rMBP Battery Performance

[kwjohns]

Anyone else getting subpar battery performance? Mine seems to only be getting at most 4 hours on a charge with my usage being just surfing the net with Chrome and Twitter being the only two things open.

 

[astrorider]

I'm seeing between 6:30 and 8:00 on a full charge at half brightness surfing the web.

Check Activity Monitor and see what's using your CPU. Maybe you've got something that's causing your battery to drain more quickly.

 

[sahot]

Maybe get gfxcardstatus, something might be kicking on the video card.

 

[kwjohns]

Just noticed this on Apple's site regarding battery life:

Testing conducted by Apple in May 2012 using preproduction 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%.

Mine has been set to 100% so that is most likely it. I set it to 75% for a few minutes and my battery indicator jumped from ~2:30 remaining to ~3:30 remaining. 50% just appears too dim for me and loses a lot of the "poppiness" of the retina screen.

 

[Auzburner]

Yes, brightness makes a tremendous difference. My battery life has been superb. Fortunately, I'm not big on brightness and that helps a ton.