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The battery on this thing is amazing (M3 Pro)

VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
912
360
Espoo, Finland
I recently got a new laptop from work, MacBook Pro M3 Pro (12 cores, 36 GB of RAM, 1TB of storage). Today it's the first time I am using it on battery for an extended period of time. I've been working in a cafe for a couple of hours with some dev tools and several other apps running, and the battery is down by 3% only. And I don't really see any noticeable difference in performance compared to when it's at home plugged in the power socket.

What is the max the battery on these laptops can last these days?
 
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Performance unplugged is exactly the same as performance plugged in. It's been like that for quite a while on Mac :)

Battery life in use is generally around 16-18 hours-ish. More if you're only watching movies, less if you push it of course. If you watch HDR that is often around max brightness, with max CPU + GPU usage 2-3 hours is possible but that's an insane load required to get to that point
 
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casperes1996 said:
Performance unplugged is exactly the same as performance plugged in. It's been like that for quite a while on Mac :)

Battery life in use is generally around 16-18 hours-ish. More if you're only watching movies, less if you push it of course. If you watch HDR that is often around max brightness, with max CPU + GPU usage 2-3 hours is possible but that's an insane load required to get to that point
Click to expand...

I thought there was still some expected difference in performance when running on battery. I absolutely love Apple Silicon.
 
VitoBotta said:
I recently got a new laptop from work, MacBook Pro M3 Pro (12 cores, 36 GB of RAM, 1TB of storage). Today it's the first time I am using it on battery for an extended period of time. I've been working in a cafe for a couple of hours with some dev tools and several other apps running, and the battery is down by 3% only. And I don't really see any noticeable difference in performance compared to when it's at home plugged in the power socket.

What is the max the battery on these laptops can last these days?
Click to expand...
My Macbook Air 2020 (opened oct 21) m1 gets still at least 18 hours with Monterey,
15 or less with Sonoma or Ventura.
the max was 21 hours after we had a power failure for 5 days thanks to Irma.

the Macbook Pro mid 2012 running MtLion OSX today shown 5 plus hours with the original battery.
The 2 macbooks are steaming some sports like football or cycling while performing other tasks
and seems to like the native OSx as the upgrades seem to eat battery life.
(case in point, 2 weeks ago catalina had only 2 hours of battery on the '12 MBP)

 did a great project on these batteries!
 
MBAir2010 said:
My Macbook Air 2020 (opened oct 21) m1 gets still at least 18 hours with Monterey,
15 or less with Sonoma or Ventura.
the max was 21 hours after we had a power failure for 5 days thanks to Irma.

the Macbook Pro mid 2012 running MtLion OSX today shown 5 plus hours with the original battery.
The 2 macbooks are steaming some sports like football or cycling while performing other tasks
and seems to like the native OSx as the upgrades seem to eat battery life.
(case in point, 2 weeks ago catalina had only 2 hours of battery on the '12 MBP)

 did a great project on these batteries!
Click to expand...
Wow, I thought this was exclusive to Apple Silicon since these SoCs are low power.
 
We recently had a couple of days in office and I had a similar experience running some dev tools and office applications.
I have a 16 inch M2 Pro 16GB RAM and 512GB storage model.

I spent quite literally all day on battery life. 10 work hour days. 2 days in a row. Started at 100% ended the workday at 10-15%. I only needed to charge my laptop at night and didn't need to worry about taking the charge with me to work.

Really does feel like the stuff of dreams.
 
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Jim Lahey said:
Low power mode drops display refresh to 60hz and the change is jarring so personally I wouldn't do that.
Click to expand...
I just got myself a 14in M3 Pro.

Ill tell you what is jarring. Comparing it side my side to my previous laptop which is a 2010 MPB 🤣

I agree about the 60-120hz though. I still use my iPhone 11 for work and have a 15 Pro for personal use and the difference is very noticeable. My desktop PC is 170hz.

I was considering the Air but I wanted 120hz. I don't think I can go back to anything that is 60hz at this point.
 
