Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[Kimcha]

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!

Can you please post your script so we can run it too and do the same test?

 

[Ma2k5]

Can you please post your script so we can run it too and do the same test?

There are several online battery test apps/scrips that you can use yourself, BatteryEater rings a bell.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I don't understand how a few people in this thread are getting 9-10 hours of battery on the 13" TB with normal use, while others (like me), are getting 6-7 hours. This is the one thing that suggests that some of these machines may have a problem that could be fixed.

I've just finished my 6th complete cycle. I got 6.75 hours of battery on this last cycle, and on the previous ones I've been between 6-7 hours. Just like the Verge review, I've never gotten over 7 hours.

I'm running the exact same software I've been running on my 2013 MBA, which still gets >10 hours on battery 3 years later. Safari, Chrome, Polymail, Slack, Evernote, Dropbox, Fantastical 2, etc. Just basic productivity stuff, no video or other processor-intensive activities.

I am for sure going to return this if Apple doesn't issue a fix, which I am very skeptical of. I will likely give up the TB and get a 13" non-TB. Either that or I'll keep the MBA for another year and hope that the next generation of TB MBPs have better battery life.

I haven't used the TB itself much, but I'm sold on TouchID. That said, it's not enough to give up 3 hours of battery life for.

 

[Ma2k5]

I don't understand how a few people in this thread are getting 9-10 hours of battery on the 13" TB with normal use, while others (like me), are getting 6-7 hours. This is the one thing that suggests that some of these machines may have a problem that could be fixed.

I've just finished my 6th complete cycle. I got 6.75 hours of battery on this last cycle, and on the previous ones I've been between 6-7 hours. Just like the Verge review, I've never gotten over 7 hours.

I'm running the exact same software I've been running on my 2013 MBA, which still gets >10 hours on battery 3 years later. Safari, Chrome, Polymail, Slack, Evernote, Dropbox, Fantastical 2, etc. Just basic productivity stuff, no video or other processor-intensive activities.

I am for sure going to return this if Apple doesn't issue a fix, which I am very skeptical of. I will likely give up the TB and get a 13" non-TB. Either that or I'll keep the MBA for another year and hope that the next generation of TB MBPs have better battery life.

I haven't used the TB itself much, but I'm sold on TouchID. That said, it's not enough to give up 3 hours of battery life for.

Is there anyone who has the opposite experience with actual usage (rather than what is estimated?).

I'd like to think you are one of the few, but when you think through it logically, 49wh battery for that resolution, that CPU, that iGPU and that RAM, while powering the touch bar, it sounds about right no? Most Windows laptops with 50'ish wh batteries are also only getting this level of battery life when they don't use a 1080p screen.

Hard to imagine the touch bar utilizing the CPU and magically pumping out ~10 hours of battery life, just defies logic (in my opinion).

 

[poorcody]

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%.

I experience this too, but I found when the percentage dropped below 20%, the two values started to converge.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I would love to hear from 15" users regarding actual battery life they are seeing.

I've decided to return the 13" TB, and am deciding whether to replace with 15" TB or 13" non-TB.

I'm heading down to the Apple Store today to see if I could live with the added size/weight of the 15", but I also need to know about battery life.

I think 8 hours would be enough, provided I can get that consistently with normal use. 10 would be better, but 8 would probably suffice. It's enough for a cross-country flight as well as using it in the waiting area for a couple hours before the flight.

 

[jacob_w]

I would love to hear from 15" users regarding actual battery life they are seeing.

I've decided to return the 13" TB, and am deciding whether to replace with 15" TB or 13" non-TB.

I'm heading down to the Apple Store today to see if I could live with the added size/weight of the 15", but I also need to know about battery life.

I think 8 hours would be enough, provided I can get that consistently with normal use. 10 would be better, but 8 would probably suffice. It's enough for a cross-country flight as well as using it in the waiting area for a couple hours before the flight.

Have used my base 15" for a week. Never got more than 7 hours. Granted I don't drain the battery completely. But it only takes 6 hours or so to drain it down to 15% under light use (Safari, Word and Spotify).

 

[mercedes27]

I think that is still good. My Experience with Dell XPS 13" with Kaby Lake i7 was 6-7h in real world - only web-browsing and it has bigger battery pack [60Wh].
For me - if it can run for 7hours consistently - ok for me. If it will be 4-5 hours - return that and payback .
There is new review on MacBook 15" - battery life etc. will be added - so keep an eye on that - they are really good in testing laptops. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html

 

[vddobrev]

Reading all this makes me sad. I never had to worry about battery life with my 2015 13". In simple tasks it is always >10 hours. May I suggest a 100% CPU utilization test? For example use handbrake to transcode a video, start the job on power and 100% battery then unplug and wait for the battery estimate to stabilize. How long do you get? On my 2015 13", remaining is estimated at 3h20m.

 

[mercedes27]

If you want to know about XPS - 2:30h, and my late 2012 13"retina 2:45h.
Overall, this 4years old late 2012retina still gets 6:30 and more consistently than this new XPS with UHD. I' ve read some reviews of XPS with only FullHD - it performs markedly better.

