Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
They seriously used someone connected to an external monitor and using Chrome as an example of getting bad battery life?? Really?

Why would you be connected to a monitor and not be plugged in and charging? Completely unrealistic example. And Chrome sucks on battery. This is so well known that I can't believe it was featured as part of nearly every example in this 'article.'
 
The first complaint mentioned here is from a user who is driving an external monitor. If you are driving an external monitor, and not pugged in to shore power, you don't really deserve any battery life. And then he goes on to mention gaming?
 
Ah yes, 'PC'. That massive well-known manufacturer. Glad you're here to provide your excellent tips on laptop alternatives.

Are you recommending the sub-$300 HP 15-f233wm, with a CPU less powerful a decade-old mobile C2D; a system barely powerful enough to just run the operating system? Or the 14" Razer Blade that's on the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, that would eat up most AAA games you'd throw at it?

Snarkiness doesn't win arguments. I think you know what they mean. Check the Dell XPS machines. Beautiful and a better deal.
 
I will, but I really don't have time for these experiments, that's one aspect of a "Pro" machine. Oh well. Here is for reference what my estimate says right now, light browsing on low screen brightness, internal graphics. Did SMCD reset by the way.

30f1607646.jpg

You have some background daemon running at 100% CPU, in all likelihood. Figure out which one, then tell Apple so they can fix the problem.

Oh, and if you just got it and migrated a bunch of files from your old machine, Spotlight is probably still indexing, in which case the problem will go away in a few days.
 
The sheer vitriol from users regarding all of these issues with the new MBPs would have been so much less if they were priced fairly. $1799 for the 13" is such a goddamn disgrace.

Well, fueling hate drove pageviews during the election, and turned out to be very profitable, MR is just jumping on the train.

I mean, this is as close as they can get to fake news, for now.

Otherwise the headline would read:

Different MBP users experience different battery life depending on usage case.


But here we are, still driving that page view revenue...
 
It's probably some runaway background process. For a long time my MacBook Air was only getting 1.5-2.5 hours of battery life because a process called "bird", which is part of iCloud Drive syncing, would spool up and use 50-100% of the CPU, even on battery power. Since it's not an "App", it wouldn't show up in the drop down menubar list, it would be visible in Activity Monitor when viewing system processes.

At some point Apple fixed it and now I get 4-5 hours again (older 2011 model). Took them a long time though, like the better part of a year, and I was pretty annoyed.
 
Truly a shame that this is happening. Last night, I disconnected my 15 MBP 2016 from the charger and began working in LR and PS. I was totally shocked when the low battery notification came on only 3 hours into working. I wasn't even doing anything that required much processor power. Not sure what is going on, but I really hope a software update comes out that fixes this, if not, I may simply go back and return it since I am within the holiday period. Such a shame, Apple. Such a shame.
 
Last edited:
It took them so long to make such a small upgrade and they couldn't get it right.
I should be receiving my company one in a few weeks, and although I am looking forward to it, I feel very disappointed in Apple.
Steve raised the bar too much.

The rest cannot really keep up, and although they still produce nice products, for us, who are used to the latest and greatest, we get this "wake-up and smell the coffee Mr. Larusso" :)

I ain't gonna cry now about Steve, I will though cry about too many problems with these new Macs which cost quite a few "doubloons"

Either way, Watch 2 and iPhone 7 Plus 128GB have been rock solid for me, and I just received the 2013 Airport Extreme. These work well.
 
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro Touch 15inch w/ 2.9ghz option and upgraded GPU. I get 5:38 hours at 99%.

The below screen shot shows my battery status with all apps closed except 'activity monitor'.
https://s17.postimg.org/t2oiq8brz/Screen_Shot_2016_11_16_at_10_03_08_PM.png

I shared this screen shot with apple support and I was told this is within the norm when using the 2.9ghz model.

I still really like the computer.

You really can't use the battery status estimate as an indicator of actual battery life, especially in the first few cycles. It's just an estimate after all and it isn't perfect. It'll adjust and go up or down during use even when the power draw remains fairly constant.

To get an actual figure you'll have to drain the battery under the conditions of Apple's Wi-Fi test.

To do this, charge the laptop to 100% (leave it charging for at least 10-15 minutes after it says 100%). Unplug and use it only for browsing with Safari on Wi-Fi with a brightness no greater than 75% (12 clicks up from off). Don't open, use or switch to any other apps (or have them running in the background) except perhaps Text Edit or some other known low-power apps. You won't be able to do this in one sitting so close the laptop and "stop the clock" when it's asleep. The minimal power drain when asleep isn't significant. Keep track of the times it's in use such as when you start, stop and when it finally powers off. It may help to have an ad blocker installed in Safari.

Doing this should give you a figure of around 10 hours as claimed but I'd suggest 9 hours is acceptable. Less than 7-8 would be unacceptable and 5-6 would indicate a problem in my opinion, be it software (drivers) or hardware.

Make sure you test with adequate Wi-Fi signal strength as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: randyrando
There are still 2015 models out there to be bought. I think thats the way to go as of now
I was considering buying the 2015 model, but the price is essentially the same (for 13" 16Gb/512Gb) and it really looks outdated compared to the 2016 models. I am not really very excited about my purchase, thought. I just NEED a new laptop.
 
The battery in the current 15" is 76 Wh. It's the previous gen that had 99.5.

Had they not been obsessed with thinness, they could have kept the battery at 99.5 and added 32GB memory. The non-LP DDR won't use an extra 24Wh

This. The biggest problem with this laptop is that they made it too thin. You can't throw away 25% of your battery capacity and try to make up the difference with better software and hope to get the same battery life as before.

The 2.5 hour life is exactly what I would expect to get if I bought one of these new machines. My top four power pigs are:
  • Finale—music composition app that keeps CoreAudio running continuously with multiple virtual instrument plug-ins.
  • Lightroom—photo management and editing app that uses insane amounts of CPU and GPU.
  • Xcode—programming tool (IDE) that sits at 100% CPU for hours reindexing everything every time I change branches, that continuously recompiles in the background (which uses lots of CPU), etc.
  • Chrome—web browser that I have to use for work (Safari unsupported). Continuously uses a small amount of CPU, occasionally has a random tab that uses high double-digit percentage of a CPU.
While running any one of those apps, my current MBPs can get as little as 3.5 hours of battery life. Multiply that by .75 (the difference in battery capacity), and you get 2.5 hours of battery life.

Want to know what I most want in a MacBook Pro? Removable batteries. I used to get about five or six hours of battery life on my black MacBook, because I always carried a spare 60 Wh battery and swapped batteries. If I could get a MacBook Pro with a removable 100 Wh battery pack, I could carry a spare and get six or seven hours, which would mean that I wouldn't be permanently tethered to a power outlet all day.
 
Want to know what I most want in a MacBook Pro? Removable batteries. I used to get about five or six hours of battery life on my black MacBook, because I always carried a spare 60 Wh battery and swapped batteries. If I could get a MacBook Pro with a removable 100 Wh battery pack, I could carry a spare and get six or seven hours, which would mean that I wouldn't be permanently tethered to a power outlet all day.

Apple doesn't believe in choice so that's NEVER going to happen again.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.