In OWC website i've seen that SSD uses 1/3 the power 5400rpm uses. So if Apple is telling 9-10 hours of battery life to normal hard drives, what is the time we get from SSD Macbook Pros? I mean 15". It should be more than 10 hours if it really uses 1 3rd the battery normal HDD uses.
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SSD users, can you tell me your battery lives?
- Thread starter emir
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15" i7, SSD only (no HD installed) and I routinely get 8-9 hours in normal web browsing, this is a measured time, not the time reported though I do find the time remaining indicator is very accurate on mine.
Depending on settings (40% screen brightness, no keyboard backlight), my Mac will report as much as 11 hours remaining in the battery monitor with a fresh charge.
Depending on settings (40% screen brightness, no keyboard backlight), my Mac will report as much as 11 hours remaining in the battery monitor with a fresh charge.
Hey, they said "Up to 10 hours", and they've obviously made every setting and configuration possible to achieve that number, so they're probably counting with SSDs.
Thats not even possible. Seriously. The power consumption of SSDs isn't low enough to get another 2-3 hours compared to rotational media. I've had an SSD in my Macbook any I don't even think that I did get anymore battery life. Few minutes more at most.
new 13" MBP 2010 with 160gb Intel X25 SSD. With half brightness and light Wifi... around 8 hours of battery. id say the new ssd gave me at most 1/2 hour more battery
I concur. Anybody who claims they get more than an extra 30-60 minutes is blowing smoke. The performance improvement is nothing short of astronomical, but the battery life is not even noticeable unless you literally do a control test, and even then it's negligible... 30 minutes is only about a 5-10% improvement.
HDD's typically don't use much power at all to start with. I have an SSD, and the battery life difference from what I remember compared to my HDD was almost negligible. Probably 10 minutes maybe, but I don't think there was any difference.
If you are looking to buy an SSD based on battery life improvement then you really are buying for the wrong reasons. SSD's are for performance and reliability, not power savings (although they give a *little* bit).
Not to start an argument here or anything, but trying to defend a statement such as saying that using a SSD over a traditional HDD would give 2-3 hours of extra battery life is nothing short of trolling. That, or you are seriously mistaken.
From a computer engineering background, using NO HDD or SSD wouldn't even net you 1 hour of extra battery life let alone 2-3 and certainly not 2-3 with using a SSD. The power consumption percentage of the storage device in most laptops/notebooks has almost a negligible effect on the overall power usage.
I did find your post humorous though, but perhaps you should look into making a more believable statement.
I have not done a strict scientific comparison here but I really have not noticed much of a difference!
I have an OWC Mercury 100GIG SSD installed and it really isn't much of a difference.
At about 50% brightness, keyboard light off, sound off, bluetooth off, and just web browsing I get about 7 hours before I hit about 10-15% battery. This is actual usage. Not just going off the battery estimate numbers but actually counting the hours of real usage.
I have never used my MBP 13inch 2010 till the battery completely drained down so I don't know how long that 10-15% would have given me on top of the 7 or so hours of usage.
BUT.... this is pretty much the same sort of stuff I got from the stock Hitachi HDD before I swapped it with the SSD.
Also, I have recently installed an Optibay with the same stock Hitachi HDD in the optical drive space. BUT still it's pretty much the same number of hours from the battery.
I am sure that the battery lasts longer with the SSD, and the optibay adding an extra HDD shorten the battery length but in real life it really must only make a very small difference because I have not noticed much of a difference.
Maybe the diference is less than 30 minutes.
I have an OWC Mercury 100GIG SSD installed and it really isn't much of a difference.
At about 50% brightness, keyboard light off, sound off, bluetooth off, and just web browsing I get about 7 hours before I hit about 10-15% battery. This is actual usage. Not just going off the battery estimate numbers but actually counting the hours of real usage.
I have never used my MBP 13inch 2010 till the battery completely drained down so I don't know how long that 10-15% would have given me on top of the 7 or so hours of usage.
BUT.... this is pretty much the same sort of stuff I got from the stock Hitachi HDD before I swapped it with the SSD.
Also, I have recently installed an Optibay with the same stock Hitachi HDD in the optical drive space. BUT still it's pretty much the same number of hours from the battery.
I am sure that the battery lasts longer with the SSD, and the optibay adding an extra HDD shorten the battery length but in real life it really must only make a very small difference because I have not noticed much of a difference.
Maybe the diference is less than 30 minutes.
What I want to know is are some you guys reporting 9-10 hours or even more, actual usage hours or just going off the estimates given by osx?
I cannot help but be sceptical of the some of your reports because if I quote you what my OSX tells me then I can tell you that I get 11-12 hours but this is not true. In reality I can only manage 7 actual real hours of continuous use till about 10-15%.
I cannot help but be sceptical of the some of your reports because if I quote you what my OSX tells me then I can tell you that I get 11-12 hours but this is not true. In reality I can only manage 7 actual real hours of continuous use till about 10-15%.
Tom's Hardware ran a report two years back where they found that SSD's were actually using more battery. This is because actively they use always the same amount of power, while a HDD only uses high power if the head has to move across the platter.
Add to this a bit of housekeeping (garbage collection) and the SSD is even doing more work than the HDD would be doing.
I'm pretty sure that SSD's are doing better, power consumption wise, than two years but question is by how much.
HDDs use up to a few watts in active mode but that lasts very short. Idling they are very power-friendly. Keeping the platter turning also is not really much power intensive - the bigger issue is speeding it up from a sleep.
If we're seeing numbers of 15 watts to 12.5 watts (i7, nvidia vs intel graphics) then saving 0.2 watts by using SSD overall will not yield much battery saving.
Tom
Add to this a bit of housekeeping (garbage collection) and the SSD is even doing more work than the HDD would be doing.
I'm pretty sure that SSD's are doing better, power consumption wise, than two years but question is by how much.
HDDs use up to a few watts in active mode but that lasts very short. Idling they are very power-friendly. Keeping the platter turning also is not really much power intensive - the bigger issue is speeding it up from a sleep.
If we're seeing numbers of 15 watts to 12.5 watts (i7, nvidia vs intel graphics) then saving 0.2 watts by using SSD overall will not yield much battery saving.
Tom
The Intel X-25M G2 uses 75 milliwats idle and 150 milliwatts while active.
Compare that to 0.7W / 1W for a normal hard drive ....
Intel SSD:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/10
Mechanical hard disks:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/13
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17269/10
Mechanical hard disks:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/13
The Intel X-25M G2 uses 75 milliwats idle and 150 milliwatts while active.
Compare that to 0.7W / 1W for a normal hard drive ....
You must be mistaken. Or Tom's Hardware who say it's >1.5W
I'm following the tug of SSD/HDD battery war for a while now and I haven't seen any SSD that goes below 1 watt while writing. And with garbage collection that they *have* to do, they are writing more than an HDD (save perhaps the sandforce drives)
Tom
