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rMBP: I don't get nowhere close to the 7hr battery life

sevimli

sevimli

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 26, 2007
727
64
ChiTown
Hello everyone,

On Apple.com it is advertised that I should get ~7hr battery life. I know it is under some particular condition but I am not getting that, not even closer.

At a full charge I can get 3.5-4hr at max.

I did run the hardware test, there was nothing wrong.

Any advice what I can do about it?

Thank you!
 
sevimli said:
Hello everyone,

On Apple.com it is advertised that I should get ~7hr battery life. I know it is under some particular condition but I am not getting that, not even closer.

At a full charge I can get 3.5-4hr at max.

I did run the hardware test, there was nothing wrong.

Any advice what I can do about it?

Thank you!
Click to expand...

what are you doing in those 4 hours and what do you have brightness set too?
 
iisforiphone said:
what are you doing in those 4 hours and what do you have brightness set too?
Click to expand...

I have mine just below 1/2 and do fairly basic stuff, no games, media, just browsing and the like - but mine is closer to 6 for that stuff.
 
Reading PDF files can be very intensive as some PDFs render high resolution images or vector graphics.

In any case, I can at least assure you that it's possible to get 8 hours or more at 75% brightness by typing up documents, or coding in Xcode, and occasionally pull up the web browser (no Flash) for reference. That's my typical usage. Screen is on all that time, too.
 
sevimli said:
On Apple.com it is advertised that I should get ~7hr battery life. I know it is under some particular condition but I am not getting that, not even closer.

At a full charge I can get 3.5-4hr at max.
Click to expand...
That's up to 7 hours. It's not a guarantee that you'll get 7 hours. There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions:
 
sevimli said:
Have you tried to contact Apple?
Click to expand...

I actually decided to return mine. After a week of use i became very unhappy with all the issues considering its high cost.

Im going to wait for the 2nd gen.

I have an air and regular pro so an extra year isnt a problem.

I just want the high quality like normal. Especially at that price.
 
I get less than satisfactory battery life it seems. And don't try and give me that crap about what are you doing or what is your brightness at. When the recent update to ML I didn't really notice any battery improvement.
 
StuLax18 said:
I get less than satisfactory battery life it seems. And don't try and give me that crap about what are you doing or what is your brightness at.
Click to expand...
It's not crap; it's fact. Screen brightness is a major factor in battery life, as is your current workload.
 
If I'm browsing online, checking my email, and doing normal productivity stuff, I can get about 6-7 hours. If I fire up a video or something, then it drops severely to 4-5 hours.
 
StuLax18 said:
Yeah, so I guess the fact that I keep my screen really low is why my battery life is less than stellar? Like I said, don't give me that crap. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It's not screen brightness alone. You can refer to facts as crap if you wish, but they're still true. There are specific things that contribute to battery life. Ignoring those facts and just calling them crap isn't the most intelligent way to diagnose your specific battery issues. Rants don't solve problems.
 
StuLax18 said:
Yeah, so I guess the fact that I keep my screen really low is why my battery life is less than stellar? Like I said, don't give me that crap. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

If you wish to have an educated discussion about battery life and ways to improve it please realize that GGJ is stating accurate information. If you wish to have an uneducated discussion please continue as normal.
 
I don't want to have any discussion about it, I just don't want people telling me that brightness is affecting my battery life. On my MB I always had it on the lowest setting, usually as low as I can go and still see on the rMBP. It's clearly an issue with ML that wasn't fixed with the last update because it seemed much better on Lion.
 
StuLax18 said:
I don't want to have any discussion about it, I just don't want people telling me that brightness is affecting my battery life. On my MB I always had it on the lowest setting, usually as low as I can go and still see on the rMBP. It's clearly an issue with ML that wasn't fixed with the last update because it seemed much better on Lion.
Click to expand...
Brightness does indeed affect battery life. There are other things that affect it, as well. Simply lowering brightness will not prevent other factors from affecting battery life.
 
GGJstudios said:
Brightness does indeed affect battery life. There are other things that affect it, as well. Simply lowering brightness will not prevent other factors from affecting battery life.
Click to expand...

But if brightness affects battery life, then lowering brightness should increase battery life. I think you're missing my point. I know that if you turn your brightness up the battery is going to have more power drawn from it. Same thing happens if you use more CPU intensive tasks. However, these are not the only two things that will lead to lower battery life. I don't use high brightness, and I don't really use much CPU, but I still get average to below average battery life. That leads me to think there is another issue that is affecting battery life, so the usual blanket statement of "screen brightness and usage will lead to lower battery life" may not always apply.
 
StuLax18 said:
But if brightness affects battery life, then lowering brightness should increase battery life. I think you're missing my point. I know that if you turn your brightness up the battery is going to have more power drawn from it. Same thing happens if you use more CPU intensive tasks. However, these are not the only two things that will lead to lower battery life. I don't use high brightness, and I don't really use much CPU, but I still get average to below average battery life. That leads me to think there is another issue that is affecting battery life, so the usual blanket statement of "screen brightness and usage will lead to lower battery life" may not always apply.
Click to expand...
If you want to just rant about it, that's up to you. If you genuinely want to look for a solution,
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.
 
If you turn your screen to the lowest brightness setting, you will get a good 7 hours with a full charge.
 
Dood, I'm not an idiot. I don't need someone to tell me to check activity monitor. I use about 4-5% CPU, no page outs. There's no obvious reason for my battery life except that something with ML and it hasn't been completely fixed yet given that's a new OS.
 
StuLax18 said:
Dood, I'm not an idiot. I don't need someone to tell me to check activity monitor. I use about 4-5% CPU, no page outs. There's no obvious reason for my battery life except that something with ML and it hasn't been completely fixed yet given that's a new OS.
Click to expand...
No one called you an idiot, or even suggested that you are. I made a genuine offer to help. You've made it clear that you don't want an answer or resolution to your problem, as it appears you'd rather just complain about it and blindly blame ML without a single bit of factual evidence. Good luck with that. :rolleyes:
 
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