MacBook Pro Users Express Concerns About Limited Battery Life

[Nik]

What will you get instead?

Keep my old one. Will wait a year and re-evaluate then. Testing Windows 10 now and then. If Apple becomes more expensive and worse, I want to look somewhere else to see where I stand. A month ago I would have never considered looking at Windows. Times change.

The only language Apple understands is loss in revenue. So I sent it back and told them exactly what I did not like. I suggest you do the same because otherwise nothing will change.

 

[austintg]

Keep my old one. Will wait a year and re-evaluate then. Testing Windows 10 now and then. If Apple becomes more expensive and worse, I want to look somewhere else to see where I stand. A month ago I would have never considered looking at Windows. Times change.

The only language Apple understands is loss in revenue. So I sent it back and told them exactly what I did not like. I suggest you do the same because otherwise nothing will change.

I use Windows 10 on my MBP and it's not too bad actually once you customize it. Good luck to you! I won't return mine because it's been pretty awesome. It really is a great improvement over the mid 2015 model.

 

[blackhawk10]

My experience doing Safari web surfing, mail and message: I’ve gone from a MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013) 1.7GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 that lasted all day to a MacBook Pro 13-inch/3.3GHz Dual-core Intel Core i7/16GB /1TB SSD/ 10.12.2 Beta with a battery that only last 4-5 hours. The new MacBook Pro 13-inch touch bar is a beautiful crafted high end machine…but why should I have to turn everything down or off on a state-of-the art $2900 notebook to do the above normal non-pro task? Disappointed that Apple engineers would let this product get released with the potential for such poor battery life.

UPDATE 12-6-16
Can report macOS Sierra update 10.12.2 Beta (16C60b) has differently improved battery life. MacBook on since this morning and battery at 31%. This will be good news for owners of 2016 MacBook Pro w/ Touch Screen when the update released to the public.

 

[morwen]

I have the 15" 2016 MacBook Pro 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7, 16gb ram, Radeon Pro 460. I have yet to duplicate one of the Apple tests, but I can verify that if you play Elder Scrolls Online full screen at 75% brightness on battery, your battery will only last an hour. I wouldn't expect something that graphics and fan intensive to last a _long_ time, but if they are saying 1080P iTunes movie playbacks for 10 hours I'd expect a little more than an hour.

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

 

[hiddenmarkov]

It's real fun to read the experts here blabbing about the code quality of Chrome (as if they could code their way out of their bed) instead of realizing that Safari might offer bling and integrate with iCloud, but rests on rotting foundations.

Welcome to the mind of the apologist. You are using it wrong...their mantra.

If they looked into browser stats they'd see chrome has a huge market share. leaps and bounds over IE/edge and safari, which fight for 2nd and 3rd place source depending. Good news is no matter the list, safari always beats out Opera which generally comes in dead last. yay apple...

If they worked in IT they'd see a nifty troubleshooting trick for the complaint website doesn't work is to install chrome, or firefox, go back to the sites they are having issues with and see if they work. Usually this simple next next next done default install....magically has a site work. This has worked with our IE windows and mac os safari clients we have.

Then you get the fun IT game of making the stock browser work like the 3rd party does. Why you kind of like it when a site fails the chrome check. Cool...the site is just bad, or something is funky in the proxies but that just means reassign ticket to the infrastructure people so off your plate regardless.

 

[CBlakeston]

So now we know the issue is fixed in 10.12.2. What will all the people who returned their machines in disgust and vow never to buy Apple again do?

 

[austintg]

So now we know the issue is fixed in 10.12.2. What will all the people who returned their machines in disgust and vow never to buy Apple again do?

I'm sure they'll find something else to complain about to justify the return!

 

[aponsin]

Just thought I would share my experience regarding battery life with the New Macbook pro 13inch with Touch Bar fully maxed out. (might not be very useful since it will get lost in already more than an thousands comments, but hey you get nowhere if don't even try)

Since I got the new macbook I was disappointed by not getting a single time even close to the promised 10 hours of battery life. But my previous laptop was a 11inch macbook air from mid 2012 that when brand new was barely lasting 3.5 hours and now after more than 1500 cycle count of battery is lasting barely 1 hour, even my disappointing 4 to 5 hours of battery life on the new macbook pro feel revolutionary to me.

