New MacBook Pro 8-hour Battery JOKE!

[wirelessmacuser]

I own many devices with batteries, like I'm sure many of you do. I have yet to have one device obtain the same exact battery run time, as is advertised by the manufacturer. Cell phones, Smartphones, Laptops, Digital Cameras, GPS devices, etc.

That said, I've been getting about 7 hours with light work, display at about 40% of full brightness and no other peripherals. I am completely satisfied with that result, as after all this a full featured powerful computer with a 15.4" display. And as I'm sure most of you know it's the display of any device that tends to draw the most from the battery...

 

[Err0xx]

I'm getting around 10 hours battery life..

I got the 17" i7 MBP with 8GB of ram and the 512GB SSD - I'm getting roughly 9.5 - 10 hours of battery life with nonstop usage (not sleeping or anything) with Google Chrome and Pages going nonstop. I'm a Law student in college and I have 3 2-hour classes and 1 1-hour class in a school day, for a total of 7 class hours per day. All of my classes are back to back and in the same building, so I just leave the computer open and go between them. I'm at about 25% brightness the whole time and at the end of my school day, I have about 30 - 35% battery left. Thats after over 7 hours of classes, so something is definitely up with your machine. One thing that I do have is the 512GB Solid State Drive; not sure how much power that saves over the standard type hard drive but it seems like 4 hours is very low. Make a shortcut to your Activity Monitor and place it on your desktop. Open it from time to time and see if there are any rogue applications running that are taxing your cpu or ram without you knowing it. I keep a check on my background activities, and with Chrome and Pages open (maybe 4-6 webpages at once) my CPU usage rarely goes about 3% (with 97% being free) and ram usage is typically about 75 - 80ish % free. Sometimes you can have things open or running that is using the CPU that shouldn't be - this will gimp battery life. Anywho, I hope you get things sorted out; when configured and used properly, the battery on this new MBP is a BEAST and should give you much more than 4 hours of use. Cheers, and good luck!

Err0xx

 

[awkwardpaws]

I find apple understate their battery times OP.

Calibrate your battery, then when it is full set the brightness to very dark, turn off the keyboard lights, turn the volume down, set it so the HDD spins down right away, turn off airport and bluetooth, ensure no other programs are running then open pages and just do some WP.

Then see how long your battery lasts.


doris

Hi doris

i bought a new 13" MBP a few days ago - can i just ask how to set that the HDD spins down right away? thanks!

 

[ubercool]

New MBP i5 here with 7200rpm drive and I'm seeing 2:50 now with 80% left at full brightness and Wi-Fi on. Turning it all the way down, I was seeing about 3:40 minutes. In other words, it will be a struggle to get over 4-5 hours, with both BT and Wi-Fi off and brightness turned down all the way.

Like the thread says, "8-hour Battery JOKE!"

 

[mark28]

New MBP i5 here with 7200rpm drive and I'm seeing 2:50 now with 80% left at full brightness and Wi-Fi on. Turning it all the way down, I was seeing about 3:40 minutes. In other words, it will be a struggle to get over 4-5 hours, with both BT and Wi-Fi off and brightness turned down all the way.

Like the thread says, "8-hour Battery JOKE!"

So does the battery life suck or not? Some people say they get 11 hours on their i7 while others say 5 hours is maximum

If it only gets 5 hours, then I'm buying the 13 inch MBP. So honest feedback is what I'm looking for

 

[burns863]

..Thats after over 7 hours of classes, so something is definitely up with your machine.

<rant>

No, it doesn't.

I've got to be honest, it annoys me so much when people say things such as the above. It just isn't possible to make such a judgement. Every battery will act differently depending on its calibration, prior and current usage/charging habits. Unfortunately with batteries, it is not a case of what happens for one person is the same for the next.

On a side note, I wish people would stop having a benny at the battery life of their portable products. At the end of the day, until Lithium Ion Batteries are replaced with a newer technology we are not going to see any significant improvement in battery life or overall lifespan.

</rant>

 

[Esquare]

New MBP i5 here with 7200rpm drive and I'm seeing 2:50 now with 80% left at full brightness and Wi-Fi on.

MBP i7 with 7200rpm drive here: shows 3:20 remaining at 47% while downloading and screen at 80%.

 

[dcurtis]

I have a 15" i7 and I will say that I notice the battery meter jumps around a *lot*. So I'm not sure that judging that alone is a good argument for either side of this.

I know two things and I will openly admit I didn't read this whole thread,

1) if the discrete is getting turned on by an application that can hurt. There is a list of apps that just by running will cause the discrete graphics to run.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/904106/

2) i did calibrate my battery on about the second day I had the machine. I don't know if this _only_ updates the readings from the machine but I have noticed that it seems to give me bigger numbers. Fully charged it will show 6:30 and that's with the display cranked up to two below max. I can get away with that for the most part so I don't turn it down cause I like it bright in those coffee shops!

