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rMBP 15 (2014) battery life far from advertised.

cudo

cudo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 6, 2007
257
0
In my head.
Hi, I just got my brand new rMBP and I love it, replaced my old machine. It is a screamer but the batter life is disappointing.

One of the reason I got it in the first place was the "up to 8 hours" battery life but I it is more of a 3 hours battery life. I do understand it might not be always 8 hours and it battery life depends but I am 3 is nowhere near 8.

I am on a 4th cycle at the moment, brightness about 2/6, no video, no music, just browsing the web.

Is that normal? What shell I do?
 
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Interesting. I get 5 hours from mine, brightness full. If I knock the brightness down to about half, I get 7 and a half hours.

Do you have a Nvidia GeForce GT 750m in yours? If so, make sure that Automatic Graphics Switching is enabled, and download gfxCardStatus to see if any apps you use switch it to the dGPU.
 
I got the base model, which should be, in theory, even more energy efficient due to its less power hungry components.

2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage1
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
 
cudo said:
Hi, I just got my brand new rMBP and I love it, replaced my old machine. It is a screamer but the batter life is disappointing.

One of the reason I got it in the first place was the "up to 8 hours" battery life but I it is more of a 3 hours battery life. I do understand it might not be always 8 hours and it battery life depends but I am 3 is nowhere near 8.

I am on a 4th cycle at the moment, brightness about 2/6, no video, no music, just browsing the web.

Is that normal? What shell I do?
Click to expand...

Open Activity Monitor and see if there are any rogue processes running your battery down. If all youʻre doing is browsing the web with brightness turned down, you should be easily hitting the 7-8 hr mark. Are you certain you donʻt have any special programs running in the background. If so 3 hrs seems a bit low.
 
cudo said:
I got the base model, which should be, in theory, even more energy efficient due to its less power hungry components.

2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz memory
256GB PCIe-based flash storage1
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
Click to expand...

OK you have either some rogue process consuming power (click on the battery icon with safari closed, and it'll tell you which apps are using significant energy failing that check activity monitor) or you have a battery fault (go to about this mac, click on system report and click on power. Your battery capacity should be at or near 8460 mAh (the rated capacity of the battery). If it is above, at or very close to this figure, then fine. But if well below, then it's genius bar time.)
 
Thanks for your input, will keep on testing. So far I can tell my battery capacity is fine and all diagnostic apps report it OK. I guess it must be something else.

I am thinking, though I am only browsing with Chrome I have plenty apps open, but idle in my dock, would it impact my battery life as well?
 
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If your machine has OS X Mavericks installed... Click on Spotlight (top right corner) and see if your machine has been indexing stuff. If you have an external hdd connected, check to see if Spotlight is "indexing" it, if so, it should say "x minutes/hours remaining" and you should be fine afterwards.
Don't use Chrome. Stick with Safari.
 
cudo said:
Mail App, Photoshop, Transmit, Spotify, Evernote, Adium, Sublime but none of them are used.
Click to expand...
Photoshop/Lightroom 5 would have minimal impact while they are not running / in the background.
I suspect Spotify is killing your battery. They brought some new features to it.
I'm not familiar with Transmit, Adium and Sublime.
Evernote shouldn't have that bad of an impact unless it is constantly syncing.
Mail App should be just fine as well.
 
I have not conducted extensive testing as of yet, but after switching to Safari and quiting idle apps I can see my battery estimate went up to more than 8 hours, I guess this solves my problem.

Thanks for your help.
 
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