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You can wait if you'd like... it might be more stable than the late 2016s, but they may also be more expensive. Lots of unknowns. The 2015 you have isn't a bad machine - enjoy it!
 
Where do you get the specs for the more intense test? And are you going to the sites they are since sites can have script that uses a ton of CPU cycles?
This is what Apple's website says,

Testing conducted by Apple in April 2015 using preproduction 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with 256GB of flash storage and 16GB of RAM. Testing conducted by Apple in February 2015 using preproduction 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units (wireless web test and HD movie playback test) and preproduction 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5–based 13-inch MacBook Pro units (standby test). 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 HD movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%.

The results I got for the test was,

QuickTime HD Playback test:
-Brightness 4 bars (approx. 30%)
-Volume=0
8.3 hours

Safari browser test:
-Brightness 4 bars (approx. 30%)
7.7 on average

 
Really? Apple had always been exaggerating with the battery numbers with the sentences like "upto 10 hours of web browsing". I can't believe that you got more than Apple promised. If you don't mind I would like to clarify these,

  1. What is the brightness you keep on during your usage?
  2. Are you referring to 11hours as just Screen On Time or does that include sleep times too?
  3. Assuming browsing is heavy relatively to your mentions usage, Is it heavy browsing with many tabs and windows or just lite browsing?

I get 10+ hours watching videos & browsing

1. Auto
2. On-screen time, no sleep in between
3. Light browsing in between movies (I always close tabs that I finish reading)
 
With performance maybe not I'm gaining much that justifies the price. But incase of battery life it may. I've well tested my battery life with the 15" 2015 during my usage thus far. Here's a brief,

  • Brightness always below 40%, at 3 bars or 4 bars.
  • Heavy browsing (average of 9 tabs throughout the usage), streaming video simultaneously once in a while with volume @ 50%.

At 4 bars of brightness (no external devices, no TimeMachine or other syncing services) I get 13 hours playing SD video in iTunes. That is a about 3 hours better than my old 2014 13" MPB where I ran the same test for comparison.

May I suggest that you look specifically at instantaneous energy consumption of safari "per tab". You can do this in the Activity Monitor > Energy and by expanding the Safari entry. That may guide you to which web page is consuming more energy.
 
This is clearly a biased thread. Way too much negativity around the 2016 model which has garnered some very good reviews. But everyone's entitled to their opinion! Still on a late 2013 MBP 15" but the 2016 one is surely an attractive buy, with early kinks ironed out. Been following the forums now, and we pretty much have a large number of people claiming decent battery life (8-10 hours), to the one who said the 2015 with GPU is certainly better than any 455 or 460 2016 one, idk what you're talking about.
 
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NatalieThomas89 the simple answer is Apple 1st Gen`s generally tend to carry issue, the 2nd/3rd Gen are alway a good deal improved. If you have no urgent need bette to wait on the 2nd Gen. Personally I believe it will be released as soon as Apple can muster, if for no other reason than the reception of the 2016 MBP. Apple have stated themselves they were surprised by the volume of negative response, therefore I rather think Apple will be expeditious with the 2nd Gen to restore.

The 216 is highly polarised for many reason, for some I believe pricing is a defining factor on both sides of the fence, some are unable to reach the price point, some can stretch and then need to continuously justify their purchasing decision. On top of this there are also clear technical matters; ports, battery, software, display, keyboard, QC etc. with proponents on both sides. Personally I would wait on the 2nd Gen (2017), as it will be at the worst far more refined, at best significantly improved.

Q-6
 
This is clearly a biased thread. Way too much negativity around the 2016 model which has garnered some very good reviews. But everyone's entitled to their opinion! Still on a late 2013 MBP 15" but the 2016 one is surely an attractive buy, with early kinks ironed out. Been following the forums now, and we pretty much have a large number of people claiming decent battery life (8-10 hours), to the one who said the 2015 with GPU is certainly better than any 455 or 460 2016 one, idk what you're talking about.

