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GeorgeVes

macrumors member
Sep 11, 2016
83
27
I've been using my 15" for 5 hours straight, downloading programs, browsing the web, editing a few documents - lost about 45% in that time :) Overall it appears light usage is exactly the 10 hours apple claims on their website.
 
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elvin_hu

macrumors newbie
Nov 20, 2016
19
3
Estimates means nothing, we are talking about real usage (a full charge and discharge). My 13TB will show 8 hours then jump to 5 then jump to 7 etc etc
yeah now I understand what you mean. It shows 14 hours now hahaaha
 

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
Wow, I was just using RingCentral (a VOIP app), Chrome, and also had Safari open (but not using) as well as Polymail, Fantastical, and Slack... and my power usage was 1105 mAH.

Thing is, I use all of these apps daily with my 2013 MBA, and it still gets >10 hours per charge, 3 hours after I bought it.

I've been on battery for 3:53, and it's saying only 1:55 left. That's horrible.

Definitely returning this... and even now considering just keeping the '13 MBA, crappy screen and all. At least it really does have "all day battery life".
 

Apple_Robert

Contributor
Sep 21, 2012
35,645
52,419
In a van down by the river
Wow, I was just using RingCentral (a VOIP app), Chrome, and also had Safari open (but not using) as well as Polymail, Fantastical, and Slack... and my power usage was 1105 mAH.

Thing is, I use all of these apps daily with my 2013 MBA, and it still gets >10 hours per charge, 3 hours after I bought it.

I've been on battery for 3:53, and it's saying only 1:55 left. That's horrible.

Definitely returning this... and even now considering just keeping the '13 MBA, crappy screen and all. At least it really does have "all day battery life".
See how much battery you actually get, instead of treating the estimate as some kind of set in stone limit, which it isn't.

I just hit 4 hours of battery and still have 62% left.
 

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
See how much battery you actually get, instead of treating the estimate as some kind of set in stone limit, which it isn't.

I just hit 4 hours of battery and still have 62% left.

You may have missed my >15 posts earlier in the thread. I've tracked battery life carefully over 6 cycles. I got between 6-7 on the first 5 cycles, and I'm on track for the same or similar on this one.
 

vince730

macrumors member
Aug 9, 2010
30
8
Getting a bit less than 6 hours on 13' TB with just a few Safari tabs and iTunes open. 12-14 Watt average power usage. The major problem is that iCloud Photo Library decided it wants to re-sync the entire library and so is uploading ~20GB of photos at an abysmally slow speed such that it seems like it will take weeks to finish.
 

Westbrook0

macrumors member
Oct 17, 2016
65
10
Can you guys suggest a free app that records the time on battery and at the end of the cycle, displays it? I am currently using my phone's timer and battery health 2, but I'd prefer a timer within the laptop.
 
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yillbs

macrumors 6502
Oct 2, 2015
382
158
Texas
Can you guys suggest a free app that records the time on battery and at the end of the cycle, displays it? I am currently using my phone's timer and battery health 2, but I'd prefer a timer within the laptop.

Their is a really good one , but its 1.99 ... you can't spare two bucks ?
 

Peptide

macrumors member
Nov 22, 2016
62
10
Has anyone with a 15inch tried disabling the dGPU and checking the battery performance then?
 

Queen6

macrumors G4
Got a replacement 13" TB from the Apple store yesterday! Same issues with battery, no indexing of any kind going on anymore and I have gotten 6:15hr of battery so far (from early morning till now) using a simple script to browse to a new website every 30 secs with 50% brightness and NO OTHER APPS OPEN!

I will give Apple a week to issue some FW/SW update otherwise this is going back for a refund!

Reality is unless you follow exactly Apple`s usage recommendations explicitly you will be very unlikely to see 10 hours of runtime, and none of us know what sites they directs Safari at during Apple`s own tests. Apple may be able to optimise Sierra more, however unless the new MBP power consumption advancements outweigh the depreciation of the battery the math will never work out.

By Apple depreciating the battery capacity of the MBP, it`s allowed for a lighter, thinner notebook, it has also weakened the MBP in the face of the competition. Personally I would trade an additional 3mm (1/8") in thickness in a heartbeat for a 34% increase battery capacity and associated runtime...

Q-6
 
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Apple_Robert

Contributor
Sep 21, 2012
35,645
52,419
In a van down by the river
I tested the battery today and got 8 hours with the screen at 50% with light usage (web surfing, email, iTunes, YouTube, MS Word. The battery estimate in Sierra is not accurate so, I wouldn't get too worked up about what it says, as it fluctuates up and down.
 

Westbrook0

macrumors member
Oct 17, 2016
65
10
I tested the battery today and got 8 hours with the screen at 50% with light usage (web surfing, email, iTunes, YouTube, MS Word. The battery estimate in Sierra is not accurate so, I wouldn't get too worked up about what it says, as it fluctuates up and down.

Out of curiosity, how did you time it?
 

tjleonard

macrumors 6502a
Jun 25, 2013
581
381
So....I rebooted my laptop and reinstalled Sierra....I haven't even seen the battery PREDICT more than 5 hours, no matter if I wasn't sitting completely idle...This is what it's saying right now, using 2.5 watts and ~ 188mah or so...no idea what the real usage is yet - we'll see...I don't expect to get even close to 18 hours, but 8 hours would be great (when I was getting 5 hours).
[doublepost=1479878610][/doublepost]Interesting enough, i've used 5% battery in 51 minutes.
 

