Which year macbook has longest battery life.

[raymanh]

I'm planning on buying a second hand macbook pro. Which year has the longest battery life? I plan on going out to parks to do work on it so I need battery, brightness and portability in that order. Suggestions?

 

[maerz001]

I'm planning on buying a second hand macbook pro. Which year has the longest battery life? I plan on going out to parks to do work on it so I need battery, brightness and portability in that order. Suggestions?

MacBook Air🙂 12h

Probably the 2017 13" without TB about 11h. Than 2015 13" 10h. 15" 8-9 but drops fast as soon as the dGPU kicks in

 

[ZapNZs]

The work you do can have significant effects on which model has the best battery life - detailed comparisons across models have found some models give the best battery life with certain workloads, where as other models give the best life with different workloads.

The MacBook Air is probably the champ of non-MBP models in terms of its general tendency for long run times, although I am getting 12+ hours on my MacBook and was getting around half that on my MBP )but the workloads were different).

 

[zedsdead]

MacBook Air is most without question.

Non-Touchbar MacBook Pro

Then it's a toss up after that, probably the broadwell 2015 models.

 

[Jamalogo10]

The 2017 macbook pro without touchbar has a larger battery, lacks an energy draining touchbar, and it uses less energy. Expect an additional 1-2 hours when comparing the nTB to the 13 TB and the 15.

 

[goobot]

The 2017 macbook pro without touchbar has a larger battery, lacks an energy draining touchbar, and it uses less energy. Expect an additional 1-2 hours when comparing the nTB to the 13 TB and the 15.

The touch bar is oled and is mostly off. While it obviously is using power I doubt it is that noticeable if that.

 

[peraspera]

Turning up screen brightness has a negative impact on battery life so your first two requirements are in direct conflict. Getting enough battery life out of any Mac laptop from sunrise to sunset for constant use will be pretty much impossible even if you can always work in very deep shade where it is practical to turn screen brightness down. Being able to frequently sleep the laptop between simple, occasional data entry may be doable.

There are now high mAh, 30+ watt USB-C PD port battery packs available that you might want to consider if your particular use case will exceed your laptop's internal battery capability. However, they haven't been on the market for long enough to establish their long term reliability and safety although The Wirecutter does tend to do very careful reviews. Also, the higher mAh battery packs are relatively heavy.
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-usb-c-battery-packs-and-power-banks/

If your work requires the power that a USB-C PD battery pack supplies you will need to stick with a 2016 or 2017 model, probably the nTB one for the best battery life.

 

[Jamalogo10]

The touch bar is oled and is mostly off. While it obviously is using power I doubt it is that noticeable if that.

I promise you an hour to two hours is extremely common.

The non touch bar has a bigger battery than the equivalent touch bar model.
54.5-watt vs. 49.2

That means the non touch bar's battery is 10.7% larger. It is also slightly less powerful and does not require power to be sent to a display that is constantly changing and refreshing. 10.7 percent of the claimed 10 hours is over an hour of additional use time and that's not accounting for the power sent to two fans over one, the higher output of GHz, 15 W vs 28 W or the touchbar. So yes, 1-2 hours is accurate. The difference is even bigger when comparing the nTB to the 15in MBP.