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Grolubao

macrumors 68000
Dec 23, 2008
1,579
583
London, UK
Damn, I'm getting like 3 hours of battery life. Will give it a couple days, but this coupled with the keyboard that simply isn't as good as the too big of a trackpad, things are not boding well
 

Jreinhal

macrumors newbie
Jan 19, 2016
19
5
Did you do the step of seeing what's draining the battery? If you run the battery monitors, even just the built in Activity Monitor, you can see what the offenders are. It might surprise you that otherwise considered lightweight apps are drawing significant power. You can than make the call if you can live without that app constantly running. Normal draw for me is about 5-6 watts. You must be in the 8-9 range based on your battery life. Something is killing it.
I did. Surprisingly, the Messenger app was one of the largest offenders.
 

littlepud

macrumors 6502
Sep 16, 2012
453
308
This post here shows the correct way to do the calculation. See how when the battery is specified in mAh, the voltage must be specified also. He then converts to an energy unit (W*hr) by assuming a ~12V output voltage.

There's no need to assume. You can see the batter specs if you look at the label of the battery from the iFixit link.

I'd bet VERY surprised if my math is off, as I used to work in a data centre doing power analysis of IT gear.
 

Murgatroyd314

macrumors regular
Feb 10, 2012
127
45
My new 15", which I haven't plugged in since I took it out of the box, is at 33% after about 4.5 hours. This is with light-to-moderate usage while getting it set up properly.
 

Murgatroyd314

macrumors regular
Feb 10, 2012
127
45
Looks like the first battery draw-down will be right around 6:25. (Currently at 6:22, estimating 3 minutes remaining.)
 

lobo1978

macrumors 6502
Sep 22, 2011
394
259
No, sorry, but you're not doing the math right. The post you responded to was exactly correct.

Let's look at the units first. A battery is rated for how much energy it stores in Watt-hours or W*hr. A Watt is a Joule (unit of energy) / second. An hour is obviously a unit of time and can be expressed as seconds. So a W*hr is J/s * s = J (energy).

Sometimes a battery's energy is expressed a amp-hours or A*hr, when a particular output voltage is assumed. Also can be expressed as milli-amp-hours, but that's just scaling it by 1000. So your contention that you should use amp-hours to express energy is not correct. In fact, using amp-hours requires you to specify the voltage. Using watt-hours does NOT require specification of the voltage. This is why Apple specifies the battery energy storage capacity in W*hr. In a modern computer different systems (CPU, DRAM, SSD, screen) use many different voltages, so specifying in A*hr would not make sense, since there is not a common voltage used. The battery outputs a certain voltage and the sub-systems need to use voltage regulators to convert the battery output voltage to whatever is needed. The CPU will down-convert. The screen will need to boost.

So the poster you responded to was doing exactly the correct calculation. Measure the overall system power usage in W. Divide the battery energy capacity (in W*hr) by the power consumption (W) to get run time (in hr).

In some previous posts, you've tried to express the power consumption of the machine in A*hr or mA*hr, which is not correct. An amp is a measure of current (coulombs/s). Multiplying amps by time just gets you coulombs (a measure of electric charge, not energy).



This post here shows the correct way to do the calculation. See how when the battery is specified in mAh, the voltage must be specified also. He then converts to an energy unit (W*hr) by assuming a ~12V output voltage.
You are absolutely right, I stand corrected.
 
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NoWayBehind

macrumors 6502
Sep 9, 2014
315
258
Rheinland Pfalz Germany
I really don't understand it, but my battery life is fantastic with the new 15. Coconut Battery showed me 105% design capacity and it feels like it. I am getting about 13-15 hours of light use out of this thing (Learning and working with PDF, occasional search in safari, some streaming..). That being said, I have my brightness at around 40%.

I don't refer to the estimate, because the first one or two hours it always shows 20 hours left (which seems to be there maximum it can show). This is after 4 days of use and without any resets mentioned in this thread.
 
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vinsalducci

macrumors regular
Nov 26, 2016
139
164
I have deen watching this thread with great interest. My new tbMBP was consistently showing 6-6.5 hours battery life on a full charge, without any real heavy lifting. 2-3 tabs on Safari, Mail and Calendar, Twitter and iMessage open. Monitor at 11-12 clicks from the bottom. (FWIW iMessage seems to be a bit of a power hog, according to Activity Monitor)

Yesterday I ran down the battery from a full charge to 0 and restarted. Now my battery, under the same usage load, show 9-11 hours battery remaining on a full charge.