I'm slightly astonished myself: But most of these negative remarks are written by a bunch of non-owners who has no practical experience of working with the MBP2016. They completely ignore the benefits: such as the best screen ever put in a laptop, good keyboard, best trackpad in the business, stellar finish and build quality, ultra-fast PCI-E SSD, and so on, and focus entirely on Apples decision to ditch a bunch of old and outdated interfaces? They even make claims about "poor battery life" even though anyone who is an actual owner know this to be a manifest lie.

The MBP sticks out in only one aspect: the price. The price is, admittedly, staggering. I believe the deciding factor here is plain and simple jealousy: they are grinding their teeth because they can't afford it , and so reacts by trashtalking a piece of hardware they have never held in their hands, except in a store.

I would recommend anyone thinking about a new Mac to heed the advice of the more known reviewers, and they have invariably been positive. Pay little or no attention to the whiners.
 
At 4 bars of brightness (no external devices, no TimeMachine or other syncing services) I get 13 hours playing SD video in iTunes. That is a about 3 hours better than my old 2014 13" MPB where I ran the same test for comparison.

May I suggest that you look specifically at instantaneous energy consumption of safari "per tab". You can do this in the Activity Monitor > Energy and by expanding the Safari entry. That may guide you to which web page is consuming more energy.
Thanks for the info. Can't take SD playback for any sort of comparison.
 
Do you think the people who bought the 2016 are going to be upset if Apple releases the 2017 model with a USB and SD card ports with the USB-C ports?
 
Yeah, Apple really have not been in the habit of reversing decisions in that manner.

But also yes, people will find fluff to be upset about, even if Apple brought back all of the ports they did away with, and once again, the forums will be ablaze. Which is always fun.
 
Personally I would wait on the 2nd Gen (2017), as it will be at the worst far more refined, at best significantly improved.
This is sound reasoning.

My first post in this thread asked, "How many peripherals do you have today that you'd need to plug in but don't want to buy new adapters for?"

My aunt is buying her first Mac and has no legacy accessories apart from a wired mouse. I suggested that if she bought a 2015, she'd need to buy adapters for an external display anyway. If she gets a 2016, when she buys another display later, she could leave the display and her extra mouse and power plugged into one end of an adapter, and she only needs to plug the other end of the adapter into her USBC-equipped 2016 MBP when she gets home.

Waiting until later in 2017 means waiting for the accessory market to catch up -- which they will, just like they did in 1997-1998 when they got on the USB bandwagon. Buying a 2016 today means you'd be ahead of the market.

But buying a 2015 today means you'd be hanging onto the last vestiges of the soon-to-be-outmoded multi-connector accessory market. Yeah, you will find enough stuff to keep going for the next couple years, but they'll be harder to find.
 
First of all I’ve to say, great to be part of such a great community. The amount participation is unseen for me. Keep the info flooding in. As I use my current Mac more & more I’d be really happy to contribute more to this forum. I hope this thread will be helpful for someone looking to buy the 2015 models for savings or trying to decide between 2016 and 2017 models. Thanks again!

@Samuelsan2001

@Jayderek

@montanaco

@smfinlay

@leman

@Finurliig

@keysofanxiety

@campyguy

@BarracksSi

@Precursor

@Benny L

@Sanpete

@bjet767

@matram

@monkeydax

@ascender

@Queen6

Guys I really can’t get it. All I have seen online mostly is that many are getting bad battery life. The experiences of Jonathan Morrison and TechnoBuffalo in YouTube can be cited as examples but not limited to them alone.

  1. As far as I can tell the improved battery life can only be achieved in the 2016 models with the beta release (10.12.3 Beta) . So can I confirm all of you are already on the latest beta release?
  2. Since the bug is relevant on the stable 10.12.2. Wouldn’t the 2015 model’s battery life also get affected along with 2016?
  3. I know it’s bit too much to ask but whatherver your claim may be it would be easy to digest & believe with some kind of proof. No problem if you can't tho :)
 
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As far as I can tell the improved battery life can only be achieved in the 2016 models with the beta release (10.12.3 Beta) . So can I confirm all of you are already on the latest beta release?

