This is what I am getting too, about 10% an hour light usage. I am on a 13 inch TB with the 2.9 8gb ram, for now until the custom spec I ordered comes next EFFING month!
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Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro
- Thread starter fokmik
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This is what I am getting too, about 10% an hour light usage. I am on a 13 inch TB with the 2.9 8gb ram, for now until the custom spec I ordered comes next EFFING month!
The new Macbooks display have 500 nits brightness. It is a lot higher than the old versions. I think this should be considered when testing the new macbooks battery.
I'm going to set up a fully automated battery test using macro software on OS X so I can see exactly how much battery life this thing ACTUALLY gets instead of relying on the time remaining estimate which is wildly inaccurate and misleading.
Apple rates the 13" MBP at 10 hours for wireless web browsing. I was thinking of loading up 5 tabs in Safari - each with a different site loaded - and refreshing one of those tabs every 20 seconds. Brightness at 50% the whole way through. I'll let it run until the computer dies and see how long the battery lasts. I already tested it out and the touch bar remains on the entire time, so that won't be factor skewing the automated results.
Any suggestions for modifying this test at all? I'm going to try to run it tomorrow if I can step away from the computer for that long.
Apple rates the 13" MBP at 10 hours for wireless web browsing. I was thinking of loading up 5 tabs in Safari - each with a different site loaded - and refreshing one of those tabs every 20 seconds. Brightness at 50% the whole way through. I'll let it run until the computer dies and see how long the battery lasts. I already tested it out and the touch bar remains on the entire time, so that won't be factor skewing the automated results.
Any suggestions for modifying this test at all? I'm going to try to run it tomorrow if I can step away from the computer for that long.
Thanks so much. Now let's do the ,math': to get 10 hrs battery life Touchbar version has more theoretical headroom - it must average 432 mAh (400 mAh for noTouch version).
Obviously there is engineering behind design and theoretical capacity - I'm will not suspect battery-gate here.
But screen brightness will heavily affect power demand- this is one of the reasons apple decided to go wayyyy over industry standard with 500 nits screens (apart providing pro color replication - as for iPads Pro and iPhone plus).
Take away: when you are in bright room with screen brightness at 100% you will not get 10hrs - 7hrs is max. The same was with any previous MacBook Pro.
But the thing is mbp ntb achieve more hours without doing anything special. And battery specs on apple site are equal for both tb and non tb.
Edit: tb has less battery but the length estimation is the same. 10hours for both
Marketing.
These two 'identical' laptop cases are housing two different computers (ifixit). It's easier to simplify laptop lineup as PC market is shrinking. For next 2-3 years apple will offer old MacBook Air 13 (11" is replaced by 12 MacBook), similar to non-retina MacBook (discontinued).
Just look at it from higher perspective and you will understand it. Apple is innovative and brave not only at engineering but marketing and focus. Value of brand is enough to do such transitions. Imagine Dell or Lenovo doing similar things - nobody will bother, they will just loose market share for other aggressive PC competitors (Asus, Samsung - if it is not exploding). Thats why they just upgrade specs and keep it in "gray box with screen". Only recent hardware designs like HP Spectre or Microsoft Surface could compete, but they will always have one problem - MS WINDOWS.
Take away:
- noTouchbar version is the new Retina MacBook Air - which is ultimate portable machine for 80% of users with time on battery +12 hrs.
- Touchbar version is the new Pro - after major overhaul.
Haha - unfortunately the "brave and innovative" marketing at Apple marketed the "new Retina MacBook Air" as a MacBook Pro.
They also marketed the whole lineup with 10 hours of battery life.
Yup. It is still business and it is working very well
Take away: Apple Inc. is not UNICEF, it is corporation that must deliver in order to survive (to hire and pay people, boost economy, drive consumption etc.).
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You don't want to differentiate within family of products. Now I'm sure both non and Touchbar version will deliver 10hrs. Non Touch will deliver +12hrs (as good old MacBook Air).
Your math is flawed...I'm using this Mac 100% identical to my 2015 Pro and getting 3-4 hours less on battery.
I use Coconut Battery on my 2015 rMB for the same purpose; very easy to configure to display Watts being consumed, the rest is just math, as the battery capacity is a known value.
I can only describe my observations of my rMB and pre 2016 rMBP`s how I would best describe it is; although the newer notebook is far more efficient, teh "pool" of energy it can dip into is far less, therefore the impact of the users actions are far more significant. I have no doubt that the new 2016 MBP can reach the advertised battery runtime, however only if you strictly follow Apple`s specified usage, go outside this zone, the runtime will significantly diminish.
Q-6
Sounds like an interesting idea... if you can share the macro I would be willing to try it as well.
