MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life

[pat500000]

I'm laughing at the comment from the article about doing lightweight multitasking work.....LOL.
Of course you'll still have life. Let's talk about REAL EDITING. Those will drain the life out of you.

 

[ipponrg]

If you're using Chrome, it's going to trigger the dGPU. This alone eats up the battery. Not sure how any of this is new news. If you were a previous MBP owner, you should know this already. On my 2011 when my Nvidia kicks in full, I get about 2.5 hours from full charge. With onboard GPU, I get around 7 hours.

 

[alvesik]

I just want to say that I love my touch bar MBP very much and it doesn't have any problems and that is all.

 

[Mcmeowmers]

Got to say I'm worried about the battery life on my new MPBTB. Only done two charge cycles and definitely getting less than 5 hours. Thought it might be because it was new and spotlight was indexing, but now don't think that's the case.

Just opened it up after a day asleep on batter and lost 25% juice in last 45 minutes. Will be contacting Apple if this continues!

View attachment 675970 View attachment 675971

**I'm not currently running Chrome**

I'm doubting indexing would take days with the speed of those SSDs....

 

[StayPuft]

A majority of the people complaining about poor battery life are using Chrome and won't even entertain using Safari.

Chrome doesn't sap up an extra 7 hours of battery.

 

[Wowereit]

What a fiasco. Glad I returned mine and got a SP4.

So you are glad that you've returned your computer with 6h of battery life for another computer with 6h of battery life?

 

[jefftomascak]

A subset of users who purchased a new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar claim to be experiencing shorter than expected battery life.

In particular, some users claim to be getting as little as 3 to 6 hours of battery life on a single charge, or between 30% and 60% of the up to 10 hours advertised.

MacRumors forum member SRTM said:MacRumors forum member Aioriya said:Reddit user Azr-79 yesterday claimed his new base model 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar received only 3 hours and 45 minutes of battery life on a single charge, despite what he described as "normal usage" in the form of web browsing, watching YouTube videos, and software development.

MacRumors forum member Scott claimed he experienced a 5 percentage point drop in battery life, from 10% to 5%, in just 12 minutes. Google Chrome, a known battery hog, was listed as the only app drawing significant power. The discussion topic he posted in and others are littered with similar claims of sizeable percentage drops in mere minutes.

Other claims on Reddit include anywhere from 3 hours to 5 hours to 6 hours -- sometimes more, and sometimes less.

Conversely, some users report battery life exactly in line with Apple's advertised figures. Reddit user Andrew J., for example, said he was working on non-intensive tasks on his new MacBook Pro for 90 straight minutes, and still had 92% battery life with an estimated 10 hours and 35 minutes of usage remaining.Estimates unsurprisingly vary widely based on screen brightness, background processes, and other factors, so user reports are only anecdotal evidence and your mileage may vary. It is also important to note battery life could be initially reduced until Spotlight finishes indexing your new MacBook Pro.

Battery life complaints are nothing new following the launch of a new Apple product. However, some users speculate battery life could be impacted by the new MacBook Pro switching from more efficient integrated Intel graphics to the power-hungrier dedicated AMD Radeon Pro GPU for unnecessary tasks.

Once again, however, there are always claims to suggest otherwise. Reddit user Lebron Hubbard claims he received 5 hours and 48 minutes of battery life on his high-end built-to-order 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar when forcing only the dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 460 graphics to run using gfxCardStatus:Apple's built-in Activity Monitor and third-party app coconutBattery are useful tools for tracking system processes and detailed battery information.

Apple officially says the new MacBook Pro is rated for up to 10 hours of battery life. Specifically, its tech specs page says all new 13-inch and 15-inch models are capable of up to 10 hours of wireless web browsing, up to 10 hours of iTunes movie playback, and up to 30 days of standby time on a single charge.

TechCrunch placed battery life at 9 hours and 35 minutes for the 13-inch model. Mashable said 10 hours is a fair estimate overall. The Wall Street Journal got 9.5 hours on the 13-inch model. Engadget gauged between 9 and 10 hours of video playback on the 15-inch model. Nilay Patel got 5.5 hours on the 13" in real-world use.

Apple explains how it performs its battery tests on its website:Apple's website also provides tips for maximizing battery life on the MacBook Pro, including updating to the latest version of macOS, optimizing Energy Saver settings in System Preferences, dimming the screen's brightness to the lowest comfortable level, and turning off Wi-Fi while not connected to a network.

Additional battery optimization advice provided by users includes performing a fresh install of macOS Sierra and resetting the SMC.

Article Link: MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life

[doublepost=1480803279][/doublepost]I am running 2 thunderbolt displays with my new MacBook pro 2TB and i am only getting 2-3 hour battery life, way less that the retina I replaced it with

 

[TMRJIJ]

Run a Chrome test yourself. The current version isn't as brutal as you're making it out to be.

But you're probably too consumed with blindly defending apple to try.

I used it last week for a class assignment. Got 2 hours out of my Mid 2010 MBP compared to the usual 4:30-5 hours with Safari and Firefox. Was there an major update since then?

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

Has anyone ever gotten Apple's advertised battery life hours? I have never on my 17' Macbook Pro.

 

[Jakexb]

Funny, they all seem to be using Chrome, a ridiculously notorious app that eats battery life like it's popcorn.

Ya'll need to be using Safari.

 

[EndlessBuffoonery]

But... but... it's supposed to be good because it's Thinner!

Here's hoping Apple learns we want quality, not thinner or gimmicks like their new bar.

Being thinner/weighing less does in fact make it better as a portable computer. I thought everybody knew that but apparently some people think it makes sense to make future laptops heavier and bulkier. Sad.

