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This is far from a controlled test, but when I use iStats pro to check my 2015 MBP 15 inch while viewing MacRumors, at 8 clicks of brightness I idle at around 12 watts, and at full brightness I idle around 19 watts. So based on that, I think display brightness does make a big difference.
These are mini-LED displays, so way more LEDs, plus hardware/firmware to constantly light/dim these lights as needed. Regular LED screens just turn on the backlight and that’s it, unless you change overall brightness in settings.
 
I'm not sure I'd say the battery life is all that bad if it lives up to specs? Sure its not going to be as good as the 16" with the larger capacity but thats to be expected. Further, I never find these things actually maintain there life anyways. My 2017 had it's battery replaced a couple years ago, for the first two months it was glorious, but then right back to not even making it through 4 hour flights.

All that to say, batteries are just batteries. There's not much you can do to change physics.
 
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Not sure what world we’re living in where 11-17 hours of battery life is considered “suck” on a this class of laptop. When Apple called the new chips Unleashed, they meant unleashed from smartphone limits on power consumption and TDP.

The Focus of the original M1 was maximizing efficiency and power usage for thin and light consumer laptops with multi day battery life. The M1 Pro and M1 Max are the exact opposite, push the hardware to the limits in a chassis that is unapologetically built to maximize cooling.

This is not “suck,” this is Apple listening to what their Pro user segment has been begging for since 2016: A notebook platform that is not limited in performance by an artificial need to be as thin and light as possible. A system that can run at full performance full-time even if it means it has to be 5mm thicker and we have to give up some battery to do it.
 
Not according to the specs on Apple's website.
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We do not know yet for certain whether the 1000 nits brightness applies to all content or HDR content only.

First, note the words "up to" 1000 nits. These words are missing in the tech specs for the 13 inch MacBook Pro (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP824?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US).

Another indication is that the Liquid Retina XDR Display, the stand-alone display Apple sells, is limited to 500 nits brightness for SDR (non-HDR) content (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP800?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US)
 
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We do not know yet for certain whether the 1000 nits brightness applies to all content or HDR content only.

First, note the words "up to" 1000 nits. These words are missing in the tech specs for the 13 inch MacBook Pro (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP824?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US).

Another indication is that the Liquid Retina XDR Display, the stand-alone display Apple sells, is limited to 500 nits brightness for SDR (non-HDR) content (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP800?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US)
Well yeah it's seemingly 500 nits even for the M1 13" MacBook Pro on the spec sheet. And we'll see how bright it gets when we get them. Suffice it to say, if the 14" & 16" could only do 500 nits peak brightness in SDR, I think Apple would have written that on their specs sheet as explicitly has they did with the "up 1,000 sustained peak brightness, 1,600 nits peak brightness."
 
Well yeah it's seemingly 500 nits even for the M1 13" MacBook Pro on the spec sheet. And we'll see how bright it gets when we get them. Suffice it to say, if the 14" & 16" could only do 500 nits peak brightness in SDR, I think Apple would have written that on their specs sheet as explicitly has they did with the "up 1,000 sustained peak brightness, 1,600 nits peak brightness."
If it's the same behaviour as a pro xdr display (that I have) it will be limited to 500 nits (SDR) desktop use.
 
Wouldn't apple compare the 14" at 500 nits brightness against the 13" anyway? Why would they do an apples to oranges comparison that hurts their marketing of the 14"? That way they could tout a more favorable battery life. So unfortunately, I think it can only do 500 nits in non-HDR mode.
 
Certainly not.

Apple's battery life estimates are based on browsing 25 websites. And video playback at 1080P. That's something even the low power cores on an iPhone 7 can handle. So the CPU/GPU power consumption is very low on the ladder.

A faster processor allows the system to "hurry up and get idle," as Intel puts it.

The biggest contributor for a notebook computer or smartphone has always been the display. The 14-inch has much more display area, 45% more pixels, and 100% increase in brightness.

What do you think is driving the display during web browsing at 120hz? The GPU.
 
What do you think is driving the display during web browsing at 120hz? The GPU.