Since the bug is relevant on the stable 10.12.2. Wouldn’t the 2015 model’s battery life also get affected along with 2016?

I am always running the latest dev beta, so I can't really comment on non-beta performance.

I know it’s bit too much to ask but whatherver your claim may be it would be easy to digest & believe with some kind of proof. No problem if you can't tho :)

What kind of proof do you want? :D Should I make a youtube video like those people you quote (no idea who they are) and get a group of followers who repeat what I say all over the place? The best I can do is supply a screenshot of my activity monitor (I think I took it yesterday around 17:00).

elY2xkD.png
 
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I only made one full test, over 11 hours (no sleep included) before my 2016 15" got down to 5% battery capacity left. I had three windows with 17 miscellaneous Safari tabs (three Amazon pages, this forum, several Google searches, Youtube, two online email clients, three Twitter feeds, etc) open the whole time, watched about four hours of HD streaming video, and worked on some text in Text Edit (a very minimal program). I had the screen at normal indoor brightness for me, which is fairly low compared to most people, it seems, four or five "clicks" except for the video, for which I turned it up some.

I was using the regular OS that was current a week or two ago, no beta.

Ars Technica uses 200 nits brightness, which is probably more than half-way up on this machine. They got 15 hours 33 minutes for web browsing (compared to 10:03 when they tested the 2015 the same way when it came out).

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/the-2016-13-and-15-inch-touch-bar-macbook-pros-reviewed/

Notebook Check tests theirs at 140 nits, got 10:02 with their WiFi Browsing 1.3 test, whatever that is. (Same test got 7:12 for the 2015 when it came out.)

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html

I haven't seen the same complaints about Sierra affecting the stability of 2015 machines, so I'd guess some of the software bugs are specific to the new machines. I haven't had any stability issues, beyond a spinning beach ball in Safari every few days. But I don't use an external monitor, and don't push the machine hard.
 
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First of all I’ve to say, great to be part of such a great community. The amount participation is unseen for me. Keep the info flooding in. As I use my current Mac more & more I’d be really happy to contribute more to this forum. I hope this thread will be helpful for someone looking to buy the 2015 models for savings or trying to decide between 2016 and 2017 models. Thanks again!

@Samuelsan2001

@Jayderek

@montanaco

@smfinlay

@leman

@Finurliig

@keysofanxiety

@campyguy

@BarracksSi

@Precursor

@Benny L

@Sanpete

@bjet767

@matram

@monkeydax

@ascender

@Queen6

Guys I really can’t get it. All I have seen online mostly is that many are getting bad battery life. The experiences of Jonathan Morrison and TechnoBuffalo in YouTube can be cited as examples but not limited to them alone.

  1. As far as I can tell the improved battery life can only be achieved in the 2016 models with the beta release (10.12.3 Beta) . So can I confirm all of you are already on the latest beta release?
  2. Since the bug is relevant on the stable 10.12.2. Wouldn’t the 2015 model’s battery life also get affected along with 2016?
  3. I know it’s bit too much to ask but whatherver your claim may be it would be easy to digest & believe with some kind of proof. No problem if you can't tho :)

If you only go by what you see online you'd also think that Apple is going to go bankrupt any second, and that they're doomed.

Consider the thousands and thousands of people who have bought this computer...a couple loud youtubers and forum members (a few who don't even own the computer) say the battery sucks. What about the other thousand users who are happy and content? The battery on this is just as good as Apple says it is. Like anything else, some people ARE having battery issues and can exchange their computers for some that aren't faulty.

http://imgur.com/a/g9WMU

^Subtract about 10-8 hours from all of those "time on battery" numbers since I was asleep and not using my computer, but as you can see, I get a full days worth from my computer, unplugged, fairly often. Keep in mind, this is with light use--web surfing, youtube, reading etc. My brightness is usually around 60%. If I am at work editing and what not, I'm going to get 6-7 hours.
 
http://imgur.com/a/g9WMU

^Subtract about 10-8 hours from all of those "time on battery" numbers since I was asleep and not using my computer, but as you can see, I get a full days worth from my computer, unplugged, fairly often. Keep in mind, this is with light use--web surfing, youtube, reading etc. My brightness is usually around 60%. If I am at work editing and what not, I'm going to get 6-7 hours.

