Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[drvelocity]

IT'S THE PRAM FOLKS! At least it DEFINITELY was for me. My discharge rate halved after resetting the PRAM from an average of 20 watts at half brightness to now 10 watts. Battery is showing double the time left at 8 hours instead of 4. SMC reset did nothing by the way.

My guess is that these computers left the factories in some kind of CPU state that prevented the Skylake from taking advantage of various partial sleep states.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

SMC reset doesn't do anything for actual time on battery (though it does change the time remaining estimates). Reinstalling Sierra does, but I still don't get 10 hours in normal use. More like 8.5.

 

[^_^]

I'm in a pretty similar position to you... although I'm mostly concerned about the GPU glitches more than anything.

However, why would you not be able to return it?

By "GPU glitches", are you referring to the fact the MBP starts using the Radeon GPU instead of the integrated one? If that's the case, then you also care about the battery life, otherwise it wouldn't have bothered you because this is probably the only effect it has (unless I misunderstood you)

As for your question - I kinda get it as a partial gift, it's complicated.. But bottom line is that it doesn't matter which configuration I get (whether I get a 13" entry level or a maxed-out 15", the difference will be about $300 or so). The down-side is that I gotta make sure I get it right 'the first try', otherwise I'll have to sell & buy, and that's a pain.

Come to think of it, I guess that in my position I should just get the maxed-out 15", and if the battery (or size) disappoints me - sell it and pick up the 13" instead. I'll make huge "profit" this way (seeing how I can pick any configuration at a kinda unified price)... Maybe I over-complicate things. Don't know. I've been meaning to use the one I get, though.

 

[tc47]

SMC reset doesn't do anything for actual time on battery (though it does change the time remaining estimates). Reinstalling Sierra does, but I still don't get 10 hours in normal use. More like 8.5.

I dont know, I reinstalled and after a great experience of having it stay at 100 percent for longer than ever, and it telling me 20 hours remaining at first, then 17h etc., I'm back at my 13" tMBP going down percent by percent pretty fast with 30-40% brightness and just safari surfing and telling me there's 2:35 left with 50 percent left. It's all too random, and the bottom line as people have said in this thread is that if the non TB Mac lasting 10 hours with a bigger battery and less heavy processor/RAM to run (plus no touch bar to run) makes it quite clear this laptop won't be able to last longer than it is currently. No matter if we reinstall OS, reset PRAM, etc. It all just makes it look better temporarily I feel, and then we end up with the same disappointing battery life as I'm experiencing again now...

Frustrated :/

 

[Techbananas]

My 13" MBP with touch bar has a terrible battery life, I'm lucky if I get 5 hours out it, that is just doing light tasks like web browsing and a few youtube vids. I just reset the PRAM so hopefully that will make a difference. Yesterday I did a SMC reset and immediately after the batter said it had 20hrs remaining, it soon decreased and now the battery is a lame as before.

I'm really hoping that this can be fixed with a software update because the general consensus from what I have seen from youtube reviewers and forums is that the battery is far worse than the previous generation MBP which is unacceptable for such an expensive product.

I have also had RAM issues with memory hitting over 6gb whilst simply running safari, I have the base line 13" with touch bar (8gb Ram). Has anyone else had RAM issues like this?

Other than that I do like the machine, the speakers are loud but could do with some global EQ adjustments to reduce the high end a bit so the bass shines through a bit better. I don't even know if it is possible to do such a thing? In the iTunes eq settings I found that either classical or acoustic offer the most rounded sound.

 

[Roller]

I dont know, I reinstalled and after a great experience of having it stay at 100 percent for longer than ever, and it telling me 20 hours remaining at first, then 17h etc., I'm back at my 13" tMBP going down percent by percent pretty fast with 30-40% brightness and just safari surfing and telling me there's 2:35 left with 50 percent left. It's all too random, and the bottom line as people have said in this thread is that if the non TB Mac lasting 10 hours with a bigger battery and less heavy processor/RAM to run (plus no touch bar to run) makes it quite clear this laptop won't be able to last longer than it is currently. No matter if we reinstall OS, reset PRAM, etc. It all just makes it look better temporarily I feel, and then we end up with the same disappointing battery life as I'm experiencing again now...