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GuruZac said:
Just got a base spec Space Black M3 Pro MBP 14. Blown away by the overall appearance and battery. I will say, the M1 MBA has aged very very well. Had it 3 years and will give to my wife or trade it for a new iPad Pro for her.
Click to expand...
Yes that is a great macbook, just wish the OS was more "less" as in options and more user friendly,
sadly, im boxing mine friday for a month just to clean my mind and soul from the current apple walled garden and hopefully can enjoy that again in August, since that is an item, not a wife.
 
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NewOldStock said:
The rules should be you can not report on battery life until the device is 1-year old!
Click to expand...
Rule should be that you cannot report on battery life if its within one week of a clean install or new build since there is probably a lot of caching going on in the background and that will likely effect the battery life.
 
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VitoBotta said:
I recently got a new laptop from work, MacBook Pro M3 Pro (12 cores, 36 GB of RAM, 1TB of storage). Today it's the first time I am using it on battery for an extended period of time. I've been working in a cafe for a couple of hours with some dev tools and several other apps running, and the battery is down by 3% only. And I don't really see any noticeable difference in performance compared to when it's at home plugged in the power socket.

What is the max the battery on these laptops can last these days?
Click to expand...

I've recently made that discovery myself. I upgraded from a 2012 MacBook Air to a 14" M3 Pro MacBook Pro (11 core, 18GB) and some days I don't even bother taking my power cable to work. I just spend the whole work day in AutoCAD, with YouTube going on an external monitor, and my battery is still 35-40% when I go home! It really does feel insane, like I fell through a portal into the future.
 
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VitoBotta said:
I recently got a new laptop from work, MacBook Pro M3 Pro (12 cores, 36 GB of RAM, 1TB of storage). Today it's the first time I am using it on battery for an extended period of time. I've been working in a cafe for a couple of hours with some dev tools and several other apps running, and the battery is down by 3% only. And I don't really see any noticeable difference in performance compared to when it's at home plugged in the power socket.

What is the max the battery on these laptops can last these days?
Click to expand...
YMMV. The display brightness you select has significant impact.
 
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Bungaree.Chubbins said:
I've recently made that discovery myself. I upgraded from a 2012 MacBook Air to a 14" M3 Pro MacBook Pro (11 core, 18GB) and some days I don't even bother taking my power cable to work. I just spend the whole work day in AutoCAD, with YouTube going on an external monitor, and my battery is still 35-40% when I go home! It really does feel insane, like I fell through a portal into the future.
Click to expand...
That's incredible!
 
Yeah the battery has be absolutely incredible on my machine. Every time I leave it on the table for a few days and off the charger, I feel like it should be close to dead and it never is. I'm not always doing power work when it's off the charger, but it still surprises me.
 
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nmeed said:
Man, if there was a way to keep ProMotion on low battery I would have it on 24/7.
Click to expand...
So low power mode on these is like having an intel MacBook Pro, less performance and 60hz, but in exchange for what, up to 10 times longer battery life than Intel Macs?
As a 2017 user, I’d actually like that, because it’s still a better experience when even the low power mode is more capable than my macbook PRO.
 
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I am stunned at how great the battery life is. I'm coming from a 2019 Intel MacBook, and that drained like crazy. I set up my new 14 inch M3 Pro MacBook Pro on Tuesday, and after all the indexing and stuff like that finished, it's been unbelievable. Today I took it off the charger at 2:41pm. About 90 minutes of usage since then and it's still at 94%. Last night, it took so long for it to dip below 100%.

I was hesitant on upgrading my MacBook Pro after just under 5 years, but I'm glad I did. The massive performance and battery upgrade was worth it.
 
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VitoBotta said:
I thought there was still some expected difference in performance when running on battery. I absolutely love Apple Silicon.
Click to expand...

Windows laptops have always had a tendency to drop performance on battery power unless you change the power settings to high performance mode or its equivalent. This has more to do with the x86 platform than the OS, as Intel-based Macs would often do the same thing when on battery power. Because Apple Silicon consumes less power in the first place, it's relatively easy to maintain longer battery life without sacrificing performance on the platform. In theory, the same should be applicable to Windows laptops running the new Qualcomm SoCs. Alex Ziskind just released a video showing that the Mac still outpaced all but one of the new Snapdragon-based Windows laptops in his battery life tests:

 
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