But because I wanted more - who doesn't ? - I started refining and selecting the app I was using in favor of battery optimized ones (safari over chrome, keeping screen brightness around the 70% mark, etc). I barely got an improvement, on a good day I was maybe getting 6 hours of life. After a couple of weeks I kind of assumed that it was the price to pay to have the maxed out version with the touch bar (more power consumption due to more ram, smaller battery than the none touch bar model, etc) and tough that Apple had succumbed to the usual marketing claims oh so present in the PC world.

But When I stumbled on this very article and especially realizing that some people were indeed getting the promised all-day battery life I started digging around to see if I could improve my current situation, because why the hell not !? Not finding much more to go on I simply decided to contact Apple support to see if maybe they could do something, secretly hoping that there might be some hardware defect on the very early series (I ordered mine about 1 hour after the keynote announcement) that would be recognized and exchanged by Apple. The first tech that I talked too wasn't very helpful and quickly tried to dismiss my battery issues on my behaviors in using the laptop: "Sir, you are using the Calendar App and Skype with notifications enabled, this forces your computer to check a bunch of stuff online continuously and using your battery more than normal usage would". Well... let me just say that I didn't talk to that person for long and quickly got bumped to a senior advisor.

The senior advisor quickly recognized that I had a bit of experience in dealing with computers (got a computer science master and run a web startup) and started taking me very seriously right away. Long story short, he couldn't find anything obvious and started to suspect foul play with the hardware somewhere so he asked me to run the system diagnostics (reboot with a command + D keyboard sequence) and upload the analysis data to apple so they can check them thoroughly. And whoah, they don't mess around at Apple when they build diagnostic data, that tool generated an archive of 548 MB of data! Geez, that's a lot of stuff to go through!

Anyways, after a little bit - looking only trough the main analysis report - the senior guy tells me that there might be a faulty sensor in the machine preventing the board from shutting down certain power hungry parts when it should to conserve energy. Woot, it seems that my wishes might come true after all. He promises to send my detailed analysis to an engineering team and to get back to the next (tomorrow, so I haven't hear from him yet).

Happy to have found the start of route to resolution of my issues, I restart the laptop and continue on with my life. But, this is were it finally gets interesting - yes I know, it was very boring until now, me narrating my little experience - almost immediately I noticed a change... battery does not go down as fast as usual. A few minutes have passed and I am still showing 100% left even though I disconnected the charger as soon as I rebooted. I started looking at the activity monitor to see if the Energy impacts numbers have changed... nope nothing, it still seems to be the same as usual (average number of ~10 for Safari, 7 for Mailplane, 3 for Finder, 2 for Skype, etc. same ballpark as before). But now for some reason that I can't explain the battery gauge is showing 99% and 10:45 minutes left !!!

So, really I don't know how to explain it. Maybe some configuration got trigger by running the diagnostics that was miss-configured by the factory (like that story where some of the new Macbook came with the System Integrity Protection disabled by default - mine was one of them). But all I can say now, is that the same laptop, with exactly the same configuration (I did not change a single settings anywhere myself) running the same bunch of apps (Safari, Calendar, Sublime 3, Skype, Flowdock, Messages, Spotify, Activity Monitor, Mailplane, iTerm2) pretty much continuously has now been running straight for 6 hours and 20 minutes (as show by the Activity Monitor) at the moment I write those words and my battery gauge is still showing 41% left with an estimated 3h48 minutes remaining which gets me even over the 10h mark if it holds!

As a side note, the right-hand side graph in the activity monitor that display the battery usage is now looking a lot less like a straight line as before. It use to be pretty much a perfect straight line and pretty steep at that, now it's much more like a curve varying steepness at times and overall much much less steep.

So let me tell you that I am pretty happy right now, I feel like I got to the promised land Which is why I took some time to share this with the forum, maybe this experience can help others. I am pretty curious to know if running the diagnostics or other macbook not hitting the mark on the battery will help in any way. Please report back. I hope this is not a fluke and that next power cycle won't be back to the "old ways". I'll definitely also report those finding to the apple team when I hear back from them tomorrow.