Frustrated :/

The fact that it's ever reporting 17 or 20 hours means that there's a software glitch somewhere. I've never seen such a wildly erroneous overestimation of time remaining on any other Apple laptop that I've owned, even immediately after charging it completely. That doesn't mean that the battery isn't also at fault, but it suggests that an OS or firmware update could make a difference.

BTW, I'm frustrated, too, and I don't even have the computer yet.

 

[titleistman18]

The fact that it's ever reporting 17 or 20 hours means that there's a software glitch somewhere.

Ding ding ding.

 

[archimon]

I just updated to the 4th public beta for 10.12.2, and I'm not even seeing a battery estimate indicator any longer.

 

[Bobthemonkey]

I dont know, I reinstalled and after a great experience of having it stay at 100 percent for longer than ever, and it telling me 20 hours remaining at first, then 17h etc., I'm back at my 13" tMBP going down percent by percent pretty fast with 30-40% brightness and just safari surfing and telling me there's 2:35 left with 50 percent left. It's all too random, and the bottom line as people have said in this thread is that if the non TB Mac lasting 10 hours with a bigger battery and less heavy processor/RAM to run (plus no touch bar to run) makes it quite clear this laptop won't be able to last longer than it is currently. No matter if we reinstall OS, reset PRAM, etc. It all just makes it look better temporarily I feel, and then we end up with the same disappointing battery life as I'm experiencing again now...

Frustrated :/

Exactly the same experience here; I thought for a minute that all the resets had solved it, but alas, no. It's the sheer randomness of the estimate that is almost more frustrating than the overall lack of longevity. I think it I had a more accurate countdown from 8 hours it would be easier to manage.

I have a genius bar appointment tomorrow, but the most likely outcome is a refund. (I've had a few glitches with the trackpad as well).

Will either go for a base nTB w16GB RAM or keep checking the refurb store for a 2015 13' with 16GB.

 

[xspin]

Is there a way to see if the SMC reset worked?

Apple says:

1. Shut down the Mac.
2. Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your Mac.
3. Using the built-in keyboard, press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the keyboard, then press the power button at the same time.
4. Release all keys, then press the power button again to turn on your Mac

When I press power (and let go), then let go of ****-Control-Option the laptop reboots and powers on by itself. Step 4 says you must press the power button again to power on so I'm not sure the reset has worked for me.

Same question for PRAM reset. Instructions say, "After resetting NVRAM, you might need to reconfigure settings for speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, and time zone information." but none of those settings changed for me so I'm not sure it worked.

Same. Unsure how to tell

 

[kwandrews]

I just updated to the 4th public beta for 10.12.2, and I'm not even seeing a battery estimate indicator any longer.

Confirmed on mine as well, gone with the beta. Still visible in activity monitor though and still just as inaccurate. I've seen everything up to 20 hours and then down to nothing.

 

[poorcody]

The fact that it's ever reporting 17 or 20 hours means that there's a software glitch somewhere. I've never seen such a wildly erroneous overestimation of time remaining on any other Apple laptop that I've owned, even immediately after charging it completely. That doesn't mean that the battery isn't also at fault, but it suggests that an OS or firmware update could make a difference.

I will just repeat something I said earlier in this thread. Install Coconut Battery. Watch the wattage usage in the menu bar over the course of a day. When you see how much it can vary based on what you are doing, you will understand that battery estimates will always be a guess at best. And yes, they have gotten worse, because processors have gotten much more complicated in how they utilize power from moment to moment.

 

[happyslayer]

So I also took a chance and installed the Dev build. Really wish I hadn't. I am back to using an average of 7-8 Watts all the time--even with the display on one tic, no apps running and both antenna's turned off--and battery time estimates (while gone in OS X but still in Coconut) are back to being like 5-6 hours. Really annoying. Not sure if I wanna do the full reinstall thing again... but at least I don't really need to back anything up accept my Parallels VM since I now have everything in DropBox or iCloud documents/desktop. Sigh... this is so frustrating.