I'm not saying anyone is wrong. Just saying that it's not happening to everyone and hoping to suggest some things. I think people do need to be realistic though.

 

[Xaero]

1) if the discrete is getting turned on by an application that can hurt. There is a list of apps that just by running will cause the discrete graphics to run.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/904106/

I just registered to post this same link. Definitely get the meter app from that thread and keep an eye on what programs are firing off the discrete graphics card.

For me it was... MSN!. I had it running in the background constantly and it was forcing the 330m to be constantly active and killing my battery life. Closed MSN and got a different MSN client and now my battery life is much improved.

 

[wowmacer]

Well, my new 13'' macbook pro shows that it only can hung on 3hrs for web browsing with around 50% brightness.So, I am wondering whether my battery is defect and according to coconutbattery, my battery capacity is 5770. Is it defected?

 

[Zadillo]

New MBP i5 here with 7200rpm drive and I'm seeing 2:50 now with 80% left at full brightness and Wi-Fi on. Turning it all the way down, I was seeing about 3:40 minutes. In other words, it will be a struggle to get over 4-5 hours, with both BT and Wi-Fi off and brightness turned down all the way.

Like the thread says, "8-hour Battery JOKE!"

Again, is there some reason people aren't posting the actual battery runtimes? This thread is full of people describing what the battery life estimator is showing, but why don't they just say "I actually ran out of battery life after 3 hours 30 minutes" or whatever?

Seriously, let's see how long the battery ACTUALLY lasts - these posts about what the estimator is showing are practically worthless.

Well, my new 13'' macbook pro shows that it only can hung on 3hrs for web browsing with around 50% brightness.So, I am wondering whether my battery is defect and according to coconutbattery, my battery capacity is 5770. Is it defected?

So, you've also tried running on battery for 3 hours at those settings and it ran down to empty, right? Surely you aren't just posting what the estimate said, but you've also seen how long you can run to empty?

So does the battery life suck or not? Some people say they get 11 hours on their i7 while others say 5 hours is maximum

If it only gets 5 hours, then I'm buying the 13 inch MBP. So honest feedback is what I'm looking for

The big problem is that 90% of the people seem to just want to post whatever the battery life estimator is telling them, not how long they actually use their laptop before the battery is empty.

 

[ibizarocks]

hey I have a new i7 mbp. One thing I am noticing over my old penryn laptop is that the battery takes AAAAAAGES to charge up. It's been charging from flat no for nearly 2 hours and it's only on 35% charged up!!! is this normal???

 

[California Crow]

hey I have a new i7 mbp. One thing I am noticing over my old penryn laptop is that the battery takes AAAAAAGES to charge up. It's been charging from flat no for nearly 2 hours and it's only on 35% charged up!!! is this normal???

Hmmm...

...I'm actually in the opposite situation, as I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly my new MBP 17 recharges. I did the 'calibration thing' last night, dropping the charge level down to 0% and letting it sleep overnight. I plugged it in and turned it on around 4:30 this morning, and when I left for work two hours later, it was at around 65%.

 

[ibizarocks]

Hmmm...

...I'm actually in the opposite situation, as I've been pleasantly surprised at how quickly my new MBP 17 recharges. I did the 'calibration thing' last night, dropping the charge level down to 0% and letting it sleep overnight. I plugged it in and turned it on around 4:30 this morning, and when I left for work two hours later, it was at around 65%.

ok well that doesn't sound too bad then because I've been working on mine whilst its been charging. I would have done the calibration thing but my time machine was backing up the new laptop so I couldn't but I'll give that a go and see what happens! thanks for the reply dude.

 

[andrewmunn]

I have a 2.4 ghz i5, and I can only get 5 hours of battery when doing light web browsing. 7 hours with no wifi and screen off. This is the actual amount of battery life I get, *not* what the battery indicator says (although its numbers agree with mine).

I've compared my MBP with a friends and he gets MUCH better battery life which leads me to believe my MBP is defective. However, the battery life is the same when the machines are doing intensive tasks like watching HD video, which suggests my machine has trouble going into a low power idle state. I've contacted Apple support about this, and they agree with me that there is a problem, but they don't know what it is.

I suspect the problem may be that the CPU is not correctly underclocking itself. Please download this app http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles
/download-maccpuid/ from Intel and report back what your CPU frequency is when plugged in versus on battery. My CPU never falls below the stock 2.4 GHZ!

