Normal Battery Life?

[modit]

Right now, I'm at 63% and my estimated battery charge will last me about 1hr and 30 mins.

I'm just doing light browsing at full brightness and been using my laptop for about 40mins and my charge fell from 96% to 63%.

Is this considered normal battery life after 7 months of use for a MacBook Pro?

Thanks.

 

[Dave Felix]

Right now, I'm at 63% and my estimated battery charge will last me about 1hr and 30 mins.

I just started using my laptop for about 40mins and my charge fell from 96% to 63%.

Is this considered normal battery life after 7 months of use for a MacBook Pro?

Thanks.

Honestly depends on what you're doing and at what brightness. At night, when Im just home laying in bed it can last about an hour and a half and just be around 45-50%. But Thats just surfing the web and using Facebook or twitter. If you're watching youtube videos, iMovie and etc then expect your battery to lower.

Whats the battery health?

 

[mmduluth]

Post a screenshot of your activity monitor with it sorted by CPU...

 

[snaky69]

Let me guess, you're using chrome, watching flash video with the discrete GPU in use?

 

[modit]

Post a screenshot of your activity monitor with it sorted by CPU...

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Let me guess, you're using chrome, watching flash video with the discrete GPU in use?

Nope? I'm running Safari though...

 

[bigjobby]

Display on full brightness sucks up alot of juice, as does sites with flash content. Is your keyboard backlight on? Howabout bluetooth?

Edit: Discrete graphics (as already mentioned) will also have a big effect.

 

[GuitarG20]

this all completely depends on what you're doing. with discrete on and using flash, that seems completely reasonable...

 

[Matthew9559]

Turn down the bightness to 50-60% and install click2flash.

Full brightness will slay any laptops battery extremely fast.

 

[mmduluth]

It has to be the brightness and maybe graphics. Your mostly idle.

 

[TSE]

I get about 6-7 hours with brightness at 20%, gfxcardstatus making sure the integrated GPU is on, Safari, Microsoft Word 2011, and Textedit normally up, Click2Flash plugin installed, and a little bit of iTunes in between. I can stretch it an extra half-hour if I take the time to turn Wifi and screen off when I don't use it.

 

[dusk007]

What all this people have with their display brightness. When I use my battery I am most of the time somewhere where max brightness is very useful and therefore I use it. Still get 4h usually.

Your problem ist µtorrent and maybe word a little. Also force the Intel GPU if you don't already. Stop µtorrent when on battery it doesn't create heavy load but for good battery life you need idle phases and µtorrent is constantly doing a little bit that destroys battery life. Word is the same but simple because Office for Mac is crap.
Honestly I sometimes get better battery life running Office 2010 in a Win7 VM than with Word for Mac.

When you want best battery life CMD+Q quit all applications that you aren't using and constantly create a little bit of load however little. If preview is open it is not a problem because it doesn't create any load unless you scroll or open documents. Skype, IM Stuff, µTorrent(unless it isn't transferring anything) creates a bit of load very often and that takes more juice from your battery than running the display at max brightness.
If you what you do in the foreground is not very light browsing and more medium load stuff or flash stuff that background stuff matters little to not at all but when you just read news sites, forums open some pdfs and read that stuff it matters a lot.

Just reading PDFs at max brigthness I get almost 7h on a 2010 15".

 

[GuitarG20]

Your problem ist µtorrent and maybe word a little....Word is the same but simple because Office for Mac is crap.
Honestly I sometimes get better battery life running Office 2010 in a Win7 VM than with Word for Mac.

with just word open I get 12 hours of battery life easy on half screen brightness... I don't know what you're talking about when you say it kills the battery...

 

[SXR]

Right now, I'm at 63% and my estimated battery charge will last me about 1hr and 30 mins.

I'm just doing light browsing at full brightness and been using my laptop for about 40mins and my charge fell from 96% to 63%.

Is this considered normal battery life after 7 months of use for a MacBook Pro?

Thanks.

Lol, what a coincidence. Im on 63 percent aswell. Keyboard backlit, all the BS is turned on and I have more than 3 hours to go. 2010 model MBP.

PS. for best battery life, just turn the damn thing off.

 

[bigjobby]

What all this people have with their display brightness...

Without trying to say what uses more power but display brightness still does have a significant impact on battery life. The difference between between 50 & 100% can be about ~2hrs. With all the things you mentioned contributing, I hope the OP can take these factors on board to answer his/her question.

Also, the OP might want to check his/her battery health as well as recalibrating the battery just to ensure more accurate readings.