Over and out.

 

[CBlakeston]

Just thought I would share my experience regarding battery life

Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear things are running well. I'm looking forward to 10.12.2 now its been confirmed that fixes things.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

I got 13 hours estimated remaining with Safari, Skype, and iTunes open, but with brightness about ¼ of the way up.

 

[b_scott]

but if they are saying 1080P iTunes movie playbacks for 10 hours I'd expect a little more than an hour.

They're not saying that.

 

[ThisBougieLife]

They're not saying that.

They are saying "Up to 10 Hours iTunes Movie Playback" under tech specs tho.

 

[Roller]

So, really I don't know how to explain it. Maybe some configuration got trigger by running the diagnostics that was miss-configured by the factory (like that story where some of the new Macbook came with the System Integrity Protection disabled by default - mine was one of them). But all I can say now, is that the same laptop, with exactly the same configuration (I did not change a single settings anywhere myself) running the same bunch of apps (Safari, Calendar, Sublime 3, Skype, Flowdock, Messages, Spotify, Activity Monitor, Mailplane, iTerm2) pretty much continuously has now been running straight for 6 hours and 20 minutes (as show by the Activity Monitor) at the moment I write those words and my battery gauge is still showing 41% left with an estimated 3h48 minutes remaining which gets me even over the 10h mark if it holds!

Thanks for sharing this. How much longer did the computer run past 6 h, 20 m before the battery actually gave out? Also, how actively were you using the apps that were running?

 

[maflynn]

I'm sure they'll find something else to complain about to justify the return!

That seems to be the issue with this MBP, there are other issues and facets that people don't like. Its a very expensive computer and if it has some shortcomings, I think the people who bought it are within their rights to return the laptop

 

[rrosengreen]

Soo. Just received it yesterday. Fresh install, all updates, energy settings on standard.
I have been using it in school to take light notes in pages and onenote for 2 hours, now it's down to 60 % battery, with estimated 2.5 hours left...........
So.... Out of more or less not using it I have at maximum om 5 hours of usage?? That is only 50 %! WHAT THE F*!
I traded it from my 4 year old MacBook Air which could hold for at least 10 hours of taking notes in school ALL DAY EVERYDAY! Come on Apple, fix!
[doublepost=1481113144][/doublepost]Soo. Just received it yesterday. Fresh install, all updates, energy settings on standard.
I have been using it in school to take light notes in pages and onenote for 2 hours, now it's down to 60 % battery, with estimated 2.5 hours left...........
So.... Out of more or less not using it I have at maximum om 5 hours of usage?? That is only 50 %! WHAT THE F*!
I traded it from my 4 year old MacBook Air which could hold for at least 10 hours of taking notes in school ALL DAY EVERYDAY! Come on Apple, fix!

 

[CBlakeston]

Soo. Just received it yesterday. Fresh install, all updates, energy settings on standard. I have been using it in school to take light notes in pages and onenote for 2 hours, now it's down to 60 % battery, with estimated 2.5 hours left........... So.... Out of more or less not using it I have at maximum om 5 hours of usage?? That is only 50 %! WHAT THE F*! I traded it from my 4 year old MacBook Air which could hold for at least 10 hours of taking notes in school ALL DAY EVERYDAY! Come on Apple, fix!

It's fixed in the 10.12.2 beta. If battery life is that much of an issue for the next week or so till its official release - download the beta.
[doublepost=1481114563][/doublepost]It would be super helpful for Mac Rumours to update the story with a 'reported fix in 10.12.2'.

 

[aponsin]

Thanks for sharing this. How much longer did the computer run past 6 h, 20 m before the battery actually gave out? Also, how actively were you using the apps that were running?

I actually went to bed before it was fully depleted, I had around 20% left and had been running for ~8 hours. I'll pick it up this morning and wait for full depletion to see where it takes me before charging again.
I was having a fairly decent normal usage with it, mostly browsing on wireless, emailing, handling a couple Excel files, nothing crazy.