Also, as an aside, I notice that my performance seems to have degraded. Things are a bit choppier when scrolling and my Touch Bar has partially frozen a couple times when adjusting brightness or volume--it comes back after a couple seconds but it is a little odd. Oh well, the joys of Dev/Beta software

 

[Nar1117]

IT'S THE PRAM FOLKS! At least it DEFINITELY was for me. My discharge rate halved after resetting the PRAM from an average of 20 watts at half brightness to now 10 watts. Battery is showing double the time left at 8 hours instead of 4. SMC reset did nothing by the way.

My guess is that these computers left the factories in some kind of CPU state that prevented the Skylake from taking advantage of various partial sleep states.

This sounds promising, I might give it a try. What program are you using to report discharge rate?

 

[justinf77]

In case you guys haven't seen this already, NotebookCheck did a great technical review of the 13" with Touch Bar and the battery section is worth a look:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-...Hz-i5-Touch-Bar-Notebook-Review.185639.0.html

Basically, it just confirms that the non-TB version is about 20% better in terms of battery life, and that the TB model comes just short of hitting the claimed 10 hours in their tests. It does, however, beat all the Windows competitors, so that's something.

 

[^_^]

In case you guys haven't seen this already, NotebookCheck did a great technical review of the 13" with Touch Bar and the battery section is worth a look:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-...Hz-i5-Touch-Bar-Notebook-Review.185639.0.html

Basically, it just confirms that the non-TB version is about 20% better in terms of battery life, and that the TB model comes just short of hitting the claimed 10 hours in their tests. It does, however, beat all the Windows competitors, so that's something.

Base 13" non-TB:

Base 13" TB:

Base 15" (TB):

First of all, they ran the test on the 13" non-TB at 164 nits, so that should be 32.8% brightness (seeing how it's 500 nits). They haven't specified the nits as for the 13" TB, but they used 140 nits for the 15", which is 28%.

You guys said that Apple has run their tests at 50%, so how come these guys at notebookcheck.net say "Apple advertises" and forget this part? Also, they haven't even reached the claimed 10hours with 32.8% and 28%, and some of you guys (according to comments) couldn't even maintain 4-5 hours at ~50% (on either 13" or 15"!), so how does any of this make any sense?

This is so annoying.

 

[justinf77]

First of all, they ran the test on the 13" non-TB at 164 nits, so that should be 32.8% brightness (seeing how it's 500 nits). They haven't specified the nits as for the 13" TB, but they used 140 nits for the 15", which is 28%.

They said Level 12 for the non-TB which is 75% brightness. Not sure how they measured nits to be 164 at that level, doesn't make sense. I believe they're trying to match Apple's test, where it says in the MBP fine print:

"The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%."

 

[kwandrews]

So I also took a chance and installed the Dev build. Really wish I hadn't. I am back to using an average of 7-8 Watts all the time--even with the display on one tic, no apps running and both antenna's turned off--and battery time estimates (while gone in OS X but still in Coconut) are back to being like 5-6 hours. Really annoying. Not sure if I wanna do the full reinstall thing again... but at least I don't really need to back anything up accept my Parallels VM since I now have everything in DropBox or iCloud documents/desktop. Sigh... this is so frustrating.

Also, as an aside, I notice that my performance seems to have degraded. Things are a bit choppier when scrolling and my Touch Bar has partially frozen a couple times when adjusting brightness or volume--it comes back after a couple seconds but it is a little odd. Oh well, the joys of Dev/Beta software

I've just customized by tool bar for Coconut Battery....didn't do that before for wattage...nice. Running 10.12.2 beta here. Current open apps = Safari (2 tabs), Skype for Business and Outlook 2016. Watts = 12.8, battery est = 6:49, 98.7%. This is on a base model 15" 2016. Brightness at 12, backlight off.

EDIT: 4 minutes later...LOL!! Wow, this is all over the place . Same apps, no change. Watts = 24.6, est = 3:23 and battery 97%. Ya, something VERY off in estimates.

