New MBP13" 10h Battery: Scam?

[Jazojas12]

I haven't yet calibrated my battery as I've just got my 2010 13" MBP..but running Firefox(no flash/youtube/etc), iTunes(idle), iPhoto(idle) with brightness at 50% with keyboard backlight at 30%, with only wifi on, temp is ~130*F, CPU is <20%...my battery says 57% charge with 2:40 remaining.
Hopefully correct once it's calibrated..

 

[lordofuo]

Wow your an idiot.

1. You've obviously never used an MBP13 before. I'm typing this out in a well let room at 5 bars. My GF next to me is at 6 bars (out of 16). At 1 bar it isn't a mirror, although reflections are noticeable. At 5 bars they are gone.

2. Many have gotten 10 hours with the MBP13. Some have even got 11 hours. On my 2.26, I routinely get 5-7 hours.

3. No ****.

4. I'm getting better than your estimate and I'm not even on the 2.4.

Ice Cold.

 

[mjoshi123]

Hi!

I bought the new 13"MBP bottom (2.4Ghz) last week, And I have charged it five times (load-cycles)
Not only the battery health is at 95%, but also It drains in 4-5h with bright set to low! It's far away from 10h.
Is it normal? I have an old MBP15" that can stay on for the same time that my new 13MBP in the same conditions!

In addition, a friend of mine, with the same new 13MBP, has the same "problem" (despite his battery health, that is still at 100%)

Is there any other here with the same Issue? Is it normal?
Thanks!

Welcome to Steve's world of reality distortion .

 

[Cheeseshred]

Mine seems to do all right. I had the 4-5 h estimates before, but now after the second calibration, it averages around 8 hours on 90%.

How ever, my battery too is showing less than 100% health(in Coconut and iStat). Is that something we should be concerned with?

 

[Jazojas12]

I haven't yet calibrated my battery as I've just got my 2010 13" MBP..but running Firefox(no flash/youtube/etc), iTunes(idle), iPhoto(idle) with brightness at 50% with keyboard backlight at 30%, with only wifi on, temp is ~130*F, CPU is <20%...my battery says 57% charge with 2:40 remaining.
Hopefully correct once it's calibrated..

Yeah so battery has been calibrated..Running Firefox, iTunes, no BT, Brightness is 3 notches, backlight keyboard is 1 notch. Temp is ~140*F, CPU <20%. 91% battery estimated 4:21. I don't think 10 hours is possible...

 

[EstrlM3]

Yeah so battery has been calibrated..Running Firefox, iTunes, no BT, Brightness is 3 notches, backlight keyboard is 1 notch. Temp is ~140*F, CPU <20%. 91% battery estimated 4:21. I don't think 10 hours is possible...

Take back your computer... lol why would you pay over a thousand dollars for a product that advertises 10 hours light web/productivity use, to get 4.5 hours...

 

[col sandurz]

It used to be common knowledge that to get the best life out of a rechargeable battery (both per cycle and in number of cycles possible) you should strive for full charge and full discharge. With modern batteries, there are sophisticated circuits that monitor charge. However, the circuit is not actually part of the battery; so, it needs to know what its seeing. Hence calibration.

That said, only a few people on this thread have mentioned calibration. And, some of the posts suggest they are not doing it entirely correctly. Calibration for MacBooks and PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) is different from the old iBooks and Powerbooks of yore. The main difference for the newer laptops is the need to keep it plugged in and on for 2 hours after completing the charge during the charge end of the cycle and the need to keep the computer asleep for 5 hours after complete discharge during the discharge end of the cycle. This tells me the newer batteries benefit from an additional trickle charge and discharge at the ends of the cycle.

see:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

I would say if this doesn't work, the battery is a dud. Jazojas12, it looks like yours is a dud, although the calibration seemed to have helped some.

 

[jolsrud]

Is there an application that will measure the actual battery time? I know about "uptime", but if you put your macbook to sleep etc..

 

[mikeo007]

Is there an application that will measure the actual battery time? I know about "uptime", but if you put your macbook to sleep etc..

Stopwatch?