If you don't mind, are you referring to video editing? Premiere?

Consider the thousands and thousands of people who have bought this computer...a couple loud youtubers and forum members (a few who don't even own the computer) say the battery sucks. What about the other thousand users who are happy and content? The battery on this is just as good as Apple says it is. Like anything else, some people ARE having battery issues and can exchange their computers for some that aren't faulty.
Maybe for some. The 2016 13" touchbar I had is actually gifted to my sister after my few days usage. This model unfortunately is suffering from 2 hours less battery life from the Apple estimated even with low brightness. When I asked her about the experience compared to her Early 2015 MBP 13" she told it's purely magical. Since the performance is overkill for her, I asked if the battery life is what you were getting and if there's anything, there is chance of return/refund. She just told "it serves my purpose, not bad". This is how most Apple users are, they aren't tech savvy basically. They have full trust on Apple and aren't bothered by issues like display calibration, battery life, etc. Therefore can't say the 'other thousand' are completely happy.
 
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This is how most Apple users are, they aren't tech savvy basically. They have full trust on Apple and aren't bothered by issues like display calibration, battery life, etc. Therefore can't say the 'other thousand' are completely happy.

One might assume this is why Apple is exiting the 'pro' market. It's too niche and yields lower margins - not a viable business model.

Fact is 90% of people will never care that their Mac gets 8 hours instead of 9. They don't know or care what integrated and dedicated graphics are. They don't care if their SSD has 20% faster random read/writes.

They care if it's quick to load Chrome and if it looks good. This is a huge market, but it's a simple consumer market. Even in this thread we've established that most are using a £1,500 machine for basic browsing.

For those who need serious power - custom builds outperform high-end Macs by massive factors.
 
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One might assume this is why Apple is exiting the 'pro' market. It's too niche and yields lower margins - not a viable business model.

Fact is 90% of people will never care that their Mac gets 8 hours instead of 9. They don't know or care what integrated and dedicated graphics are. They don't care if their SSD has 20% faster random read/writes.

They care if it's quick to load Chrome and if it looks good. This is a huge market, but it's a simple consumer market. Even in this thread we've established that most are using a £1,500 machine for basic browsing.

For those who need serious power - custom builds outperform high-end Macs by massive factors.
I agree 100%. I could have gone for a Windows this time but the tension my 2014 desktop PC gives with it's instability is what made me to stay within Apple ecosystem somehow. XPS or Razer Blade was perfect for my usage but the macOS experience is currently unbeatable except by Linux(with some customisations).
 
The battery life on my 2016 15" MBP is never more than 6 hours on a full charge. To be fair, I do keep brightness at 75%, keep the key backlight on and run at least two programs that are significant resource drains. Still, I do feel that I get fewer hours than I did on my 2013 15" MBP.
 
The battery life on my 2016 15" MBP is never more than 6 hours on a full charge. To be fair, I do keep brightness at 75%, keep the key backlight on and run at least two programs that are significant resource drains. Still, I do feel that I get fewer hours than I did on my 2013 15" MBP.
75% is fine. Key backlight may have an effect depends on how bright it's. What are those significant resource drains for you?
 
I will wait.

I wish to change our MB12 (2015) to this year MBP 13", and my exciting computer not fast but meet our requirement (a little be lag in programming) and it very stable and with perfect display.
(So i affair to change and not stable )

Skylake without full HEVC 10bit hard decorder, and my MB12 play 1080p HEVC soft decording without problem, so two machine both can not play full 4K HEVC content.

Better to wait kaby for better video playback, however unless introduced the 10nm CPU, don't thing the CPU power / Battery performance will boost so much and simply broadwell (2015 model) will
survive and good on a least 2-3 years.

If I with older machine broken and need a new one simply will buy this year model.
 
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