hard drive do you have in your 17"? Is the stock one with no upgrades?
 
TrojanX said:
Apples liberal quotes on battery life are based on testing on " Minimal" Setting. What does that mean?? No bluetooth/wireless on, screen brightness lowered, running low use apps ect.
Click to expand...

This is wrong. Get your facts straight.

Direct quote from Apple, footnote 2.

The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processor document with display brightness set to the middle setting.
Click to expand...
 
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