 

[thesaint024]

I've just customized by tool bar for Coconut Battery....didn't do that before for wattage...nice. Running 10.12.2 beta here. Current open apps = Safari (2 tabs), Skype for Business and Outlook 2016. Watts = 12.8, battery est = 6:49, 98.7%. This is on a base model 15" 2016. Brightness at 12, backlight off.

EDIT: 4 minutes later...LOL!! Wow, this is all over the place . Same apps, no change. Watts = 24.6, est = 3:23 and battery 97%. Ya, something VERY off in estimates.

That doesn't sound like an "estimate" problem per se, that is an application problem. Your watts used are what is concerning. I get little bumps here and there (not up to 24.6) when I get a new imessage or mail fetches etc. Btw, google hangouts on imessage seems to jack up watts too. So it would seem one of your programs is doing some crazy power usage for some innocent reason. From what I've read, it sounds like your dGPU is turning on for some reason on your apps. Unnecessarily I might add since there is no need for the dGPU to run on those. I would assume these are software updates to tell a program not to activate the dGPU for no good reason.

 

[Brookzy]

Did a full battery test today on my 13" Touch Bar 3.3 i7/16GB/512GB. A somewhat heavier version of the standard web browsing test, which involved my normal working activities:

• Screen and keyboard brightness set to auto; in practice at around 50% for most of the test

• Fairly heavy use of Safari with a few tabs open

• Heavy use of Word, flicking between Safari and Word frequently using Mission Control

• Streaming Apple Music via iTunes to Bluetooth speakers for nearly all the test

• Preview open with a couple of PDFs

• iMessage open with some use

• Mail open

• Twitter app open

Result: 8 hours 52 minutes from time it was taken off charge to the time it died. Included in that was about 15 minutes total sleep time.

I'm happy with that.

 

[tc47]

Brookzy, that is amazing battery life. I would have got 4-5 hours with that usage, maybe less. Have you reinstalled Sierra, done an SMC/PRAM reset or any other steps? Any other recommendations you can share so that we who get half the battery life on the same 13" TB could try to get 9ish hours that you're getting?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I'm on my 3rd cycle after the Sierra reinstall. On the first two I got between 8-8.5 hours. But on this one, I've only been on battery for 2:56 and I'm down to 55% charge. That would suggest only 6.5 hours of battery life on this charge, which is right back to where I started prior to the reinstall.

I wondered about this earlier in the thread, i.e. what if the software glitch recurs and the fix (reinstalling OS Sierra) that worked for many of us has to be done repeatedly?

I have not done anything differently on this charge, using the same software at the same brightness. Don't understand why the battery life has been worse again.

 

[Brookzy]

Brookzy, that is amazing battery life. I would have got 4-5 hours with that usage, maybe less. Have you reinstalled Sierra, done an SMC/PRAM reset or any other steps? Any other recommendations you can share so that we who get half the battery life on the same 13" TB could try to get 9ish hours that you're getting?

I reinstalled macOS, did an NVRAM (aka PRAM) reset, and the only setting I have that differs from standard is that I have turned off Touch Bar word suggestions.

To show that I'm not exaggerating (as exaggeration seems rife in this thread) here is a usage screenshot from 8 hours 45 minutes; shortly before the system died.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I reinstalled macOS, did an NVRAM (aka PRAM) reset, and the only setting I have that differs from standard is that I have turned off Touch Bar word suggestions.

To show that I'm not exaggerating (as exaggeration seems rife in this thread) here is a usage screenshot from 8 hours 45 minutes; shortly before the system died.

View attachment 675510

I believe it. As I said in my last post, I got 8.5 hours on my last charge (I didn't go all the way until it died, so it very well may have ended up at 8.75 hours).

However, this cycle has been much worse, for reasons currently unknown.

 

[marcel500]

I reinstalled macOS, did an NVRAM (aka PRAM) reset, and the only setting I have that differs from standard is that I have turned off Touch Bar word suggestions.

To show that I'm not exaggerating (as exaggeration seems rife in this thread) here is a usage screenshot from 8 hours 45 minutes; shortly before the system died.

View attachment 675510

How do I do NVRAM (aka PRAM)?