Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[lobo1978]

Still on the same charge. Computer is on all the time - from 42% down to 27% - roughly 10% per hour. Brightness at 50% all the time + BT + mail.app + youtube videos + dropbox syncing + fantastical (syncing all the time)...

I'm impressed. I will try use it until it actually shut down. Maybe this will show how battery is calibrated.

 

[sbpax]

So what exactly is wrong about my facts? Look up what Base Frequency means first.

15W and 28W it's not consumed power, it's heat dissipation. That's what's wrong.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Still on the same charge. Computer is on all the time - from 42% down to 27% - roughly 10% per hour. Brightness at 50% all the time + BT + mail.app + youtube videos + dropbox syncing + fantastical (syncing all the time)...

I'm impressed. I will try use it until it actually shut down. Maybe this will show how battery is calibrated.

You have the non-TB version, though. No one is complaining about battery life with those.

 

[Nitefly]

In this thread or another I'm sure I read a couple of posters noting that "S??" was disabled (possibly by default). It was a 3 letter acronym beginning with S. It wasn't SMC and the implication was that it was affecting battery life for better or worse. Does anyone recall what this was? I can't find the posts now but I'm curious. Thanks.

 

[Apple_Robert]

In this thread or another I'm sure I read a couple of posters noting that "S??" was disabled (possibly by default). It was a 3 letter acronym beginning with S. It wasn't SMC and the implication was that it was affecting battery life for better or worse. Does anyone recall what this was? I can't find the posts now but I'm curious. Thanks.

You are referring to SIP (System Integrity Protection). There were several instances of it being disabled on several new MBP. To my knowledge, having of off does not affect battery life.

 

[Mercman1]

You have the non-TB version, though. No one is complaining about battery life with those.

Here are my experiences over the past week with the 13" TB 2.9 GHz/ 16 GB / 512 GB model.

At the start with the spotlight indexing etc, as I set it up from new, I was seeing 5 hours or so of battery life. As all of that syncing died down (including time machine backup, sync 300 GB to OneDrive etc), I noticed that sometimes battery would be fantastic and other times miserable. This seems to be consistent with professional reviews on the web, and this forum.

Yesterday I ran with Activity Monitor open, and watched the CPU thread to see what was busy at any given moment, while I was working in Word and Excel, iTunes playing music, and I was building and working on annotations in Preview with a 280 page PDF.

The key was face recognition in the Photos application. I have 98,000 photos in my library, and upon a new installation, Apple processes facial recognition locally (as opposed to Google who does it server side). The Photos app was spiking a single thread, using 90% to 105% of CPU (with 400% being the max with 2 cores / 4 threads) consistently.

I don't know why it runs sometimes, and not others, but as I type this now, I have 9:48 left on my battery (95% remaining), with Mail, iTunes, Word, Preview, OneNote, OneDrive syncing running...but the photos app is silent and not processing.

Not saying other reports aren't what everyone is saying, but coming from a 2015 rMBP 13", I find the battery life here to be about the same when there isn't some monster process like Face Recognition running away.

 

[Nitefly]

You are referring to SIP (System Integrity Protection). There were several instances of it being disabled on several new MBP. To my knowledge, having of off does not affect battery life.

Thank you

 

[Impatientmac]

So my 1st day using it for what I originally needed it for and that was school work. After about 4 hours of classes I had over 50% battery left. I used a different ad blocker on Firefox and did not watch any videos flash or html but I did have the browser open the entire time as well as Microsoft word. I also turned off flash with an add on which I think improved battery life as well. Oh and I had switch the touchbar to show the app controls instead of the expanded control strip so the entire bar isn't always on. I was worried but it seems like these simple tricks really did make the battery life last much longer. I expect a good 8+ hrs of use now

 

[high3r]

The key was face recognition in the Photos application. I have 98,000 photos in my library, and upon a new installation, Apple processes facial recognition locally (as opposed to Google who does it server side). The Photos app was spiking a single thread, using 90% to 105% of CPU (with 400% being the max with 2 cores / 4 threads) consistently.

On both MacOS and iOS facial recognition runs only while connected to power and not using the app.