 

[unagimiyagi]

I'm still waiting for objective evidence that these batteries last 3 times as long as normal batteries.

The batteries are at least 2 years old now, and people should be able to comment on the # of cycles and how much capacity that they have left.

I know with the old batteries, at 350 cycles I'm down to 55% capacity!

 

[jjahshik32]

Apple's own website says 10hrs is acheived at 50% brightness with wi-fi on. I am not sure how dim 1 notch is, but if that's what it takes, I'm not very impressed.

This is the reason why I opted for a matte display as 1 notch of brightness is plenty bright everywhere I go even outside in the direct sunlight. Also no glare anywhere either so its perfect.


Just the other day with automatic gpu switched on I got 11 hours and 34 minutes of continuous battery life. This also included watching youtube videos off and on all day (remember to install click2flash to block out any unwanted flash content such as advertisements on every other webpages you go to (this helps dramatically with battery life).

If I just did light web browsing and just typed all day I could easily get 12+ hours on one notch of brightness level. But I have 6 spaces opened with word, ical, email (constantly checking every 5 minutes for email), 13+ tabs on safari and firefox opened on one of the 6 spaces as well running flash based website for online study guides from course compass.com, occasionally I had vmware fusion running (probably for no longer than 1 hour to run an app on windows xp 64-bit version).


Try to find any 17" notebook that even gets you even 6-7 hours of battery life, you can't. I am more than impressed with the MacBook pros 11-12 hour battery life.

 

[eiprol]

I've just calibrated the battery, and health has dropped to 94%.
I'm starting to be worried about it... 94% Health with 8cycles...

 

[Alonzo84]

I've just calibrated the battery, and health has dropped to 94%.
I'm starting to be worried about it... 94% Health with 8cycles...

The battery health isn't 100% accurate and will fluctuate. Mine was down to 95% according to coconut battery after only a few cycles and am currently at 98% with around 23 cycles. I have only calibrated the battery twice.

 

[Jazojas12]

Taking it in tomorrow...

 

[khunsanook]

It used to be common knowledge that to get the best life out of a rechargeable battery (both per cycle and in number of cycles possible) you should strive for full charge and full discharge. With modern batteries, there are sophisticated circuits that monitor charge. However, the circuit is not actually part of the battery; so, it needs to know what its seeing. Hence calibration.

That said, only a few people on this thread have mentioned calibration. And, some of the posts suggest they are not doing it entirely correctly. Calibration for MacBooks and PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) is different from the old iBooks and Powerbooks of yore. The main difference for the newer laptops is the need to keep it plugged in and on for 2 hours after completing the charge during the charge end of the cycle and the need to keep the computer asleep for 5 hours after complete discharge during the discharge end of the cycle. This tells me the newer batteries benefit from an additional trickle charge and discharge at the ends of the cycle.

see:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

I would say if this doesn't work, the battery is a dud. Jazojas12, it looks like yours is a dud, although the calibration seemed to have helped some.

Thanks. You beat me to it.

Many people on this and other forums fail to properly calibrate their batteries. Just going through x amount of cycles does nothing to calibrate your battery. Apple has provided very specific calibration instructions because they need to be followed.

After a proper calibration, if your battery is still well below 7-8 hours (a real-world interpretation of Apple's 10 hours) then return your computer for service or exchange.

I just calibrated my new MBP 13 for the first time. Now I'm seeing a solid 8 hours with 60 percent screen brightness, web and mail.

 

[skiltrip]

I've gotten close to 10 hours on the battery with mine. Although, I wasn't using it for the whole 10 hours. For periods in between it would sit there idle while I did whatever else I needed to do during the day. But I didn't let it go to sleep (Caffeine running). So it was ON for the 10 hours, and I was using it (web browsing, messing around with iMovie) most of the 10 hours I would say.

I would say if you are getting nowhere near the 10 hours, call Apple and get their take on it.

