Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacBook Pro 16" - drastic battery life drain

SwiftyAlek

SwiftyAlek

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 13, 2020
19
2
Hello.
I have my MBP 16" since December. I have lost 2% battery life since then (value from coconut battery) but today I noticed that I have only 87% capacity. I noticed this twice - a few days ago I had the same issue but it was solved by resetting SPM and running my machine in safe mode and charge the battery to full.

I noticed this situation both times after playing the game (Diablo 3). While playing game I had a computer connected to AC power.
This is strange. Does anyone noticed this kind of issue?

Battery details:
Screenshot 2020-04-13 at 22.09.23.png
 
@jerryk Did you understand what my problem is?
My battery lost lot of capacity (more than 1-2% in this case 15%) over few hours and then receive it back. I noticed such case while gaming.
I can't found similar issue in search ☺️.
 
I have the same issue, I got my MBP 16" in December and it came with 96% capacity and now it is down to 93% capacity with only 30 cycles.
 
it didn't really lose the capacity, it lost it's internal track of how much charge it was storing.

Capacity calculations and such are all basically theoretical, it's very hard to keep a 'true' value of these things, everything is a best guess/estimate of some sort.

This seems to happen when high demand uses cause battery to be depleted whilst plugged into mains.

Though some capacity will certainly be lost over time-- the 96 to 93% drop is likely more real, but short of full discharge/charge cycles you can't really get a close idea of what it truly is, and such cycles are recommended to be avoided anyway as they also hurt capacity whilst revealing it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Patcell, simonmet, Honza1 and 1 other person
@iMacDragon Thank you for describing it to me. Well it could be the same in case of cycle calculation. I noticed that my cycle count increase after 80% of full battery use. :p
 
SwiftyAlek said:
@iMacDragon Thank you for describing it to me. Well it could be the same in case of cycle calculation. I noticed that my cycle count increase after 80% of full battery use. :p
Click to expand...
My MBP 2019 13" used to do that too when it was new. I think it is simply due to poor battery. Once it started to count cycles close to 100% of real use, the battery life has been poor. I mean in no conditions it would run for 10 hours. I practically get just over half of that. But battery health still shows around 100% and battery condition normal...
Just lately it has been draining battery even when powered off (not sleeping) around 10% per day.

Try running something demanding (benchmark or similar) without charger connected and monitor battery health at the same time with CoconutBattery or similar monitoring tool. Do you see sharp drops under high load? I bet you do, I've seen that with mine.
 
@0906742
Just lately it has been draining battery even when powered off (not sleeping) around 10% per day.
Click to expand...
Indeed. macOS doing lot of things while sleeping.
You could look at your logs in terminal using:
pmset -g log|grep -e " Sleep " -e " Wake "
Click to expand...
command or similar and take a look. You will see lot of 'mainatance' tasks during sleep ;). The best way to avoid this kind of 'issue' is to shut down you mac if yo would not use him in next 1-2 days.
 
mine was never 100% out of the box and now it’s down to 94-95% :/ 46 cycles.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Yurk
SwiftyAlek said:
@0906742
Indeed. macOS doing lot of things while sleeping.
You could look at your logs in terminal using:

command or similar and take a look. You will see lot of 'mainatance' tasks during sleep ;). The best way to avoid this kind of 'issue' is to shut down you mac if yo would not use him in next 1-2 days.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but as I said, mine draw about 10% a day POWERED OFF. I don't even dare to try what it would be if I just let it sleep instead of powering down...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Yurk
Hello SwiftyAlek

I was struggling to find a solution for my fast battery drain too, for about 4 weeks. Started with:

2h 14min - from 100% to 6%

and ended up with:

11h 44min - from 100% to 5%

After reading through several forums, having phone calls with Apple experts and doing live testing (without using tons of 3rd party apps) I could finally solve my fast battery drain. Here is how I managed it:

forums.macrumors.com

Battery Life on MacBook Pro 16.

Battery Life issue on MacBook Pro 16 finally solved (>11hours) i9 2.4GHz 8core | 64GB DDR4 | 5500M 8GB | 4TB I purchased my MBP 16 on 19.02.2020, received it on 21.02.2020 and then the testing began. After a performance analysis with Cinebench from Maxon I was pretty excited about my new...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
Last edited:
Bob-Lee said:
Hello SwiftyAlek

I was struggling to find a solution for my fast battery drain too, for about 4 weeks. Started with:

2h 14min - from 100% to 6%

and ended up with:

11h 44min - from 100% to 5%

After reading through several forums, having phone calls with Apple experts and doing live testing (without using tons of 3rd party apps) I could finally solve my fast battery drain. Here is how I managed it:

forums.macrumors.com

Battery Life on MacBook Pro 16.

