Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[Jefe's MacAir]

Bought my TB 13" 256 2.9 8 GB yesterday. Pulled it off the charger at 9:00 am MST. It's currently 5:00 pm MST. And this is a screen shot I just took.

I haven't been on it non stop. But I have been using it most of this time. Safari w/ about 6-10 windows open in multiple desktops, Mail, Activity Monitor, and other random Apps throughout the day at about 60% brightness.

So far it's much better than my early/mid 15' rMB. We shall see.

I did a Migration Asst. from my rMB.

 

[thesaint024]

Nope, been using it the entire day.

For about an hour+ my battery % didn't change whatsoever, including Coconut Battery... seems like a software glitch far more than hardware.

Nice! I was going to ask the same thing as @Brookzy, what the heck were you doing at the beginning and the end? Flat.. normal.. extreme drop. I believe you man. I get these stats whenever I want with browsing and several background apps, well not AS good, but close.

 

[jozero]

Just chiming in. Macbook 13" 8/512 touchbar. Had it since November 18th. I reset the SMC. Factory Seirra install, no migration from my old Mac (I manually moved over some folders, fresh install of apps).

My battery life sucks. The estimates from the menubar are all over the place so its useless of an indicator on when my MacBook suddenly goes to sleep. I can go from to 2:30 hours estimate, to 1 hour, to 11 minutes to shut off within 25 minutes.

 

[b_scott]

Since reinstalling Sierra 10.12.1 from scratch 2.25 hours ago, I'm at 90%. I'm on half brightness with Chrome open. Haven't been doing a ton, but that's WAY better. Last night no programs open on half brightness was dropping 15% in 15 minutes.

Also the system seems super cool now.

 

[xapp]

Here is a ridiculous idea - install Windows via BootCamp...
If it performs adequate, then it's Sierra's issue, if not, then there is something wrong with hardware on a deep level.

 

[bizack]

I have to disagree. The only reasonable and normal thing to do with a new computer is to turn it on and use it! As for reinstalling Sierra - why? What do you hope to accomplish? All you are doing is replacing the OS with another copy that is the same. If there are any updates since it left the factory you will be prompted to install them.

My post was sarcastic.

 

[b_scott]

My post was sarcastic.

Personally I gave it a 9/10.

Good show.

 

[Karnicopia]

Here is a ridiculous idea - install Windows via BootCamp...
If it performs adequate, then it's Sierra's issue, if not, then there is something wrong with hardware on a deep level.

You haver to be careful with that too lol I think you can actually blow your speakers if you have a 15" because of bad windows drivers for the speakers. I think they have updated the drivers but I guess people are plugging headphones in while they load windows to be safe. I think they have something on the macrumors front page about it.

 

[marcel500]

Anybody spoke with Apple recently about it? Understand they are busy because of gpu issues but still might be worth to talk to them

 

[thesaint024]

Here is a ridiculous idea - install Windows via BootCamp...
If it performs adequate, then it's Sierra's issue, if not, then there is something wrong with hardware on a deep level.

I'm actually curious to try this now since I have bootcamp installed already. However, I don't think this will really prove anything as a test case. Bootcamp relies on Apple for all of the hardware drivers so it's not really native. So if any of the Bootcamp drivers aren't optimized, you can't conclude that it's hardware causing bad battery life. However if this comes back with like 12 hours of battery, it'll really prove a point. I might try this at some point this weekend.

 

[b_scott]

Update - after the reinstall of Sierra 10.12.1, it's been 5.5 hours. Using only Chrome. Half brightness. I'm now at 67%. That seems above average.

 

[ACGarland]

I had very poor battery life results initially as posted HERE. After resetting the SMC I'm seeing dramatically better results. I had migrated from a Time Machine backup of a 2011 MBP and the single action I can point to that made the big difference in my results appears to be resetting the SMC.

 

[mahcus36]

some pretty good stats in the last 2 pages. y'all have got me pretty optimistic again. i hope when mine comes, i'll be able to replicate you guys's long battery life

 

[ACGarland]

I've been unplugged since I finished work earlier today. I wanted to revisit the time I might get without running a W7 VM--with typical "light" use. Well, I wound up having to respond to a "work emergency" so had to fire up my full work load again for about an hour (W7 VM, driving two external large monitors)--but I kept on battery the whole time. So now I'm back to "light load" use and, even after the hour of heavy duty stuff it is looking pretty good.

Remaining charge: 45%
Time on battery: 03:40
Time remaining: 05:53

So even though the hour sucked things down some, the rate of discharge now is looking good where I'll maybe wind up near 9 hours.

My MBP is the 15" with touch bar, maxed out except only 1TB SSD (not the astronomical 2TB).

 

[xraydoc]

To achieve the quoted battery life, your watts need to be somewhere around 9 or 10 watts from what I remember about the 15".

With gentile web surfing on Safari and a medium screen brightness, my machine sits between 6-8 watts. Battery life has been quite reasonable. Haven't had it long enough (nor used it in a long enough single stretch) to determine if it's getting the advertised 10 hrs, but I suspect it's reasonably close with low impact applications.

