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3SQ Machine

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 8, 2019
369
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I just wanted to hear from some other 14" M3 Max 14 core users what their experience is. I'm getting 10-12 in mixed use (web browsing, video, office work). If I baby it and close down a lot of apps, I can get 15+. I also get good standby time (24 hours +). Unfortunately, when I push it even just a bit with some pro apps I get from 5-7.
 
that's really good idk what's unfortunate about it. m2 15" mba here and the battery lasts longer than I do so it's fine. charges plenty fast too.
 
I'm not really dissatisfied, I just wanted to see if I'm in the range of what others are getting. I did a lot of optimization (getting rid of old apps, disabling background tasks, running etreck, etc.) and want to see if I'm in the ballpark. Otherwise, I might do a little more investigating of any energy-intensive processes.

Low Power Mode can definitely stretch it out, but I don't really like how it disables promotion and causes a delay with typing for some reason.
 
I'm getting 10 hours watching YouTube and surfing web on medium brightness.
100 battery cycles and 100% life still
when I plug in a couple of ssd hard drives into this Mac, the battery drains noticeably faster.
 
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I'm getting 10 hours watching YouTube and surfing web on medium brightness.
100 battery cycles and 100% life still
when I plug in a couple of ssd hard drives into this Mac, the battery drains noticeably faster.
Thanks, yes I noticed actually that after I optimized Brave (dark mode, a tick below medium brightness, hardware acceleration on, battery saver OFF (for some reason is better)) I can get some insane web browsing time, like 20 hours on a full charge. Monitoring CPU history shows it only uses the efficiency cores for my web browsing, which is exactly what I wanted for these lighter tasks. Pretty impressive actuall, drawing only about 3-3.7 watts.

But one day I was cleaning up some connected drives and noticed the same thing you did, got only 6-7 hours and just from file management. I haven't used Better Battery 2 yet to check battery draw, but I bet it's quite substantial.
 
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