I am currently in the market to buy a new MacBook Pro. I can not decide whether or no I want non touch bar(i7 CPU) or base touch bar 13 inch. I was wondering if there will be any sort of battery difference between these models since it seems the two CPUs are so similiar. I know that the nTB has a larger battery and the CPU has a lower TDP. Will this translate to any real better battery difference between models? Is there really gunna be that big of a difference between them in performance? I plan on playing some light games such as world of tanks but mostly it will just be used as a daily driver in college.
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Battery differences
- Thread starter cdrizel51
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People do generally get significantly better battery life with the non-touch-bar version; there are a lot more complaints about the battery life of the touch-bar version. There are performance tradeoffs, but it sounds like you won't be pushing it too hard.
The performance trade-offs are minimal -- check out geekbench results, the nTB 2.4 for instance is on par with the TB 3.1 -- and the difference in battery life is pretty significant, on the order of 2-3 hours.
As reported by the Ars review, the nTB will not throttle unless both the CPU and GPU are taxed. For truly light gaming it probably isn't an issue, but in general for gaming or any video work the TB will come out ahead.
Okay thank you, I am most likely leaning towards the nTB since it has the better battery life with minimal performance trade offs.