 

[thesaint024]

Have used my base 15" for a week. Never got more than 7 hours. Granted I don't drain the battery completely. But it only takes 6 hours or so to drain it down to 15% under light use (Safari, Word and Spotify).

I am just as perplexed at the discrepancy in battery life too, especially after the 1st and 2nd cycles where a lot of background setup processes are running. I was in the same spot during my first couple cycles, than I started doing the troubleshooting. I suggest you guys do it too to end the mystery. Aren't you all curious as to why your battery drains so fast? Answers are right in System Monitor and Coconut Battery. Just a small change in behavior, conscious or subconscious, will get you battery life you expect. I'm not running a unrealistic, battery saving setup or anything. I'm just more aware of what has been sucking power. Example is iTunes running music from my network drive is more power intensive than Spotify off the internet. Who knew, and now I have comfort knowing that won't be an issue on the go since my network drive won't be connected anyway. 6.4 watts in the screenshot at this time is on the high end of my mobile use. When just browsing Safari, I'm usually under 5. Extra power for Spotify, but all the other crap and more is always running.

My point is, instead of just assuming it may be defective, you can know definitively if it is a specific app or something that is causing battery woes, and you can just find a workaround. It might make sense because the new OS, hardware, app combination may not be optimized and may need an update. Or you can just return it and wait it out. You are completely justified in saying the battery life is worse than last year's larger battery model (because it is) or that you shouldn't have to do this nerdy troubleshooting (because you shouldn't). But Apple didn't lie about the battery estimate of "up to 10 hours". There's a lot more variability in this processor in terms of power usage, so the estimates and expectations just haven't "matured" yet.

 

[zhenya]

I don't understand how a few people in this thread are getting 9-10 hours of battery on the 13" TB with normal use, while others (like me), are getting 6-7 hours. This is the one thing that suggests that some of these machines may have a problem that could be fixed.

I've just finished my 6th complete cycle. I got 6.75 hours of battery on this last cycle, and on the previous ones I've been between 6-7 hours. Just like the Verge review, I've never gotten over 7 hours.

I'm running the exact same software I've been running on my 2013 MBA, which still gets >10 hours on battery 3 years later. Safari, Chrome, Polymail, Slack, Evernote, Dropbox, Fantastical 2, etc. Just basic productivity stuff, no video or other processor-intensive activities.

I am for sure going to return this if Apple doesn't issue a fix, which I am very skeptical of. I will likely give up the TB and get a 13" non-TB. Either that or I'll keep the MBA for another year and hope that the next generation of TB MBPs have better battery life.

I haven't used the TB itself much, but I'm sold on TouchID. That said, it's not enough to give up 3 hours of battery life for.

It's because as @thesaint024 says above, tiny differences in power consumption equate to big differences in battery life. At 5W you'll get 10 hours. At 6.5W you'll get 7.5 hours. The difference between 5 and 6.5W is almost nothing - it's a couple of clicks of screen brightness, a different website loaded with a script that constantly runs, some program that's running in the background using slightly more energy than it ideally should.

 

[thesaint024]

If you want to know about XPS - 2:30h, and my late 2012 13"retina 2:45h.
Overall, this 4years old late 2012retina still gets 6:30 and more consistently than this new XPS with UHD. I' ve read some reviews of XPS with only FullHD - it performs markedly better.

I returned the XPS 13 touchscreen because the battery sucked. My friend's FHD XPS has massive battery life, over 10 hours, but the touchscreen UHD was about 6 hours no matter what you do. The power management just seems disconnected from the hardware, big surprise on a Windows machine. MBP touch is way better than the XPS UHD. I believe the non-touch MBP and XPS HD are similar in battery performance. Similar to the MBP controversy, Dell does not publish a separate battery performance for the UHD and FHD and just claim "up to 14 hours" or something ridiculous. UHD version is a joke in that respect.

 

[vddobrev]

If you want to know about XPS - 2:30h, and my late 2012 13"retina 2:45h.
Overall, this 4years old late 2012retina still gets 6:30 and more consistently than this new XPS with UHD. I' ve read some reviews of XPS with only FullHD - it performs markedly better.

Am I guessing right you are replying to my post regarding 100% CPU usage, or?

 

[tjleonard]

So I was getting 4-5 hours steady...for 10 cycles. Last night, I decided to boot into recovery mode and reinstalled Sierra. It took about 30 minutes but when I unplugged t off the charger, I'm actually now getting 11 or so hours of usage (not prediction, usage). I have been using Outlook for Mac, Jump Desktop, Better Touch tool, wifi, and Safari 90% of the time. Today, I only lost about 15% battery in about 2.5 hours. It was actually game changing.

I did noticed the mah usage doesn't spike and take a long time to drop. It idles around 125 mah right now, I'll see it jump when I do something but it actually will drop back down.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

It's because as @thesaint024 says above, tiny differences in power consumption equate to big differences in battery life. At 5W you'll get 10 hours. At 6.5W you'll get 7.5 hours. The difference between 5 and 6.5W is almost nothing - it's a couple of clicks of screen brightness, a different website loaded with a script that constantly runs, some program that's running in the background using slightly more energy than it ideally should.