 

[malikkamran]

So my 1st day using it for what I originally needed it for and that was school work. After about 4 hours of classes I had over 50% battery left. I used a different ad blocker on Firefox and did not watch any videos flash or html but I did have the browser open the entire time as well as Microsoft word. I also turned off flash with an add on which I think improved battery life as well. Oh and I had switch the touchbar to show the app controls instead of the expanded control strip so the entire bar isn't always on. I was worried but it seems like these simple tricks really did make the battery life last much longer. I expect a good 8+ hrs of use now

Is this touch bar

 

[Impatientmac]

Is this touch bar

Yes I say touchbar in my post

 

[Mercman1]

On both MacOS and iOS facial recognition runs only while connected to power and not using the app.

Good point. There were three processes from the photos app. Maybe it's creating thumbnails?

Either way, snap judgements on battery life don't necessarily hold.

 

[macdkus]

Apple support is offering me to swap mine out, but I don't see how that would help seeing as multiple ppl and reviewers (Verge) are reporting this issue! Has anyone got a TB 13 or 15 MBP that actually gets 9 or 10 hours ?

 

[zokstar]

Have any of you done a fresh install + SMC reset etc to see if it helps?

 

[macdkus]

Have any of you done a fresh install + SMC reset etc to see if it helps?

Yes it did NOT make any difference on 2/2 of my MBP 13 TB (I tried installing the public beta version of Mac OS on one of them without any significant difference either)

 

[Apple_Robert]

Apple support is offering me to swap mine out, but I don't see how that would help seeing as multiple ppl and reviewers (Verge) are reporting this issue! Has anyone got a TB 13 or 15 MBP that actually gets 9 or 10 hours ?

I have seen 2 maybe 3 members on here who claim to get 8 - 9 hours. Can't recall screen names though.

 

[marcel500]

Still on the same charge. Computer is on all the time - from 42% down to 27% - roughly 10% per hour. Brightness at 50% all the time + BT + mail.app + youtube videos + dropbox syncing + fantastical (syncing all the time)...

I'm impressed. I will try use it until it actually shut down. Maybe this will show how battery is calibrated.

On what kind of computer are you? An old MacBook Pro? Because your signature is saying u just ordered a MBP 13 TB... So, don't show us old stats, it is really not helpful

 

[xspin]

I've discharged my battery about 4 times since it arrived - getting about 5 hours each time on my MBP 15" TB. Its really sad literally watching the percentage go down noticeably fast as I work.

 

[malikkamran]

I've discharged my battery about 4 times since it arrived - getting about 5 hours each time on my MBP 15" TB. Its really sad literally watching the percentage go down noticeably fast as I work.

Try smc reset

 

[xspin]

I used Migration Assistant

I set mine up as new and migrated absolutely nothing off of my old computer.
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Try smc reset

I tried that. Is there a way to tell if the SMC reset went through - I thought it usually did a sound/ visual queue. But, after (I think) doing it - the computer just turned on as normal and normal speed.

 

[malikkamran]

I've discharged my battery about 4 times since it arrived - getting about 5 hours each time on my MBP 15" TB. Its really sad literally watching the percentage go down noticeably fast as I work.

Try smc reset and uncheck keychain in iCloud preferences

 

[Apple_Robert]

Try smc reset and uncheck keychain in iCloud preferences

According to Apple, SMC reset (re: batteries) is for when your battery is not charging properly or the display battery lights are acting up. As such, resetting the SMC because the Mac is getting less than 10 hours, when it appears to be acting normally otherwise, is probably not going to do anything, other than report inaccurate time left for battery discharge.

I don't think turning off iCloud Keychain is good advice. Why do you think it would impact the battery in a significant way?

 

[xspin]

Try smc reset and uncheck keychain in iCloud preferences

keychain is already unchecked. see my above question about SMC reset and figuring out if it went through or not

 

[meteoreos]

Does Apple fix issues with each new batch in the production line? I'm receiving my Macbook Pro 15" in December hoping some of these problems are ironed out.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm on my 4th or 5th cycle and I've gotten between 6-7.5 hours each time, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. I have done SMC resets twice. I set it up as a new computer. I'm doing light/normal usage, nothing intensive.