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mbp 2.3ghz owners - what kind of battery life are you seeing?

7

73CortinaV8

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
476
213
Palo Alto, CA
Let's say browsing the web. My first full charge I got 45 minutes before it went red. I was browsing and installing stuff. Not really taxing the system too much.

Is battery life really that crummy for the faster model?

edit: and when it went red it said there was 19 minutes remain.

There appeared to be no CPU-hog processes and no unusual disk activity.
 
Last edited:
what was the screen brightness? did you have the backlit keyboard enabled? which browser were you running? have you installed gfxCardStatus (http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/) to see which GPU is running?

i have the 2.2GHz and last night i was browsing on safari and listening to music on iTunes and i got 7:15 out of it... i actually fell asleep before my laptop went dead. screen brightness was slightly below half
 
Well installing stuff does use a fair amount of system resources, when I was reinstalling OSX on my 2010 i7, on battery, i had 8% left by the time it was done :D
 
I still can get 2-3 Hrs on mine, it depend on the kind of work am doing on my Macbook, what's your battery cycle and life readings? You may need to replace your battery.
 

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edifyingGerbil said:
what was the screen brightness? did you have the backlit keyboard enabled? which browser were you running? have you installed gfxCardStatus to see which GPU is running?

i have the 2.2GHz and last night i was browsing on safari and listening to music on iTunes and i got 7:15 out of it... i actually fell asleep before my laptop went dead. screen brightness was slightly below half
Click to expand...

50% screen brightness, no keyboard light.

let me install this gpu thing
 
73CortinaV8 said:
Let's say browsing the web. My first full charge I got 45 minutes before it went red. I was browsing and installing stuff. Not really taxing the system too much.

Is battery life really that crummy for the faster model?

edit: and when it went red it said there was 19 minutes remain.

There appeared to be no CPU-hog processes and no unusual disk activity.
Click to expand...

I have a 2011 15" hi-res 2.3 with an intel SSD and the original HDD in an optibay.

I reliably get 7.5 hours of basic safari browsing and terminal sessions. Firing up and working in a real application that can make use of the multiple cores (e.g. Photoshop) cuts this roughly in half. Firing up a 3D game (like Portal or CS:Source) at native resolution and high settings gives less than 3 hours of battery life.

Honestly, I find this battery life adequate; it's better than the machine it replaced (early 2008 penryn) ever was, even with a brand new battery.
 
One of the first things I did when I got this comp. is check to see how much battery life I'd get under realistically heavy usage. I got about four hours, thirty minutes with in a test a variety of different applications. I played a whole DVD in full screen mode (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles Vol. 1), played a little bit of Braid (up to about halfway through the third level, with all puzzle pieces collected) and surfed the Web a bit. The I.M. client was running in the background during most of that time. I'm running off of a wireless router.

This was before Firefox 4.0 came out with GPU acceleration though. gfxCardStatus informs me that FF IV always wants the discrete GPU when FF is open and dynamic switching is turned enabled. How much time do you get using Safari instead?

I'd imagine you should probably get more than 45 minutes either way, esp. since I got 60 times that much but I can't be 100% sure without running another test myself. I still think it's likely that your battery might just be defective though. Apple should replace it in that case, as par the terms and conditions laid out in the limited warranty. (User consumable parts like batteries aren't covered, unless it's a defect in the materials or workmanship.)
 
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CHSeifert said:
Try to chrge it to full, then let it go all the way down - do this 3-4 times.
Click to expand...
This isn't necessary and it adds cycles needlessly. Just use the MBP normally, make sure the battery is properly calibrated, and make note of what consumes battery power.
 
Depends on what i'mdoing, but if i'm just working on excel, it says i'm getting 6.5 - 7 hours, right now as I am taking a break on macrumors typing this, it says i have 6:35 with 78% remaining.
 
I've yet to run it down.

2.5 hours of surfing & ARD over WiFi left me with 83% the other morning (screen at 1/2 brightness, keyboard backlight on, and discrete GPU).