 

[blile]

I've gotten close to 10 hours on the battery with mine. Although, I wasn't using it for the whole 10 hours. For periods in between it would sit there idle while I did whatever else I needed to do during the day. But I didn't let it go to sleep (Caffeine running). So it was ON for the 10 hours, and I was using it (web browsing, messing around with iMovie) most of the 10 hours I would say.

I would say if you are getting nowhere near the 10 hours, call Apple and get their take on it.

So i just calibrated my battery unplugged and these are the facts:

Battery indicator shows 6:13 remaining
Health 100
cycles 3
Charge: 100
Backlight: lowest level
BT: Off
Keyboard light: off
Only app running is Chrome Browser to type this.
15in MBP (2010) 2.56gz 500GB 7200rpm HD

Does this sound normal or should I call Apple Support?

Thanks a bunch.

 

[drewsof07]

So i just calibrated my battery unplugged and these are the facts:

Battery indicator shows 6:13 remaining
GB 7200rpm HD

Does this sound normal or should I call Apple Support?

Thanks a bunch.

You cannot base your battery life on what the monitor says... It must be tested in real usage conditions. I usually run with screen brightness at 25% running one safari page, mail, IM, and a word document. Wifi on & bluetooth off.

 

[Mark.W]

Hi!

I bought the new 13"MBP bottom (2.4Ghz) last week, And I have charged it five times (load-cycles)
Not only the battery health is at 95%, but also It drains in 4-5h with bright set to low! It's far away from 10h.
Is it normal? I have an old MBP15" that can stay on for the same time that my new 13MBP in the same conditions!

In addition, a friend of mine, with the same new 13MBP, has the same "problem" (despite his battery health, that is still at 100%)

Is there any other here with the same Issue? Is it normal?
Thanks!

No, it's not normal. Mine lasts about 6-7 hours with near-full brightness and wifi on, as long as you don't watch videos or flash content, listen to music, play games, etc. I suppose 10 hours would be feasible with brightness set to low and wifi turned off.

 

[blile]

You cannot base your battery life on what the monitor says... It must be tested in real usage conditions. I usually run with screen brightness at 25% running one safari page, mail, IM, and a word document. Wifi on & bluetooth off.

Thanks. Yeah i gathered that. I was just wondering if others were having the similar readings, or comprable readings to mine given the situation. If so I wont worry as much. But if mine is uncommon then I'll worry.

Thanks

 

[macchiato2009]

10h is what apple pretends to get on MBP13 prototypes (as mentioned on their site)

it is more realistic to get around 7h in real conditions of use

with the previous one which meant to last 7h, i got around 5h

anyway, even if you don't really get 10h, the battery life is still longer than the previous MBP13

it's an improvement anyway

 

[7thMac]

Right. 7-8h is reasonably easy to achieve. It's somewhat hard to get the 10h but not impossible. "Up to 10 hours" may be accurate but it sounds like a sale: "Up to 70% Off". How many items are described by the "up to" language? Unfortunately, you have to take the specified number with a grain of salt.

 

[ryannazaretian]

I've never had the correct battery life with Snow Leopard. My MacBook Pro came advertised with 5 hours of wireless productivity. Right now, I can hardly get over 2 hours. Battery health is at 86% with 312 cycles and 18 months old. I've exaggerated the power saving in the screen shot... and still only 2:21 with 95% charge left.



If you have iStat Menus, uninstall it. It's a power leech. I get 1/2 an hour to 1 hour of extra battery life with out it running. Check the Activity Monitor and see what you have running. MDS is the culprit in my case, which is for Spotlight. Even if I disable spotlight, the mds process eats up lots of CPU usage. I can even disable it with terminal... and yea, still does that. I can end the process, and it comes right back.

With 86% battery life, I should theoretically get 4:18 from a complete charge.

 

[joshwithachance]

with my screen on 1/4 brightness and keyboard on 3 clicks and bluetooth off I definitely get about 10 hours with medium usage of web, YouTube, email, AIM.

 

[blile]

with my screen on 1/4 brightness and keyboard on 3 clicks and bluetooth off I definitely get about 10 hours with medium usage of web, YouTube, email, AIM.

Is this by using a stopwatch to time your usage or by using the battery meter on the mac?