Battery Life issue on MacBook Pro 16 finally solved (>11hours) i9 2.4GHz 8core | 64GB DDR4 | 5500M 8GB | 4TB I purchased my MBP 16 on 19.02.2020, received it on 21.02.2020 and then the testing began. After a performance analysis with Cinebench from Maxon I was pretty excited about my new...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

I did that today, but all I've been doing is listening to music, using safari with about 5 tabs open, and my battery is dropping a lot. At this point, with this computer having kernel panics and now battery issues, I just feel like returning this machine.
 
fel10 said:
I did that today, but all I've been doing is listening to music, using safari with about 5 tabs open, and my battery is dropping a lot. At this point, with this computer having kernel panics and now battery issues, I just feel like returning this machine.
Click to expand...
what’s your battery health?
 
The mac pulls >100 Watts from the wall and battery discharges when playing a video game (on MacOS or Bootcamp).
The only way I've been able to avoid this is to use turbo boost switcher or something similar and disable turbo boost on the Intel CPU. Then I can play a game without discharging. But my expensive 8-core Intel i9 is neutered.
[automerge]1590196726[/automerge]
 
it's possible the game is heating up your macbook pro enough that it's degrading the battery health. While playing intense games, this situation is even more tough on a battery as it's constantly underdoing charging and discharging while the power adapter can't keep up. Couple that with a hot metal case, I'm assume this is the fast track to battery death.
 
Coconut Battery fluctuates quite a bit. Saying that, I haven’t seen less than 96% personally and it’s usually around 98, sometimes nearly 99.

Still only 12 cycles though. Battery life has been good so I’m not worried. I’d be a bit perturbed if I saw 86% already however.

Best to only check it when it’s fully charged.
 
ha1o2surfer said:
it's possible the game is heating up your macbook pro enough that it's degrading the battery health. While playing intense games, this situation is even more tough on a battery as it's constantly underdoing charging and discharging while the power adapter can't keep up. Couple that with a hot metal case, I'm assume this is the fast track to battery death.
Click to expand...
The heat will wear the battery prematurely, but is not the cause of these problems. The heat is a side effect of the ridiculous power consumed by this GPU.
I must stress that battery drain occurs with a very light video game (AoE2). Battery discharges from 100% to 50% after 1 hour of light gaming. I hate to think what would happen with a demanding video game... I do not think the main culprit is the Intel CPU. The AMD GPU draws a lot more power (85 Watts) than the CPU. With a 100 Watt power adapter, this leaves no room for the CPU to turbo boost.

I wish there was a way to reduce power consumption by the GPU. AMD GPU power management is extremely poor, I have seen nothing worse.
 
Yurk said:
The heat will wear the battery prematurely, but is not the cause of these problems. The heat is a side effect of the ridiculous power consumed by this GPU.
I must stress that battery drain occurs with a very light video game (AoE2). Battery discharges from 100% to 50% after 1 hour of light gaming. I hate to think what would happen with a demanding video game... I do not think the main culprit is the Intel CPU. The AMD GPU draws a lot more power (85 Watts) than the CPU. With a 100 Watt power adapter, this leaves no room for the CPU to turbo boost.

I wish there was a way to reduce power consumption by the GPU. AMD GPU power management is extremely poor, I have seen nothing worse.
Click to expand...

You mean unplugged in Boot Camp I presume? Well, it’s a 100 Wh battery, so I suppose that means if you’re using 100 W you get only an hour of battery life.

Still, I’m very surprised if that’s the case for such a light weight game as AoE2. Have you tried Turbo Boost Switcher?

I’ve played some light weight 3D games in Mac at native resolution and with Turbo disabled the fans don’t even ramp up. It stays silent.
 
Last edited:
simonmet said:
You mean unplugged in Boot Camp I presume? Well, it’s a 100 Wh battery, so I suppose that means if you’re using 100 W you get only an hour of battery life.
Still, I’m very surprised if that’s the case for such a light weight game as AoE2. Have you tried Turbo Boost Switcher?
Click to expand...

No, I mean it discharges while being plugged to the wall! Starting from 100% battery, playing a light video game, and the battery drains to 50% after 1 hour. The laptop pulls more than 100 Watts, which the power adapter alone cannot provide, so it uses the battery too. This is a major flaw.

Turbo Boost Switcher does help reduce CPU power consumption, and brings the total just under 100 Watts, just enough to stop the battery drain. Of course, that neuters the 8-core Intel i9 I just paid for.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back