I think two factors would be to try the test with different websites (will they use flash?) and maybe at a higher brightness... I believe Apple's 10 hour claim is with 75% brightness. Although I find 50-60% to be fine for a normal room.
[doublepost=1479658808][/doublepost]I noticed something very interesting this morning... after booting up, I was unable to get my wattage-usage below about 14watts. Even when I closed all the applications and left it alone for five minutes, the wattage usage stayed that high. I checked Activity Monitor and saw nothing using any significant energy, even under System Processes.
So I rebooted, and sure enough it is back down to 5-8watts. It makes me think there is some OS issue that is drawing power unnecessarily. The difference between 7 watts and 15 watts is the difference between 10 hours and 6 hours of battery life!
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I had to open Preferences (in Coconut) and toggle the "Launch at Startup" switch to make it appear in the menu bar.
Also I modified what is shows to this:
%p% %r hours %ww
This shows battery percentage, estimated hours remaining, and wattage, e.g. "91% 16:57 hours 4.7w".
Battery percentage is always 5% less than what Sierra shows on the menu bar for some reason. Estimated time remaining seems to be based on current wattage, and varies much more than what Sierra uses, which I'm guessing is based on an average over some period of time.
Consistently getting about 5-6 hours on the 13" TB with the battery monitor sometimes claiming only ~4 hours as an estimate when nearly full. How long are the indexing and other set-up processes supposed to take? Going on day 3 now, and a bit frustrated with the initial 40% drop in battery life compared to what I was getting on the 2015 model.
Incoming major n00b question.
how can I go about doing a SMC and PRAM reset, I googled it but it's on older models. Apparently it has changed.
I'm getting atrocious battery life on my MacBook 13" TB.
It's at 95% with an estimate of just 4 hours.
how can I go about doing a SMC and PRAM reset, I googled it but it's on older models. Apparently it has changed.
I'm getting atrocious battery life on my MacBook 13" TB.
It's at 95% with an estimate of just 4 hours.
I have the base 13" TB with 512 GB and I had about 7 hours yesterday. It was running time machine, spotlight, I loaded in a lot of pictures ~200 GB web browsing and music. The pictures were loading from a SD card reader that was being powered by the laptop so that may have caused drain. It's backing up the pictures now so I'm leaving it on power but I'll take it off power and see how it looks later with lighter things. I'll try the reset thing but I want to give it a few days to see how it goes. I want to get a good comparison of before and after.
Sorry to say this but the drastically smaller battery is the reason why everyone is reporting worse battery life. The knee-jerk reaction is exactly the culprit. It was a dumb design decision by Apple. I don't see how the battery will equal last year's runtime. For the average user there will indeed be a decease despite $500 more.
How it is related to my 'math'? Theoretically new mac should deliver stated battery life but YMMV.
No
The Culprit is to the huge difference between what apple said and the actual performance.
In every one of my purchases including phones, iPads, airs, MacBooks I have never seen such a huge delta.
The 2016 will hit it`s battery runtime numbers as long as you stay within Apple`s usage parameters, however if you go outside of this zone, you will quickly find that the runtime rapidly diminishes. My own 2015 rMB is exactly the same needing to very much live within it`s power budget.
To me longer battery runtime is one of the primary factors for a portable PC, Apple have simply executed a retrograde step for the sole purpose of athletics. I have already switched my 13" class notebook to a Surface Book, irrespective of what new MBP brings to the table, it`s little more than paperweight once the battery is drained...
Q-6
I agree that something is likely wrong in the software/firmware. Brief history of my situation (13" tMBP):
- First 3 battery cycles I got 6-6.5 hours
- Did SMC reset. 4th cycle seemed better. Originally predicted 10 hours on battery just after I unplugged. Ended up getting closer to 7-7.5. Note: the computer was sleeping for about 16 hours of that charge cycle, but given that Apple claims 30 days of standby time, having the computer in sleep mode should not substantially discharge the battery in 16 hours.
- 5th cycle. Unplugged from charge and Apple showing 7:16 remaining. Coconut Battery is showing usage of 7.25-8.5 watts. I have Safari, Slack, Polymail, and Fantastical open. Safari is having energy impact of 3.3, all of the other apps are below that.
- I quit all apps except for Safari, and it is still drawing between 6.5-7.25 watts. At that power consumption, the MBP would last 6.5 to just overt 7 hours—which is exactly what Apple's estimate suggests.
For those that did the SMC reset, has the improvement continued through to subsequent charge cycles?
All this battery life stuff with the 13'' Touch Bar version has me wanting to go pick up a 15'' and cancel the current order I have.
People are having issues with the 15" as well, but they aren't as significant because it has a bigger battery.