What draws the icons on the macOS Dock? The GPU.

The point is, 120Hz browsing isn't even anything close to intensive. Neither is 1080P video. Power consumption has always been largely attributed to the display.
 
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What draws the icons on the macOS Dock? The GPU.

The point is, 120Hz browsing isn't even anything close to intensive. Neither is 1080P video. Power consumption has always been largely attributed to the display.
I don’t think it’s the display that makes the difference.

If that was the case, then the stream video battery benchmark would be similar to web browsing, since the display should consume a similar amount of energy during web browsing and during video watching.

But since it’s 6h more, I think it really has to do with the CPU and the 2 extra performance cores.
 
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I don’t think it’s the display that makes the difference.

If that was the case, then the stream video battery benchmark would be similar to web browsing, since the display should consume a similar amount of energy during web browsing and during video watching.

But since it’s 6h more, I think it really has to do with the CPU and the 2 extra performance cores.

Apple doesn't say anything about streaming video. It's simply a video playback.

The wireless web browsing test emphasizes wireless. Meaning the computer fires up the Wi-Fi radio and keeps it active, which why there is a such a big difference in battery life.

Neither of these tests will stress the CPU, memory, or require any high performance.

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I don’t think it’s the display that makes the difference.

If that was the case, then the stream video battery benchmark would be similar to web browsing, since the display should consume a similar amount of energy during web browsing and during video watching.

But since it’s 6h more, I think it really has to do with the CPU and the 2 extra performance cores.
video playback does not go at 120hz, but scrolling on safari does go at 120hz.

its the screen nit (1000 nits) + 120hz (wireless web means safari browsing) that's going to kill the battery life.

if unhappy with the battery life of the 14" MBP, wait for the MBA refresh that will most likely retain the M1's 4 efficiency cores but higher frequency (M1 Pro/Max only has 2 efficiency cores). guaranteed it will be at least 17+ hrs of wireless web.

chances are you can go higher than 11 hours of wireless web by keeping it at 60hz
 
Apple doesn't say anything about streaming video. It's simply a video playback.

The wireless web browsing test emphasizes wireless. Meaning the computer fires up the Wi-Fi radio and keeps it active, which why there is a such a big difference in battery life.

Neither of these tests will stress the CPU, memory, or require any high performance.

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If you read the footnote it says that Apple tested the base 14" mode. I wonder how the battery life of the other 14" models is...
 
Does anyone know how the battery of the 14" MBP compares to the M1 MacBook Air? I know the battery life with the Air is less than the M1 MBP, but not sure how it compares with the new 14" MBP with M1 Pro or Max.
 
Again, wrong. The new MBPs can go up to 500 nits for SDR content.
Source? No one actually knows this yet, the speculation is just based on the Pro Display XDR having peak 1600 HDR and SDR 500. No SDR specs have been released for the MBP.
 
Source? No one actually knows this yet, the speculation is just based on the Pro Display XDR having peak 1600 HDR and SDR 500. No SDR specs have been released for the MBP.
It might be speculation but it is highly probable. The iPad Pro display and the Pro Display XDR have the exact same limitation on SDR content. What makes you think that the new MBP will be different?
 
This seems like a rather weird discussion. There are folks who wonder about the battery life downgrade, and those that proclaim that a thousand cores certainly use more energy when used full blast. Well, yes, they do. But we're talking about the equivalent of a granny calmly reading the local news in a browser.

You can drive both a V6 and a V8 efficiently, and it'll use just a few sips more than that 4-banger. Nobody denies that nailing it changes that.

I'd understand if it were about an hour less than the 13", maybe two, but this difference in a completely non-intensive workload is mind-boggling.
 
I have an M1 MBA. I *never* run out of battery during the day. That's the only benchmark that matters to me, so I'm trying to figure out if the same will be true for the 14" M1 Max MBP I just ordered. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

To me, battery life is all about real-world usage. Will the battery life last through the longest flight that I'm likely to take (even though this is now largely moot because most long-haul flights offer a charging port)? Will it last through my typical workday? Anything beyond that is just specs on paper that don't matter to me.
 
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