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MacDaddy22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 2, 2010
20
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I know several posts have been made about this but none of them seem to fit my situation. Battery is supposed to be 12 hours. I'm getting like 6. So it's not draining super fast. But it's half of what it should be. No issues with charging. It's running Catalina. I found heavy usage coming from spotlight so I stopped the indexing. Prevented it from ever indexing anything again because I literally never use spotlight. I wish I could disable it completely. Anyway, suggestions? SMC? PRAM? I haven't done those yet but wanted you guys to point me down the right path. Thanks!
 
The 16” is rated for 11 hour battery life per Apple’s strict marketing scenario (pasted below). In most cases, the dGPU causes the battery to drain faster as it draws significantly more power than the onboard iGPU. Most people run the display brightness pretty high and that can also drain batteries faster. At the end of the day, for a mobile workstation notebook built on Intel, 6 hours isn’t horrible, not great, sure. I feel you.

I use software called istat menu that helps monitor and track temps and energy usage. Give the trial a shot. Might help you see usage better.

My 2 cents? Don’t worry too much and just enjoy using the machine. If it’s new it takes some time to exercise the battery and for macOS to learn your habits for energy management. I wouldn’t fuss with turning off indexing or things like that. This is a big energy hungry machine that happens to be portable. I have a maxed out i9 5600m model and adore it. I hope you enjoy yours as well!

“Testing conducted by Apple in October 2019 using preproduction 2.3GHz 8-core Intel Core i9-based 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The standby test measures battery life by allowing a system, connected to a wireless network and signed in to an iCloud account, to enter standby mode with Safari and Mail applications launched and all system settings left at default. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.”
 
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I'm lucky if I get 4 hours on my 16" i9 just browsing the web.
Same for me. It's bothersome. If one goes to the Apple website and sees the small letters when they talk about "11 hours of battery" it says; The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%.

That's it, that's their "measure". Totally non-regular or unreal use in the daily life of a user.

The "video playback" is done from AppleTv, which is obviously optimized to reduced energy impact... but it is also obvious that 99% of the video playback for a regular user does not come from AppleTv app. Furthermore, 75% of display brightness or '12 clicks' is super fine at midnight... not at noon when your office/room has a window. Who'd possibly use the brightness level at 75% with daylight comfortably?.

Also, has BigSur had a different impact on your battery? or do you remember having the same experience on Catalina? I don't know anymore. Can't recall... but I feel the "optimizations" from BigSur have had an impact... negatively.
 
My OPTIMIZED battery is at 79-80% now at 252 cycles. Basic warranty ends mid May. Is this normal? Should I take it in hoping for a new battery or will Apple jsut turn off Optimized setting and claim battery is a few percent higher to avoid replacing battery? on my 12 inch MacBook without optimized option it took me about 600 cycles to hit this battery life so im not happy about this MBP16. I'll try to sell it anyways.
 
Mine is at 85% health with 281 cycles (According to third-party app thou). I've been using the display brightness at 75% as they (Apple) recommend and truly the charge is lasting longer during the day... just a few hours more... from 4 hours with fully bright display to 6 hours now at 75% brightness... a significant difference I believe. Fewer hours if I'm editing video on FCP of course.
 
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