I have this Battery Drain issue on my brand new base 14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro chip. 8Core/16GB Memory. I did a Factory reset last night and re-installed the OS (Monterey - 12.0.1). So far there was no Battery Drain while on Sleep, but while using it with very minimal apps open such as Safari 5-6 tabs open, Remote Desktop App and Activity Monitor it has consumed 30% in the last 3 hours of usage. The battery has been set to low power mode along with "Slightly dimmed screen while on Battery power" option ticked, I have the Brightness set to 45-50% .No Bluetooth devices connected. No external device/s connected and no External Monitor. Find my Mac is Turned off, almost all notifications are off. Display is manually set to P3-500 nits with 60Hz with Auto Brightness off, True Tone Off. There is no Time Machine configured or any other Backup services. I'm not listening to any music or Spotify/Pandora. I'm really starting to think that this is really for Pro users who really need the power and doesn't really care about battery life. The M2 chips will probably be geared towards people like me. But then again, I was planning to use this for running multiple VM's, Visual Studio, iTerm2, Watching some training videos, Study/Lab materials etc. I'm really hopping that this is just a bug that can be addressed in an update. I really like the 14" and don't want to go to 16" as its a little to big for my preference. Though I have heard that some 16" MBP with M1 Pro Chip having the same issues. Has anyone been able to figure this thing out? I wish there was a way to test Big Sur on this machine to see if its really the OS or its just the hardware on this laptop that's consuming the power.
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Major Battery Drain - 14" MBP M1 Pro 8C/16GB/512
- Thread starter asohal
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Losing 10% an hour while web browsing would put you at about 10ish hours of battery life, which isn't really far off the "up to 11 hours wireless web browsing" Apple claims for the 14". That seems about normal to me.
I clearly understand that part, but what if I start running VM's, including other apps that requires power? Does this mean I should've gotten myself a 16" instead?
Then you'll get less. It means you weren't realistic in your expectations.
If the battery life, larger screen, and so on are worth the extra money and weight, sure. But you still won't be able to go all day doing heavy processing, probably. Any reason not to plug in some while working? You can fast charge up to 50% in a half hour.
Btw, have you checked in Activity Monitor to see whether indexing is done, and what's using your energy?
OP got fooled by Apple saying you get all-day battery life etc etc. These laptop are only a bit better battery life than a equivalent high end Windows laptop
I get 15+ hours. No Intel that I'm aware of gets that.
Thank you for your input. I guess I should've really considered those Battery Numbers (Hours) seriously. What's good is that I'm still under my 14 day window of returning the device.
Long story with lots of details, but the important information is missing - which applications use most energy? It is in Activity monitor and would tell you if this is something which may go away (indexing), relates to web sites you are using (Safari), or some other process. That info is most useful when trying to figure out what is happening.
Apologies, I think I should have added those information. Anyway, mostly its Safari showing up on Activity Monitor and sometimes its Microsoft Remote Desktop App (used to connect to Azure Windows Virtual Desktop for work related stuff). For Indexing, are you referring to Spotlight showing up in the list? Or the specific process called mdworker under CPU processes? If the later, then yes, I see it and I see Spotlight under the Activity Monitor list of apps running.
When you say you get 15+ hours, how much battery percentage is left before you plug it into AC?
If the most energy using applications are RDC app and Safari, it will be difficult to fix much and Apple is innocent. RDC is not Apple application at all, so they have no control over how much energy it is using. Some clients for remote access are nightmare for cpu use and some are low power use. Depends on protocol and how they are implemented.
Safari - as any browser - is another challenge as its power use really depends on what the web page itself is running. Each page should be basically considered its own application and depends on how that page is written and what is it doing. Adware blockers may help, if they manage to stop scripts and junk from running.
When new, I used it for 8 hours straight and about 60% battery was left. Some of that time was used for high resolution audio processing, not just web surfing and/or watching videos. I stopped paying attention after that because battery life isn't an issue with this machine.
How is everyone's Display settings configured? I just changed my settings to use the Apple XDR 1600 Default with 6 clicks of birghtness from the left. Selected the Automatically Adjust Brightness and I've made sure I'm using Promotion this time. I actually selected 60Hertz manually with P3-500 nits before thinking this would help in lower battery consumption. Not sure if disabling Promotion and setting it to 60 Hertz manually was the cause of my battery drain, since I was moving through 2 different Desktop, 1 was the main desktop and the other was my Full-Screen Remote Desktop session. I'm really interested in knowing how everyone's setting is.
Greetings, I've a worse battery issue. I received this brand new 14"M1 Pro yesterday. This morning I left it on with only Safari app, and display is set to off in 2 mins, and left my office. When I returned to it after about 4 hours, it's battery went zero.
This is normally due to something preventing the machine from sleeping.
Google Mac battery drain fix, there's YouTube videos on how to fix it.
It's not a problem with the Mac generally, its some application you have installed that is preventing sleep.
Google Mac battery drain fix, there's YouTube videos on how to fix it.
It's not a problem with the Mac generally, its some application you have installed that is preventing sleep.
Funny thing is that Ive only installed MS Remote Desktop app, and close it fully when not in use. Everything else is default apps that comes pre-installed
Probably indexing. The Energy tab in Activity Monitor may show where the power went.