Additionally, iStat reports that my computer consumes 0.8-1.0 amps when idle, versus the 0.5-0.6 that my friend's MBP consumes. Something is definitely wrong.

Edit: To be clear, I always made sure the Nvidia 330M was deactivated when measuring battery life and power draw.

 

[Jasoco]

which model is yours? it is a week 08 so made in february.. this ia the proof that they were in production 2 months ago while we were waiting ... it seems almost a pre production unit if really made in february

How do you get the week from that? My serial number doesn't seem to agree..

W8016FK5ATM

Does that mean week 16? What does the 80 mean? I opened Coconut Battery and it said my Mac was made 122 months ago. My brand new MacBook Pro was made 10 years ago according to Coconut Battery. How? What? I don't even have files on my HD that are 10 years old.

 

[Err0xx]

I got the 17" i7 MBP with 8GB of ram and the 512GB SSD - I'm getting roughly 9.5 - 10 hours of battery life with nonstop usage (not sleeping or anything) with Google Chrome and Pages going nonstop. I'm a Law student in college and I have 3 2-hour classes and 1 1-hour class in a school day, for a total of 7 class hours per day. All of my classes are back to back and in the same building, so I just leave the computer open and go between them. I'm at about 25% brightness the whole time and at the end of my school day, I have about 30 - 35% battery left. Thats after over 7 hours of classes, so something is definitely up with your machine. One thing that I do have is the 512GB Solid State Drive; not sure how much power that saves over the standard type hard drive but it seems like 4 hours is very low. Make a shortcut to your Activity Monitor and place it on your desktop. Open it from time to time and see if there are any rogue applications running that are taxing your cpu or ram without you knowing it. I keep a check on my background activities, and with Chrome and Pages open (maybe 4-6 webpages at once) my CPU usage rarely goes about 3% (with 97% being free) and ram usage is typically about 75 - 80ish % free. Sometimes you can have things open or running that is using the CPU that shouldn't be - this will gimp battery life. Anywho, I hope you get things sorted out; when configured and used properly, the battery on this new MBP is a BEAST and should give you much more than 4 hours of use. Cheers, and good luck!

Err0xx

As stated in my previous post, my claim to battery life IS based off of actual usage. The percentage of battery remaining in the menu bar is close to 100% accurate, the estimated run times may not be close, but the battery percentage is. Anyway, ran my computer for my 7 hour school day today, then left it on all the way home (disabled sleep and screen going off), which is about an hour drive. After I got home, around 4:15, I wrote a book review with internet open and pages and my computer finally went into forced hibernation at exactly 6:55. Thats over 10 hours of nonstop usage with the same brightness/processes open as in my quoted post. Sure, batteries and such may be different from machine to machine, but i don't see how they can be so different as to cause 4-5 hours of battery difference. Try using the same configuration and open processes as I am after you calibrate your battery. I don't understand why my battery life is so good, unless this Solid State Drive really does save that much power. Beats the heck out of me.

Err0xx

 

[polsander]

I have a 2.4 ghz i5, and I can only get 5 hours of battery when doing light web browsing. 7 hours with no wifi and screen off. This is the actual amount of battery life I get, *not* what the battery indicator says (although its numbers agree with mine).

I've compared my MBP with a friends and he gets MUCH better battery life which leads me to believe my MBP is defective. However, the battery life is the same when the machines are doing intensive tasks like watching HD video, which suggests my machine has trouble going into a low power idle state. I've contacted Apple support about this, and they agree with me that there is a problem, but they don't know what it is.

I suspect the problem may be that the CPU is not correctly underclocking itself. Please download this app http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles
/download-maccpuid/ from Intel and report back what your CPU frequency is when plugged in versus on battery. My CPU never falls below the stock 2.4 GHZ!

Additionally, iStat reports that my computer consumes 0.8-1.0 amps when idle, versus the 0.5-0.6 that my friend's MBP consumes. Something is definitely wrong.

Edit: To be clear, I always made sure the Nvidia 330M was deactivated when measuring battery life and power draw.

got your problem i guess. my frequency is always at peak.
what about the amps, how can i see them? anyway my problems is also MDS process, with my internet dongle by 3 it gets crazy

 

[polsander]

How do you get the week from that? My serial number doesn't seem to agree..

W8016FK5ATM

Does that mean week 16? What does the 80 mean? I opened Coconut Battery and it said my Mac was made 122 months ago. My brand new MacBook Pro was made 10 years ago according to Coconut Battery. How? What? I don't even have files on my HD that are 10 years old.

W8013QPTAGU this is my serial. does it mean that it is a model assembled 8 weeks ago? that could amount to all the problem...