This is really interesting and explains a lot. I've seen much more fluctuation than 1.5W in normal use. I've been tracking with Battery Health 2, and consumption can go from 220 mAH to 750+ mAH in a heart beat.
[doublepost=1479924882][/doublepost]

So I was getting 4-5 hours steady...for 10 cycles. Last night, I decided to boot into recovery mode and reinstalled Sierra. It took about 30 minutes but when I unplugged t off the charger, I'm actually now getting 11 or so hours of usage (not prediction, usage). I have been using Outlook for Mac, Jump Desktop, Better Touch tool, wifi, and Safari 90% of the time. Today, I only lost about 15% battery in about 2.5 hours. It was actually game changing.

I did noticed the mah usage doesn't spike and take a long time to drop. It idles around 125 mah right now, I'll see it jump when I do something but it actually will drop back down.

Strange. I did a completely fresh install when I got the 13" TB and I never got usage like this.

 

[tjleonard]

This is really interesting and explains a lot. I've seen much more fluctuation than 1.5W in normal use. I've been tracking with Battery Health 2, and consumption can go from 220 mAH to 750+ mAH in a heart beat.
[doublepost=1479924882][/doublepost]

Strange. I did a completely fresh install when I got the 13" TB and I never got usage like this.

I have no idea why it worked to be honest. This proves to me it's software though.

 

[thesaint024]

This is really interesting and explains a lot. I've seen much more fluctuation than 1.5W in normal use. I've been tracking with Battery Health 2, and consumption can go from 220 mAH to 750+ mAH in a heart beat.
[doublepost=1479924882][/doublepost]

Strange. I did a completely fresh install when I got the 13" TB and I never got usage like this.

If all of your battery stats are saying it's a good battery, you are likely running something that is killing it. I assume your brightness is down? No insights from Activity Monitor on what program is the offender?

I was able to determine that Safari/macrumors/flash combination was killing my battery. I just watched it to make sure the watts were reasonable and carried on. Otherwise, I restarted Safari and didn't load whatever crazy flash running page it was in macrumors. Yes, this is a software optimization issue.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I have no idea why it worked to be honest. This proves to me it's software though.

That's what I'm still hoping. Unfortunately no one at Apple that I can reach on the phone seems to know anything about it.

 

[cibonak]

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.

They dont give a **** of Macbook Pros.. the future is on the ipads...

 

[Jolly-boo]

The touch bar says something different.

 

[hArrisburger]

I was having the same issues on my 13" MB Pro TB. I have 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8GB of memory.

I did a full restore using Time Machine after getting the computer out of the box. I experienced the same issues that I have read here, even after indexing was finished and several battery cycle charges. I contacted Apple Support and they recommended doing an erase, reinstalling Sierra, and then restoring just User Data and Applications.

And the early returns are showing that it is working. Now, I was only getting 3-4 hours prior and as of now I am getting close to 7 hours. Not the 10 advertised, but markedly better. I am hoping future fixes will improve it even more.

My use is relatively benign, Safari, iTunes, Word, etc.

 

[JohnnyGo]

The touch bar says something different.

Indeed ! The touch bar is a major investment in both hardware and software and as such shows how much time and effort Apple is willing to spend on the Mac.

Folks may not like the touchbar now. And back in the day there were a lot of critics of a new smartphone without a keyboard (a joke in 2007). But change is coming to the bottom part of our laptops ! And it won't be just the touchbar !!!

 

[shadow82x]

75% - 4 hours estimate remaining. Ugh. This is my second TMBP with terrible battery life. On top of that I'm forcing integrated graphics right with gfxcardstatus. What gives?

Only apps open are safari and iTunes. Nothing is exceeding >10 in energy impact under activity log.

15" 2.9GHZ/460/1TB

 

[thesaint024]

I was having the same issues on my 13" MB Pro TB. I have 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 with 8GB of memory.

I did a full restore using Time Machine after getting the computer out of the box. I experienced the same issues that I have read here, even after indexing was finished and several battery cycle charges. I contacted Apple Support and they recommended doing an erase, reinstalling Sierra, and then restoring just User Data and Applications.

And the early returns are showing that it is working. Now, I was only getting 3-4 hours prior and as of now I am getting close to 7 hours. Not the 10 advertised, but markedly better. I am hoping future fixes will improve it even more.

My use is relatively benign, Safari, iTunes, Word, etc.

Check your iTunes on Activity Monitor in SysInfo app. iTunes not that "benign". I was getting 9 watts of power consumption on it playing songs from a network drive. Granted it could be less with local files, but does anyone store music files on their SSD's? If you kill a 9 watt power app, you will double your battery life. iTunes needs an update, especially since it's a "native" Apple app.

Edit: 9 watts when I normally have 4-6 on battery. iTunes itself probably draws 3-5 watts, a lot for a background app to play music. Spotify internet did much better for me. Not saying to stop listening to music, but understand that iTunes will draw good power in it's current state.