I'm no computer engineer, but the Remaining Battery Time estimate seems pretty variable, based on what you're doing RIGHT THEN. It's tough to be super accurate, given that CPU use ebbs and flows. I wanted a computer that could get a full day at work out of a charge. I'd say that now, after running out down, it can get the necessary 6-8 hours with some sleep periods, no question.
 
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badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
I'm on my 7th cycle, second one after the Sierra reinstall. This morning I woke up, unplugged, and see 20 hours as estimated time remaining! Obviously not accurate, but I've been on battery for 54 minutes and am only down to 96%. I've had Safari, Fantastical 2, Polymail, Slack, 2Do, and Messages open, and power consumption has been at about 250-350 mAH.

This seems even better than my first cycle after reinstalling Sierra.

The one thing I haven't done yet is the suggestion posted earlier in the thread for reducing the battery drain that happens while sleeping. Because of the holiday, over the past few days my MBP has been in sleep mode a lot. Seems like it loses way more battery than it should in sleep, so I wasn't able to get a good read on actual battery life while working on the first cycle after the Sierra reinstall. I'm pretty sure it was better than before the reinstall, but every time I put the computer to sleep it would lose a big chunk.

I can't see a downside to the fix that was suggested, so I'll do that now.

I'd love to hear reports from others that have reinstalled Sierra. What kind of real-world battery life are you getting now?

Also, has anyone tried the "battery drain while sleeping" fix? (i.e. sudo pmset -b standbydelay 3600)

P.S. I did not migrate data when I first set up my MBP, and reinstalling Sierra seems to have helped tremendously for me. So I'd suggest that anyone having battery issues do this, regardless of whether they migrated data.
 

zhenya

macrumors 604
Jan 6, 2005
6,931
3,681
I feel like a lot of you are talking about how you discharge with only like 6 Watts doing light internet browsing? Mine is always at 12-20W.

That's way too high. What browser are you using? How many plug ins? What brightness?

Even with the old 13" model with larger battery you'd only be looking at ~3.75-6 hours of battery life max with that kind of power use.
 

ccozmo

macrumors newbie
Apr 9, 2011
15
14
Have a 15"tb - SMC reset and kill a few processes based on activity app... Great battery life. 3 hrs using (wifi web browsing) & it still shows 12 hours to go..

Too many negative comments almost made me cancel, but glad I didn't - you guys complaining should check activity monitor - CPU and see if you have anything that is using too much, in my case my IT dept pushed out a backup service that was not being used, but the service was running & using the highest utilization
 

badlydrawnboy

macrumors 68000
Oct 20, 2003
1,531
418
I'm pretty sure battery life has improved tremendously after the Sierra reinstall. I've been on battery for 1:45 and I'm down to 86%. At that rate I'd get 12.5 hours on battery. Not expecting to get that in reality, but I'd be thrilled with 10 if it happens.
 
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bluewooster

macrumors member
Jul 18, 2007
95
35
There were different recommendations in that thread. 3600 was one, but someone else suggested 1200, which is 20 minutes. That seems reasonable to me.

I used 5 minutes (300 seconds) on my rMB as I reasoned that if I opened my laptop within that time frame I might have forgotten to do something and it might be nice to have it instantly on. Longer than that, I don't really care if it takes an extra second to open. I had to do this process over when I upgraded to Sierra. I can't recall how long the standby is by default but it seemed pretty excessive! Whether it is a coincidence or not, it does seem to improve the battery drain I have overnight.
 

thesaint024

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2016
1,073
888
suspension waiting room
P.S. I did not migrate data when I first set up my MBP, and reinstalling Sierra seems to have helped tremendously for me. So I'd suggest that anyone having battery issues do this, regardless of whether they migrated data.

That's unexpected that reinstall on a fresh OS would help. I might try it some point if my battery life starts deteriorating. So far so good though. Glad you fixed it.
 

bcaslis

macrumors 68020
Mar 11, 2008
2,184
237
For those that have reinstalled Sierra, what version do you show? My original installation shows 16B2657.
 

thesaint024

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2016
1,073
888
suspension waiting room
I used 5 minutes (300 seconds) on my rMB as I reasoned that if I opened my laptop within that time frame I might have forgotten to do something and it might be nice to have it instantly on. Longer than that, I don't really care if it takes an extra second to open. I had to do this process over when I upgraded to Sierra. I can't recall how long the standby is by default but it seemed pretty excessive! Whether it is a coincidence or not, it does seem to improve the battery drain I have overnight.

I've read that with the new SSD speeds there will be minimal impact from hibernate. I'm going to do this if my sleep drain does not improve. Much bigger deal on previous MB's. but any SSD will still blow away a HDD.
 
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