 

[diamond.g]

I have a 2.4 ghz i5, and I can only get 5 hours of battery when doing light web browsing. 7 hours with no wifi and screen off. This is the actual amount of battery life I get, *not* what the battery indicator says (although its numbers agree with mine).

I've compared my MBP with a friends and he gets MUCH better battery life which leads me to believe my MBP is defective. However, the battery life is the same when the machines are doing intensive tasks like watching HD video, which suggests my machine has trouble going into a low power idle state. I've contacted Apple support about this, and they agree with me that there is a problem, but they don't know what it is.

I suspect the problem may be that the CPU is not correctly underclocking itself. Please download this app http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles
/download-maccpuid/ from Intel and report back what your CPU frequency is when plugged in versus on battery. My CPU never falls below the stock 2.4 GHZ!

Additionally, iStat reports that my computer consumes 0.8-1.0 amps when idle, versus the 0.5-0.6 that my friend's MBP consumes. Something is definitely wrong.

Edit: To be clear, I always made sure the Nvidia 330M was deactivated when measuring battery life and power draw.

I don't think that is accurate. We need something like CPU-Z/GPU-Z to tell the true clock speed at any moment. MacCPUID shows that my (current) Macbook is 2.0 Ghz, but I know that speedstep is working.

 

[MathiasVH]

I consistently get 5 hours MAX on my 15" i5 (With basic internet surfing, which I think's the absolute least you can do while wanting to test battery life - As it's the least I can do on my laptop). I'm disappointed - I was promised 8-9 hours with BASIC SURFING. That's what Apple told me. I do think this can be solved by some kind of software-update, 'cause the temperature smcFanControl shows when the CPU's idle is somewhere between 40 and 50 celcius. My plan is to get a SSD, so we'll see if that'll extend my battery life noticeably.

(sorry for my english, I'm tired as h**l )

 

[MBHockey]

Again, is there some reason people aren't posting the actual battery runtimes? This thread is full of people describing what the battery life estimator is showing, but why don't they just say "I actually ran out of battery life after 3 hours 30 minutes" or whatever?

Seriously, let's see how long the battery ACTUALLY lasts - these posts about what the estimator is showing are practically worthless.



So, you've also tried running on battery for 3 hours at those settings and it ran down to empty, right? Surely you aren't just posting what the estimate said, but you've also seen how long you can run to empty?



The big problem is that 90% of the people seem to just want to post whatever the battery life estimator is telling them, not how long they actually use their laptop before the battery is empty.

+1 million

 

[wrboyce]

I got the 17" i7 MBP with 8GB of ram and the 512GB SSD - I'm getting roughly 9.5 - 10 hours of battery life with nonstop usage (not sleeping or anything) with Google Chrome and Pages going nonstop. I'm a Law student in college and I have 3 2-hour classes and 1 1-hour class in a school day, for a total of 7 class hours per day. All of my classes are back to back and in the same building, so I just leave the computer open and go between them. I'm at about 25% brightness the whole time and at the end of my school day, I have about 30 - 35% battery left. Thats after over 7 hours of classes, so something is definitely up with your machine. One thing that I do have is the 512GB Solid State Drive; not sure how much power that saves over the standard type hard drive but it seems like 4 hours is very low. Make a shortcut to your Activity Monitor and place it on your desktop. Open it from time to time and see if there are any rogue applications running that are taxing your cpu or ram without you knowing it. I keep a check on my background activities, and with Chrome and Pages open (maybe 4-6 webpages at once) my CPU usage rarely goes about 3% (with 97% being free) and ram usage is typically about 75 - 80ish % free. Sometimes you can have things open or running that is using the CPU that shouldn't be - this will gimp battery life. Anywho, I hope you get things sorted out; when configured and used properly, the battery on this new MBP is a BEAST and should give you much more than 4 hours of use. Cheers, and good luck!

Err0xx

Eeeesh, same machine except I have a 256GB Crucial C300 SSD, and I'm yet to get over three hours. Nothing CPU intensive, Chrome + Terminal mostly; although my Twitter client (Tweetie) does force the NVIDIA gfx.

Still, 10 hours? Niiiice.

 

[polsander]

ok, ultimate battery test - MBP 15" entry

ok guys, the joke is over. I get 4 hours of battery life in the same conditions as the Apple 8-hours productivity test, doing just some word and light browsing and mail. checking graphic card, everything's okay, always with intel...no crazy processes rockin the cpu, thus...this is ridicolous. I feel betrayed, this is exactly half of promised.


Shoud I write to them? report it to the official support?

 

[parajba]

I picked up a new MBP i5 2.4GHz and confirm the battery lasts up to 8 hours. I mostly surf, 50% brightness, bluetooth switched off.
Am very pleased with this mac and its battery!
How can people get such different results?!?