M1 MBP 14/16 Maximum Power Consumption

[tilstip]

The new M1 MBPs should use much less power than their Intel predecessors.

I was surprised to see that the power adapter have even higher wattage than before. I believe this is only to enable fast charging and not required to sustain the machines during usage.

So, I was wondering: What is actually the maximum power consumption during usage? What is the power consumption during normal use? What would be the minimum required power adapter to sustain that?

This would be good to know to buy the smallest possible power adapter for travelling. Is for example a Anker Nano 60W GaN charger sufficient to keep the 14 Inch model running? Or even less?

 

[Sanpete]

Interesting question. Some reviews cover power consumption for selected use cases, NotebookCheck, for example. But for your own use case, you might be able to figure out how quickly you use up the battery watt-hours and do some simple math to figure out what size charger you need. (Assuming chargers deliver what they promise.) Or just try some ...

 

[JPack]

I was surprised to see that the power adapter have even higher wattage than before. I believe this is only to enable fast charging and not required to sustain the machines during usage.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Test show the M1 Max can use 92W alone. That doesn't include the display nor peripherals attached to TB4 ports.

 

[Sanpete]

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Test show the M1 Max can use 92W alone. That doesn't include the display nor peripherals attached to TB4 ports.

Apple apparently says the larger charger is to enable quick charging. I keep seeing reviews saying they said that, at least.

 

[JPack]

Apple apparently says the larger charger is to enable quick charging. I keep seeing reviews saying they said that, at least.

Sure, that's one of the benefits. But it if were for fast charging, the base model 8-core MBP 14 would come with a 96W charger instead of 67W. It has the same battery capacity as the other configurations.

Under extreme CPU+GPU load, the system will use the close to the capacity of the power adapter.