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New Macbook Pro battery onlly lasts 3~4 hours

J

jonomo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 28, 2005
197
0
I just got the new Macbook pro a few days ago and I noticed that the battery only lasts 3~4 hours.. nothing close to the 7~9 hours as advirtised.. what's going on?
 
Well, to tell you the truth, Apple cuts a few corners when they say the battery lasts 7 hours. It only lasts 7 hours when:

Your doing NOTHING on the computer.
The screen brightness is turned WAY down.
The keyboard lighting is turned OFF.
The HDD is spun DOWN.
 
I've been using my 15" i5 2.4GHz on battery power since 10:00pm (pacific) wirelessly surfing the web on my Airport Extreme about 20 feet away using Chrome (with the Intel integrated forced with gfxCardStatus v1.), checking email, playing a few songs on iTunes, display at about half brightness and the keyboard LED set to low...it is now 1:45am and my battery readout says 57% remaining (4hrs 10mins)...that would give me about 7+ hours...not too shabby...:D :apple:
Edit: forgot to add - BlueTooth off...
 
On my 17" i am getting a good 6+ hours after calibration. This is with the brightness set just 3 notches down while i web browse and photoshop. You should calibrate your battery the first week you use your new mac. I hope everything works out.
 
As other have said and will continue saying, do a battery calibration. I am in the process of doing mine and this damn laptop won't die. Been using my 13" since 10:15 with web/music/some steam and i still have 18% left over 6 hours later. Hoping to get close to 8 with the calibration.
 
Lol I don't see why you'd need to use your computer for more than 5 or 6 hours straight anyway. I've never used mine for more than 4 hours in a row.

What about you guys?
 
This one is good for 6-7 hrs surfing, which I'm happy with.

Edit: Mostly in the evening, so screen brightness <50%
 
mrsir2009 said:
Well, to tell you the truth, Apple cuts a few corners when they say the battery lasts 7 hours. It only lasts 7 hours when:

Your doing NOTHING on the computer.
The screen brightness is turned WAY down.
The keyboard lighting is turned OFF.
The HDD is spun DOWN.
Click to expand...

That isn't correct. The testing conditions they claim for battery life is as follows:

The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processor document with display brightness set to the middle setting.
Click to expand...

You can find it under note 1 at the bottom of this page http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/features.html
 
I have read in another thread about some people who had the same issue. The problem was they swapped their hard drive from their old macbook to their new one. So the computer didn't recognize the newer battery or something to that effect. So maybe if you did that or if you cloned your drive then you could try a clean install of the OS.
 
Lemme guess...
You are watching videos and surfing non-stop, you are running your nVidia Graphics Chip 24/7 and never your Intel HD Graphics, and you are on medium-high to full brightness.

Even having one of those reasons will put your battery that low.
 
Lol dude, videos just own your battery. And if they're flash, even worse. Don't even think about getting more than 4 hours if your watching flash videos the whole time. In fact, 4 hours of watching vids is pretty lucky. :D
 
mine usually lasts me all day...longest i had was 12hrs lol. if i watch movies, it'll drop me down to 4-5hrs of battery life, but if i increase my fan speed while watching movie it'll drop down to 3. right now mine has 26% battery life with half way brightness on my screen and keyboard backlight @ 4notches, i got 2hrs and 6mins left :D
 
mrsir2009 said:
Well, to tell you the truth, Apple cuts a few corners when they say the battery lasts 7 hours. It only lasts 7 hours when:

Your doing NOTHING on the computer.
The screen brightness is turned WAY down.
The keyboard lighting is turned OFF.
The HDD is spun DOWN.
Click to expand...

Nooo... Apple says it lasts 8-9 hours when...

Surfing the internet :mad:
Editing text in word Document:confused:
Brightness on 50% (Most people use 60-70% anyway, I use 50%) :mad:
Keyboard light OFF :D
HDD is spun NORMAL :mad:
WiFi ON:confused:
BlueTooth OFF:confused:
Click to expand...

:mad:=You are wrong............:D=You are right.............:confused:You didn't include

mrsir2009 said:
Is it a 13", 15" or 17" model? Because my 13" lasts just over 5 hours when surfing the web.
Click to expand...

What 13" do you have? My new 2010 one lasts 11 hours with 50% brightness, Bluetooth OFF, WiFi ON, Internet, and Typing
 
Battery calibration will not give you more battery time. The calibration only makes the battery gauge more accurate.
 
That's not true~ However, is really depends on what you do
Is crap to tell us you're doing Photoshop or Final Cut with full brightness

So What did you do?

PS: I can get about 8 hours

Wifi
iWork (Pages)
iTunes with earphone
Brightness 50%

Apple ONLY promise the true, not like a lot of Windows laptop promise 5 or 6 hours with wifi off and brightness ever lower than 50% and still can't get 5 hours of battery life lol What a joke :D
 
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