 

[rrosengreen]

It's fixed in the 10.12.2 beta. If battery life is that much of an issue for the next week or so till its official release - download the beta.
[doublepost=1481114563][/doublepost]It would be super helpful for Mac Rumours to update the story with a 'reported fix in 10.12.2'.

No its not?
I'm running alteady running the beta version 5?

 

[CBlakeston]

No its not?
I'm running alteady running the beta version 5?

Maybe you have a different issue? Many with the latest beta have reported greatly improved battery life. Here's just one report. Your the first person I've seen say they're on the beta and its not fixed.

https://m.reddit.com/r/OSXBeta/comm...s_10122_b5_tmacbook_pro_battery/?compact=true

If the official release doesn't fix it for you I'd suggest contacting Apple for a replacement. That's what I'll do. I currently get 2 1/2 hours of battery life with safari open with one tab. Also file a bug report with Apple. http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

If you're not getting advertised battery life with light use then clearly something is wrong somewhere. But ranting on a forum Apple support doesn't read EVEN IN CAPITALS won't help!

 

[Tech198]

New hardware, New problems.

 

[rrosengreen]

Maybe you have a different issue? Many with the latest beta have reported greatly improved battery life. Here's just one report. Your the first person I've seen say they're on the beta and its not fixed.

https://m.reddit.com/r/OSXBeta/comm...s_10122_b5_tmacbook_pro_battery/?compact=true

If the official release doesn't fix it for you I'd suggest contacting Apple for a replacement. That's what I'll do. I currently get 2 1/2 hours of battery life with safari open with one tab. Also file a bug report with Apple. http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

If you're not getting advertised battery life with light use then clearly something is wrong somewhere. But ranting on a forum Apple support doesn't read EVEN IN CAPITALS won't help!

Well yeah.. I'll report it. after 3.5 hours now there is only 33 % left... So bad.
Strange however.

 

[michaelsviews]

The refurbished line of 13 & 15 was replenished late last night and thats already dropped. Seem's some people are have the battery drain and other issues and some are not. When apple has the dog and pony shows announcing new products and they make claims on batter life it'd be nice if someone in the audience had the nerve to ask what the testing scenario was for them to determine say 10 hours on battery for the MBP. Or does Apple silence people that ask questions at show's? Can't determine whether this new line is desperation, scam, or F it lets throw something out there to keep people happy of 3 years of NOTHING. Isn't there logo "It just works" seems someones slipping or forgot.

 

[aponsin]

Thanks for sharing this. How much longer did the computer run past 6 h, 20 m before the battery actually gave out? Also, how actively were you using the apps that were running?

Ok, I have fully depleted the battery (down to 0%) a few minutes ago. It lasted around 9 hours and 40 minutes on that single charge. Pretty happy about that figure

 

[CBlakeston]

The refurbished line of 13 & 15 was replenished late last night and thats already dropped. Seem's some people are have the battery drain and other issues and some are not. When apple has the dog and pony shows announcing new products and they make claims on batter life it'd be nice if someone in the audience had the nerve to ask what the testing scenario was for them to determine say 10 hours on battery for the MBP. Or does Apple silence people that ask questions at show's? Can't determine whether this new line is desperation, scam, or F it lets throw something out there to keep people happy of 3 years of NOTHING. Isn't there logo "It just works" seems someones slipping or forgot.

It would be nice if someone in the forum had the nerve to do a little research. Apple does clearly publish their scenario for testing. Brightness is 12 clicks to the right - out of the total of 16 so 3/4 brightness. They have the system signed into iCloud and cycle through ten popular website. Or.. they watch play iTunes movies which gets the video playback number. I'm trying to remember this from the top of my head but I think that's right.

 

[ackmondual]

God help me, i'm seriously considering getting a not-Mac.

I'm sure Apple is counting on stuff like this these days... they know that there are some people who simply will not switch away from OSX (regardless of if it's justified, or not). They in effect got a monopoly on those users, so they can come out with something incremental to say they've done something, but not make it too great so that they still have other features that'll get those folks to pony up.


If you're willing to vote with your wallet, that's the only tool at your disposal to drive changes.