Color me pleased.
:)
 
I am experiencing excellent battery life. Before I bought an MBP, I read in this forum that the 2011 MBPs are sucking the juice out of the battery, but that has not been my experience. I receive roughly 6-7 hours of juice, but I have had 5 hours of juice. I was importing pictures with several tabs and apps running etc.. Nothing hardcore though, as that should be noted. I have cycled my battery 9 times.

Also, I adjusted my brightness to 30% or so, with the backlight on, set display sleep to 2 minutes, and the laptop sleeps after 3 minutes before I used the laptop off the charger. I will test the battery this week while using new software that I bought. I am pleasantly pleased thus far. :)

Furthermore, I would be concerned, because 45 minutes of juice is very weak! Since you were not "taxing" the system, you should check your settings as others have already pointed out. One question though. What do you consider "taxing" while using your laptop?
 
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With gfxCardStatus

edifyingGerbil said:
what was the screen brightness? did you have the backlit keyboard enabled? which browser were you running? have you installed gfxCardStatus (http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus/) to see which GPU is running?

i have the 2.2GHz and last night i was browsing on safari and listening to music on iTunes and i got 7:15 out of it... i actually fell asleep before my laptop went dead. screen brightness was slightly below half
Click to expand...

With integrated graphics only and 75% display brightness, and without my ExpressCard SSD, I have been getting around 4-5 hours on a 17. That being said, I was running an XP VM under Fusion 3.1, and running three virtual routers under GNS3/dynamips/dynagen, while browsing the web and working on CCNA security labs.

At the end of the day it depends on how many cycles your battery has, how often you calibrate it, and what your workflow is.
 
they do need to be discharged once in a while though.

also I get 4-6 hours with typical moderate load; 4 spaces, safari (5 tabs 2 windows), tweetdeck, adium, Mail, youtube (but using click to flash so flash doesn't chew all my recourses) and a bunch of stuff in dashboard.

under heavier load I'll get maybe 3 hours on a full charge (tops) with things like minecraft, source engine games aren't much heavier supprisingly, I guess 'cause minecraft needs to generate a massive open world and a bunch of AI for the animals (and it's all in Java)
 
73CortinaV8 said:
Let's say browsing the web. My first full charge I got 45 minutes before it went red. I was browsing and installing stuff. Not really taxing the system too much.

Is battery life really that crummy for the faster model?

edit: and when it went red it said there was 19 minutes remain.

There appeared to be no CPU-hog processes and no unusual disk activity.
Click to expand...

about 2 hrs now, a bit more if it's just light work. It can run about 3hrs if I pull the spinning disk and just run off my SSD

EDIT: Ah, you're talking about the new machines, those should be *considerably* higher than mine
 
I was getting the specified Apple estimate using battery with the graphics switcher set to integrated always. I also use Flash blocker and yeah it started off at 10hours, dropped to 9 and 8 hours but that was after an hour and half usage so I expected it to get the 7 hours just doing some blogging and web browsing with a couple notches under half brightness. The AG helped here as I was on the couch near a window.. no need to turn up brightness though =D
 
PAPO said:
they do need to be discharged once in a while though.

also I get 4-6 hours with typical moderate load; 4 spaces, safari (5 tabs 2 windows), tweetdeck, adium, Mail, youtube (but using click to flash so flash doesn't chew all my recourses) and a bunch of stuff in dashboard.

under heavier load I'll get maybe 3 hours on a full charge (tops) with things like minecraft, source engine games aren't much heavier supprisingly, I guess 'cause minecraft needs to generate a massive open world and a bunch of AI for the animals (and it's all in Java)
Click to expand...

Correct - just because they are Li-Ion, they still can benefit from a discharge once in a while.

I've been doing this to all my batteries, whteher they were the old NiMH or the newer Li-Polymer or Li-Ion - and I always have great battery life, wonder why :rolleyes:

First time I always charge them fully and run them almost down to 2-5%, then fully charge and then run them down to 2-5%. Do this 3-4 times, and then I charge them like I feel like :)

Once a month or so, I remember to run the batterty down and then charge it fully. This is also what iPhone guides recommend.
 
Full discharges calibrate the battery. They also add a cycle, but you've a guaranteed 1000 of those before the battery may be impacted significantly.

It's a well-known fact that batteries need at least one full discharge to calibrate correctly.
 
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