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

MacBook Pro 2017 Battery Life

E

eshroom

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I know there are several threads on this, but no two threads are exactly alike.

I recently bought a Kaby Lake 13" MacBook Pro with touchbar. I have for the past 5 years used a 2012 MacBook Air.

The Air with over 1000 charge cycles wildly out performs the MacBook Pro on battery life. With web browsing I am lucky to get 3.5 hours on simple browsing or 2.5 hours when accessing aggregator sites (momondo and kayak) which for some reason drain battery faster. The old air (which even has a battery service warning) will almost double this.

2.5 hours is just unacceptable for me. And when using things like Photoshop this falls even further!

I read a teardown which said the non-touchbar pro had a larger battery, but didn't have any specs. Can anyone advise if the non-touchbar pro has a better battery life? And does my battery correlate with other people? I used coconut battery and the battery is healthy.
 
Non touch bar definitely has better battery life - larger battery, no touch bar, one less fan, and CPU is lower voltage (same processors the MacBook Air has previously used, while the touch bar models use the pro style).
 
I also bought a MacBook Pro Touchbar last week and what helps with me is to turn the brightness down.
Then I'll get 8-9 hours with web browsing and office work.

I'm hoping that the battery life will be better when High Sierra comes out. But I doubt it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KGB7
I think that something is not ok with your macbook, I have since about 1 week a MacBook Pro with TB 15 but 2016 and only web browsing I guess I can do about 8 hours or more over wifi

try to open activity monitor, energy tab and sort to see who is daring your battery
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rocko99991
If you are browsing hard, constantly switching sites, multi-tabs, etc. I can see only getting 5-6 hours. 2.5 something is wrong.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

I have brightness set at 75%. When watching video I get exactly 3 hours with volume on full and brightness at 75%.
 
I will try volume.

I did some more testing, with light browsing (just news and blogs) and with brightness down to 65% I managed 2 hours down to 62% battery. I then started using youtube and some flight comparison websites (what is it about momondo and kayak?) and had more tabs open. I got 1 hour 20 mins before I hit 3% according to CoconutBattery...
 
eshroom said:
I will try volume.

I did some more testing, with light browsing (just news and blogs) and with brightness down to 65% I managed 2 hours down to 62% battery. I then started using youtube and some flight comparison websites (what is it about momondo and kayak?) and had more tabs open. I got 1 hour 20 mins before I hit 3% according to CoconutBattery...
Click to expand...
How new is this MBP? If under week be patient for a few days (indexing). If not, that's way too much loss IMO.
 
PBz said:
How new is this MBP? If under week be patient for a few days (indexing). If not, that's way too much loss IMO.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks. I will call Apple tomorrow. Activity monitor is showing indexing as 0% CPU usage so it must be done indexing?
 
eshroom said:
OK, thanks. I will call Apple tomorrow. Activity monitor is showing indexing as 0% CPU usage so it must be done indexing?
Click to expand...
You can tell it's indexing because you'll see "mdworker" threads in Activity Monitor. Initial Spotlight Indexing used to be a 4-8 hour process back in the day of motarized rotating storage so it may take a little less time now in the land of SSDs.

High screen brightness will definitely tank battery life in these computers. I believe Apple gives a screen brightness percentage with their battery life estimates. Apple's Tech Specs says 12 clicks from lowest setting, or 75% brightness (way down at bottom of page, footnote #2).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rocko99991 and PBz
eshroom said:
OK, thanks. I will call Apple tomorrow. Activity monitor is showing indexing as 0% CPU usage so it must be done indexing?
Click to expand...
Heavy web browsing should last 5-6 hours. Light will be 6-7 hours at 75% brightness. If 3 hours is something wrong. If still in 14 days bring back to exchange. Stop believing index spotlight ******** take a week.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rocko99991
joefoong79 said:
Heavy web browsing should last 5-6 hours. Light will be 6-7 hours at 75% brightness. If 3 hours is something wrong. If still in 14 days bring back to exchange. Stop believing index spotlight ******** take a week.
Click to expand...
What are you basing your info on?
 
As others have said it and I'll say it as well. Screen brightness will make a big difference in battery life, on any device.

If you are in an environment where it's not very bright, drop screen brightness to 50% or lower. This will improve battery life significantly.
Otherwise keep the laptop plugged in if possible.

Websites that are heavy with flash or Java will also drain your battery faster.
Simple test. Browes Craigslist vs CNN.
 
eshroom said:
I know there are several threads on this, but no two threads are exactly alike.

I recently bought a Kaby Lake 13" MacBook Pro with touchbar. I have for the past 5 years used a 2012 MacBook Air.

The Air with over 1000 charge cycles wildly out performs the MacBook Pro on battery life. With web browsing I am lucky to get 3.5 hours on simple browsing or 2.5 hours when accessing aggregator sites (momondo and kayak) which for some reason drain battery faster. The old air (which even has a battery service warning) will almost double this.

2.5 hours is just unacceptable for me. And when using things like Photoshop this falls even further!

I read a teardown which said the non-touchbar pro had a larger battery, but didn't have any specs. Can anyone advise if the non-touchbar pro has a better battery life? And does my battery correlate with other people? I used coconut battery and the battery is healthy.
Click to expand...
Sorry I'm a little late to this thread but I would suggest opening up activity monitor to see if any specific application has an unusually high energy usage or is using all of your CPU. You can also try quitting all applications and restarting your computer. Having your brightness all the way up should definitely NOT affect your battery life to the extent that you're experiencing and the battery life on the non touch bar is not significantly better than the touch bar (barely noticeable).

If none of that works then go to an Apple Store and trade out your laptop since it is defective.
 
I figured out today the Kindle app will force use of the discrete GPU unless you stop it. I'm now using gfxstatus from gfx.io (donationware) to keep my MBP only using the integrated GPU.
 
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