 

[vmflapem]

Is it better to use safari or is it ok to use chrome? I heard chrome is not good for batteries.

 

[kwandrews]

For the next 2 days, I'm committing to only real world use under the following conditions to see what happens:

1. Turn off any 3rd party battery monitoring (Coconut, etc.)
2. Use only the Apple battery indicator in the menu bar without the %. This will help me not be preoccupied with it.
3. Run the apps I want to run regardless of battery, but know that if I'm going to render video or do heavy imaging processing, I'll plug in.
4. Only check activity monitor if something really seems wrong.

Why am I doing this? I wonder if some of these issues (of course, not all!) are somewhat self-induced by worrying so much if there is an issue. I started this 1 hour and 15 minutes ago (just shut down Coconut a few min ago though). The last check I'll do is this. In that time, I'm at 87% and that's included some YouTube, fairly heaving web browsing and email. Looking at my battery bar (sans %), it looks nice and pretty full. No need to think about it from here on out. We'll see if I can stick with it and give this 15" a chance

 

[xraydoc]

Is it better to use safari or is it ok to use chrome? I heard chrome is not good for batteries.

Safari for now. Supposedly next version of Chrome will be much better optimized for power efficiency. Sometime this month I've read.

 

[JohnnyGo]

I think I solved my "problem" increasing my battery life to the "double" using this "old article" that talks about a corrupt fille after migration.

http://www.mactrast.com/2012/07/cou...double-your-retina-macbook-pros-battery-life/

I used the migration system and I try the steps from the previous link and I get a "normal" battery life ... (I don't know if this was the reason or the normal life of the battery, but if someone wants to try)

If I understand that article correctly migration assistant may be the culprit now as it was back in the launch of the first retina MBP. So much from learning from experience! Apple: you disappointed me !

 

[JohnnyGo]

I have to disagree. The only reasonable and normal thing to do with a new computer is to turn it on and use it! As for reinstalling Sierra - why? What do you hope to accomplish? All you are doing is replacing the OS with another copy that is the same. If there are any updates since it left the factory you will be prompted to install them.

I agree with you but Nik was just being sarcastic

 

[5to1]

Been flicking through this thread as I'm interested in real world battery life of the new Macs.

Would stick with my current 13" rMBP, but change in workflow means I probably need to move to a 15" . As such the reduced foot print of the 2016 models will help that transition (wish they'd gone Bezel-less rather then thinner). And they've added the one other feature I really wanted, touch ID (regularly entering my pwd which isn't secure when others are around, aside from the annoyance factor).

I may have missed mention of this (since its a long thread) but are you guys sure the system isn't indexing the FS or doing other optimisation (wether OS or Apps launched for the first time)? I tend to migrate machine using TimeMachine backup and usually for the ~first week battery life will be atrocious, as indexing occurs and Apps launched for the first time do their own "optimisation".

To help things along I tend to keep the machine plugged in to avoid throttling. And also find foreground Apps that peg the CPU/Memory/Drive will throttle these background processes leading to them taking longer. In the UK Apple offer 14 day return. So by doing this I let the system do its thing for a week, then have the second week to properly appraise performance and battery life (which is an important metric for me).

 

[Nik]

I agree with you but Nik was just being sarcastic

No I wasnt. Returning the machine on monday until Apple increases the battery capacity again.

 

[creamz]

Diagnostic question: It seems like (from lack of complaints here) the nTB version has smooth consistent battery life. Aside from 'larger battery' and 'less demanding processor', there must be some other difference in how the nTB vs TB machines are operating, because we're not hearing about spikes in power usage or erratic battery life variation within one person's machine (i.e. e.g. Tuesday I got 7 hours but Wednesday I got only 3). We're not hearing about Safari having a negative impact on the nTB, so it's not just battery size and easier processor.

My low-tech guess is that the fix will lie somewhere in that difference. Does anyone know what that operational difference might be? Don't say 'larger battery' and 'less demanding processor'. That can account for longer battery life but not more consistent battery life.

If the nTB is safe and Safari having such an impact on the TB version, I'm guessing is the software problem and the TB is not optimized yet, maybe on every other app too and drawing unnecessary power. An update might fix that. Meanwhile TB users might have to sacrifice some battery cycles until that happened.

 

[AintDutchNotMuch]

I have my rMBP 13" 2015 for exactly one year now, and the battery life is the same as the first day I bought it. I use it daily for Safari, Spotify and Word.

I get between 8 to 10 hours of screen-on time with brightness set at 50%. I also make it to 11 to 12 hours sometimes with brightness at around 40% and only browsing the web without watching YouTube videos. My battery cycle count is at 161. I only use it at home so I could leave it on the charger fulltime, but I want to give the battery some 'exercise' so I use it unplugged half of the time. I want to use it more while plugged in to keep the charge cycles on the lower side.

It's my first MacBook by the way and I'm still impressed by the amazing and stable performance, the beautiful screen and very good battery life.

 

[b_scott]

Safari for now. Supposedly next version of Chrome will be much better optimized for power efficiency. Sometime this month I've read.

look at activity monitor - Safari uses WAY more battery. Like 42, to Chrome's 13.