 

[robeddie]

Being thinner/weighing less does in fact make it better as a portable computer. I thought everybody knew that but apparently some people think it makes sense to make future laptops heavier and bulkier. Sad.

Apparently someone forgot there was already an Apple line of laptops that was thin and light. These macbook 'PROs" are supposed to be uncompromising powerhouses. That's what the high price tag is supposedly for.

Back in the good old days we had a choice: Thin and light (and perfectly adequate for everyday use) then a laptop that was a genuine desktop replacement.

Now all we get from Apple is variations of the macbook air ... and flawed ones at that.

 

[Lidar]

Good call on taking away MagSafe because of the great battery life. That took some "courage."

How bad would 32 gig have been? 1 hour? 20 minutes?

I am just dumbfounded by the new issues that come to the surface every day. This is sad. So sad...

 

[EndlessBuffoonery]

Neither are power-user applications. If that beast cannot even run a multi-platform browser like Chrome properly, well, kiss that "Pro" moniker goodbye and spend that money on a machine that deserves the name.

I agree. It's Apple's fault that Google makes a horribly inefficient browser. Stupid Apple.

 

[b0fh666]

safari is an unusable POS.

 

[robeddie]

safari is an unusable POS.

Agreed. Safari often refuses to load video's on the weather channel or can't show pages correctly on CNN, when every other browser on the planet does just fine. I still use safari, but have chrome as a backup when safari can't read a page correctly.

 

[2010mini]

You've never seen someone "giving a PowerPoint" (or "KeyNote")?
You lucky, lucky person.
Sometimes people even use data projectors for useful things, like demoing software/websites.

Nope. Laptop always has been plugged in.

 

[b0fh666]

well my list of annoyances with safari are too big to use it as my main browser

- does not show URLs (seriously?)
- missing extensions
- rendering problems
- only works in apple devices, same crap as IE on M$ side
- etc

 

[AdventurousJosh]

Please give me a reason to buy this! I've been wanting to upgrade my 2011 MBP since the retina version. Now I'm almost considering a regular MB for the weight. Either way I'll probably have buyers remorse. What do?

Get the MB. I LOVE mine, absolutely beautiful machine.

 

[HiRez]

Has anyone ever gotten Apple's advertised battery life hours? I have never on my 17' Macbook Pro.

I've owned a lot of Apple laptops over the years and they all pretty consistently got about 65%-75% of the advertised battery life under what I would consider a casual "medium low" load of mostly Safari use, iTunes, Mail, maybe some Preview, Photos, Keynote. Under moderate load (Xcode, Photoshop), more like 40%-50% (i.e. ~4-5 hours with a "10 hour" machine). Under heavy load (After Effects, Cinema4D, Lightroom, 3D games, etc.) of course battery life will be terrible but that's true of any computer.

However, under light load (mostly idle Safari, reading PDFs, typing text), etc, I've been able to get somewhat close to Apple's claimed battery life, in the 85%-90% range. But obviously those figures are always going to be for a best case scenario.

Also, nowadays there's a lot more background processes (some from Apple, some from 3rd parties we install) that sap battery life. For example, right now I've got processes for iCloud (sync bookmarks, calendars, etc.), iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Photo Library, Slack, display calibration, Adobe management, iStatMenus, TeamViewer, and others running constantly, stealing little bits (sometimes lots) of CPU and memory. And a lot more that Apple installs that do various things. 5 years ago a lot of those things didn't even exist so the OS had a lot more idle time to optimize.

What I'm trying to say is, if you don't have the brightness down on your screen and it's not completely idle, it's sort of unrealistic to expect to get close to the claimed battery life. 65%-75% is a reasonable estimate for what most people would consider a "typical" load. And obviously, batteries will lose their maximum charge as they age so it only applies to new machines.

I have found the MacBook Airs to be a bit closer to claimed battery life, they really are great for power efficiency.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Maybe it's because I'd been waiting two years for this redesigned MacBook Pro, but the disappointment following this product announcement seems enormous to me.

Let's see if lessons are learnt. It feels like a tipping point. Either this is where things start to improve, or Apple accelerates downhill.

Tim uses an iPad Pro for all his day to day work so don't count on it.

 

[fyun89]

From my experience, you should never expect to get advertised battery life using Youtube.

Browse web with minimal amount of flash/html5/java.

Word processor with minimal graphics or computing involved.

Absolutely no gaming of any sort.

Use 25% brightness for the display. (External display probably force use of dGPU)

Then, i am highly certain you get advertised battery life...

 

[RuffyYoshi]

Remember when Steve said "We can't sell junk."?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.

 

[WiiDSmoker]

Fresh install (well, factory install where I manually moved my data without the data migrator) on a near maxed out 13" model yields 7-8 hours of what I consider "normal" use which is, how shall we say, underwhelming especially since Apple's battery life claims have been pretty realistic on the last three MacBooks (2 Pros, 1 Air).

One thing I have noticed is that the use of an external Thunderbolt monitor drains the battery like crazy, just as expressed in this article. Mind you I'm almost always on power when using an external monitor but it's still pretty crazy.

Still mostly happy with the machine for my own purposes but this thing has more of a beta feel to it than any prior machine. (I tend to avoid first gen releases though. Maybe I should have kept up with the policy?)

Take it back before it's too late.

 

[Jetfire]

The sad thing is that Dell is even worse. I used to like the Latitude line for the office. Now I can't seem to find a Quad-core processor in the line anymore. Have to go to the Precision line for Quad-core. Damn wish the early 2012 Macbook Pros had Thunderbolt 2 ports and 2 of them. Wish my early 2011 15" had USB 3 ports. Guess I'll have to make it last until next year and hope 2017 MacBook Pros are worth buying.