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happyslayer

macrumors 65816
Feb 3, 2008
1,031
579
Glendale, AZ
I'm on a base 13" TB (i5, 8GB, 256SSD) and I have generally been getting about 5 or so hours of time. I've had it since Sunday at 1:00pm. Started using it on battery a 9:00pm Sunday and used it continuously (light web and youtube and stuff) and it hit 5% at 1:35am (4.5ish hours). Last night, I got a little more, about 5.5 hours. Tonight, I am using the $1.99 battery logger and coconut battery and it seems to be on track to get about the same. Also, with coconut, I have been averaging about 9-10 watts and that is using only Safari, Battery Logger and Coconut. I think a lot of this can be solved with a software update the more I hear about it. Too much discrepancy among all of us.

Also, since it was asked previously, I did a migration from my previous MacBook not a fresh install. And I honestly don't have it in me to do a full re-install right now. Too much work.. and too many passwords :)

Here's hoping this gets better. I'd be happy if it would just equal my previous 2016 MacBook (that went to the wife) which was usually about 8ish hours.
 

dgdosen

macrumors 68030
Dec 13, 2003
2,817
1,463
Seattle
Getting a bit less than 6 hours on 13' TB with just a few Safari tabs and iTunes open. 12-14 Watt average power usage. The major problem is that iCloud Photo Library decided it wants to re-sync the entire library and so is uploading ~20GB of photos at an abysmally slow speed such that it seems like it will take weeks to finish.

It's doing that on battery power? That seems like a waste.
 

unagimiyagi

macrumors 6502a
Jun 9, 2009
905
229
There is 0% doubt left that this mbp that people have waited 4 years for has worse battery life than the previous generation across the board. It's due to 1/3 smaller batteries in the 13" models and 25% smaller batteries in the 15" models. A more efficient screen and more efficient CPU is not able to make up the deficit. In fact, under load the battery life is even worse because the size of the gas tank is less. These laptops are sipping power only a little slower rate than 4 years ago, but apple put in an even tinier gas tank. So for sure the battery life is worse. There's no advanced degrees needed for this. The fact that everyone on this forum, mac lovers, who want to justify their investment, are universally reporting lower battery runtimes in both unrealistically easy and realistic usage scenarios, settles the issue.

The only issue is if you can live with it. I think people can live with it because in a year your battery life goes to mush anway. But what many people can't live with is the principle behind it....so expensive for so little, etc etc ad nauseum.

Apple will still sell alot of these, but not to as many of the core audience. Once the core audience gets wandering eyes, even though they are small in number....watch out. No one's on top forever. Imagine if Honda stopped focusing on the accord and started focusing on building a Benz competitor. Weird, huh? But that's exactly what apple's doing. Apple has this odd way of making things binary--it must be this way or we'd rather not build anything at all. As a company they overthink things. They think, "We must focus and build the one-true-computer" even though they have more money than any company in history. We can't target two markets at once. That's not what they say, but this is what they are showing by their actions. Also, oddly, everything they do from the even more outlandish focus on design, to the pricing. to the marketing budget to make up for the lack of innovation, to what they sponsor, to their alliances with the fashion industry, to the $300 coffee table book claiming they took 8 years to design special inks and linens all while ignoring of the airport routers and abandoning the display market, etc.....their behavior reminds me very much of a jewelry company now.

The most telling sign is that what takes the longest to build up--brand image--is starting to erode in the eyes of basically everyone. Once that happens it's kind of a done deal as the death spiral begins.
 
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thesaint024

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2016
1,073
888
suspension waiting room
I am getting 8-9 hours on with reasonable light use on 13 TB i5/16/512 clean install. Safari, mail, imessage, skype, outlook, excel or word, and occasional media content, plus all these battery apps. I can get 10 hours with Safari alone and a couple background apps. I've run 7 cycles of real testing, no estimates. Run down to between 20% to 50% life and use math for the rest.

I can see how long I will and can get from all these battery apps going all the time: Coconut, Battery Health, Sysinfo/Activity Monitor, some suggested by other users here. I always know how much power I'm using and what the effect of different apps are. Lots of interesting observations you can gather on how power is consumed. I don't plan on doing this regularly, just wanted to confirm that the reported battery life was possible and it is from my tests. Monitoring your watts used in realtime takes out all the mystery and speculation. I know what programs or processes are causing rises in power consumption. Results are a little surprising. These battery monitors are definitely using power, but I suppose acceptable amounts.

At this moment, 46% battery, active use about 5:10 (shows more but I'm only counting screen time), 4:17 remaining, consuming 5.3 watts. This was not the lightest use either. I saw using just safari I could get the watts down to 3! Run some real tests with some real data and there's no more guessing.

It appears that this can at least be optimized by some software updates. Safari and itunes have some power spikes. I can only guess the OS itself isn't optimal. This power spiking is why the time estimates are all over the place. I can see it changing constantly with whatever the last power consumption read is. Not very good since the power reading is so volatile. Anyway, here's a data point for you. I don't think Apple is insane. All depends on what is considered "light" usage. It also appears that data migration is a big issue too. Old processes can be running that you aren't aware of. That's why the Activity Monitor helps.
 

vddobrev

macrumors 6502a
Oct 28, 2016
962
833
Haskovo, Bulgaria
Something for people with 2016 MBP to check - I noticed that on my 2015 13" MBP, the OS battery percentage does not match the percentage reported by coconut battery. For example OS is reporting 100%, while coconut battery is reporting 96.5%.
 
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