Realistic MBP 13" 2020 battery performance

[phl92]

I bought my first Apple Macbook Pro last week, and to be honest, the battery gives me a bit of worrying.
APple claims 10,5 hours for "web surfing" (whatever this means) and the same for watching films on Apple TV (how much this app makes a difference compared to other streaming services, idk).
My MBP 13" 2020 in the basic version, comes no where close to these 10 hours.

I read all articles Apple provides for any kind of battery/performance issues on the net. My display is on 50%, key light is on the lowest and I have almost nothing on my hard drive yet or third party applications.

I read on the forum also other people having issues with the battery but I would be interested in your experience:

how much is your MBP showing in the Activity Monitor as Battery remaining when having opened only a Safari tab with youtube, watching a youtube with 50% volume on 50% screen?
And also how much battery remaining you get from Safari with 5 tabs of "normal" websites likes these here. All measure around 100-90% battery please.

I had running a YT video and 2 more tabs on safari and mine shows in average around 4:30h remaining with 92% battery - thats poor imho.

 

[phl92]

I called Apple for this 'issue' and we did some Diagnosis (reboot + D) and SMC reset (Command+Option+R+P).
They said I should test if I can notice a difference and otherwise make another SMC reset (but with a different combination).
I asked if they can give some realistic benchmarks like Safari only with 1 Youtube tab or Safari with 5 tabs open, but they do not give any numbers at all on this.

I really would appreciate if people here could post their experiences.
I now had a Skype call (open only Skype with a tiny video screen of my Skype partner, and a google Translation tab in safari). The Skype call was exactly 31min long and it took my MBP from 54% to 39%.

 

[bill-p]

The 10-hour figure can only be reached if you are watching an offline video with all radio (WIFI, bluetooth, etc...) off, and screen brightness at 50%, with no keyboard backlight at all.

I got this once while on a 13-hour flight.

5 hours with Youtube seems reasonable. If you push the machine harder (process 4K videos), it can get as low as 2.5 hours.

I also have a 16" MacBook and I can actually get 8 hours with Youtube on Big Sur running Safari. It makes sense when you look at battery specs. The 13" has a 58WHr battery, and the 16" has a 100WHr battery (almost twice the capacity).

 

[phl92]

I heard the 16" is even much worse. Here and also in the official Apple Forum is a thread with more than 30 pages each about the bad battery of the 2019 16". I cannot find much about my 13" though :/
I guess I have to live with it (it's not soo bad) and may use this Turbo Boost Switcher, to reduce performance and win a bit of battery

 

[ght56]

As I am sure you are aware, runtimes can vary quite a bit as so many things impact them and it makes it hard to compare. I am getting upwards of 10-11 hours on my (second) 2019 16-inch using Word, Chrome to browse websites and watch YT videos, and Netflix when on the integrated graphics (side note-your system has integrated graphics only), and 7-8-ish hours on the discrete graphics (battery health feature engaged). All videos are at 1080 or 1440 and I've noticed a significant decrease in runtimes with higher resolutions and obviously if videos are HDR.

My first curiosity pertains to your low cycle count...this makes me wonder if the system may not be able to accurately predict runtimes as well since the battery has not been used much? My battery health statistics and runtimes on both my first and my current 16-inch were a bit whacky until I had about 20-ish cycles on the system, where they then stabilized and predicted runtimes matched pretty well with actual runtimes (provided the way I used the system remained consistent throughout the time it took to discharge the battery). Perhaps you need to do a few full discharges and recharges? If you still are not happy after that, you could try disabling the battery health feature to see if this makes any difference.

Also, I feel individual models can definitely vary, at least to some limited extent. My first MBP 16 did not have quite as good of runtimes as my current 16 inch. They were identical specs, except for a different GPU. While the GPU explains the much better runtimes when on the dGPU, it does not for runtimes on the iGPU, obviously. They were using the same OS and software, same running apps, in the same way. Presumably, the battery in this 16-inch is just a bit stronger or something is just a bit more efficient.

Finally, web conferencing apps do have a tendency of nuking battery, so I would not read into that drop too much. I would do actual, real-world tests using things like word processing, internet browsing, and streaming (non-4K, non-HDR) videos. See what happens in terms of real-world runtimes relative to the predictions, and record the results. Let's see if that gets you to a better place. If not, you might want to look at how much power the system is consuming and keep an eye on CPU and iGPU utilization levels throughout the discharge cycle.

Finally-finally, I would not hesitate to return the system for a replacement if you are not satisfied by the end of the two week period. I was not satisfied with my first 16-inch (for a different reason) and Apple was great about the return...they helped get me into a system I was absolutely delighted with. They're really good about this, and they want you to be happy with your Mac.





Idle consumption on iGPU - if this is high when your activity is idle, it suggests some activity is being performed by the system or by one of your apps and might offer an explanation for your poor runtimes.

 

[bill-p]

I heard the 16" is even much worse.

No, the 16" is much better actually. I have both and I can attest the 16" easily gets over 6 hours of light use, including Youtube.

You'll only be able to make the 16" behave worse if you use Chrome. Chrome is a known battery hog even on Windows and Linux.

 

[phl92]

Chrome is even tricky to use on a Desktop, since its eating up RAM as well

Anyway, thanks for commenting. At the end of the day the 16" is too big and too expensive for me.
I had another Apple Support chat yesterday evening and the guy literally said after 5min that he cannot help me (quite understandably, Friday evening 30Min before work end and the last evening before 2nd lockdown here).
Anyways, the SMC might pushed things around a bit. My "just Safari browsing" is quite good now. Showing 7,5-12hours of battery remaining. I think my device is not defective and yes, I think CPU efficiency is varying on each device slightly. In case I need a long battery in future I will turn of the Turbo Boost. I will keep my MBP

 

[leman]

I heard the 16" is even much worse. Here and also in the official Apple Forum is a thread with more than 30 pages each about the bad battery of the 2019 16". I cannot find much about my 13" though :/
I guess I have to live with it (it's not soo bad) and may use this Turbo Boost Switcher, to reduce performance and win a bit of battery

My 16” with the i9 CPU gets about 7-8 hours battery under normal work scenario: browsing, reading, writing and running code prototypes.

One problem with these newer Macs (courtesy of Intel) is that their power draw can be quite unpredictable. It depends a lot on the application behavior. You should keep your eye on the Activity Monitor, maybe you have an application that uses a lot of power for no reason.