Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[deepfry3]

I was waiting to see if the dust settled in regards to battery life before buying one, but then decided to just take advantage of the return policy and test it out for myself.
Set up my 13" TB as new yesterday, having not owned a MacBook before, and out of the box I probably got around 8-9h of usage without even charging it.

I've been using it moderately all day today from 100% (mostly Safari, documents, YouTube, iTunes etc) and it's been going for around 4.5h, now at 50%. Estimates haven't been varying as wildly for me as others either.

I've seen some people have better battery life following a Sierra re-install... could the issue stem from setting up the PC with a backup rather than as new?

 

[mahcus36]

My tips would be try to turn off auto brightness (I don't like displays changing brightness anyway). Turn the keyboard backlight down I do about 75% on the screen and about 50% on the keyboard which is about where I would want it anyway. If I really wanted to get power out of it I'd turn the keyboard backlight off but I guess I like the look of it. Look at your activity monitor to see what is taking up the most average power. My photo agent and mail took a long time to process through so those absolutely ate my battery for the first couple days. Once they were done my battery life is fine.

I guess the other things are don't power other devices with the laptop when you are testing battery life, don't blast the speakers or have the laptop driving external monitors. Those are the types of situations you are going to be plugged in for real usage anyway. If you are trying to squeeze battery life you aren't going to be blasting your speakers with your keyboard at retina tearing levels, I'd be using my headphones and that kind of thing. I'm guilty of it too the first couple days I was blasting the speakers had the screen near 100% with the keyboard at max and got around 6.5 hours browsing like everyone else. Changed a few things in the first paragraph and I get consistently 9-10 hours browsing on two different laptops 13" TB and 15" TB. I don't think I'm giving up anything really either as these settings are about where I would want them anyway. I guess also don't pay attention to the time remaining that is pretty meaningless. I could run intensive things and take a snapshot I have a few hours or put the machine to sleep do nothing and take a snapshot saying I'll get 20 hours. You really have to measure how long you are able to use the laptop or measure % drop by hour. That seems fairly consistent.

I will say I think there is a software bug for some people. Seems to be centered around migrating instead of doing a clean install too. A laptop using 20 watts to browse the internet just doesn't sound right, the fact that people are burning that and then changing something in software like SMC or Sierra reinstall and then burning 7-10 which is normal leads me to believe something is probably cranking away in the background that shouldn't be. I wouldn't suggest anyone waiting past their return period but if you can I would wait it out for the next software release to see what happens.

thanks for the tips! my keyboard backlight was already at 0% though. my brightness was a little too high perhaps, i'll try to lower that a bit. activity monitor was really high for "google chrome helper" or something like that...

it's not connected to any monitor or anything, and i was at maybe 25% volume. even when i plugged it out of the power, at 100%, it was showing around 6 hours left. and quickly plummeted from there. mine was a clean install.

how do you see watts for a task? is it also in activity monitor? sorry, i'm new to this OS, not sure where everything is still.

 

[ssn637]

Is there anyone with a bto "13 3,3 GHz i7, 16 ram who has more then 5-6 hours of battery life with office work and wifi connection ?

I brought my laptop into the office yesterday for my first all-day battery life test under normal conditions and it lasted for a little over 7 hours before reaching the 5% level. The primary battery hogs were Outlook 2016 and Business Skype for Mac, which I used for a couple of conference calls lasting around 2 hours total. In general I'd say this is equivalent to the battery life I was getting with the rMBP 13" 2015 model.

macOS Sierra 10.12.1 Build 16B2657 (Stock). I tried the 10.12.2 Beta (Beta 4) but found this to be disastrous to battery life, so I restored my original system backup and will wait for the final release of 10.12.2 to see if there's any improvement.

 

[aioriya]

Is there anyone with a bto "13 3,3 GHz i7, 16 ram who has more then 5-6 hours of battery life with office work and wifi connection ?

During light use, mainly browsing and watching videos in safari continuously, I've been getting about the same battery life 5-6.5 hours. These last couple weeks I've been mainly working at about 75% brightness but recently I've been starting to lower my brightness as low as I can tolerate around 50% and I believe with this I may be able to push 8 hours. I know it sucks to have to lower the brightness of this beautiful screen but man it does eat battery. I have also noticed this machine idles very well, so this may explain why some people are getting much higher battery life.

Other people with the same config (13 3,3 GHz i7, 16 ram, 512 gb), if you are getting good battery life, what screen brightness are you using? Has anyone switched to the new version of Chrome and are you getting good battery life? I personally don't like safari but I don't think there is a better browser when it comes to saving battery life on a mac.

 

[creamz]

It's strange and bizarre people are still doing this Sierra reinstall again (I get it if you did a migration that mucked things up, but out of the box the version of Sierra you get and the version you reinstall are going to be the same). The reason a lot of folks are seeing a 'fix' for a few days and then back to what they saw before is because this simply doesn't work. It's likely a placebo (which one might argue is just as good as something not being a placebo). But anyway, there's a more-than-usual level of obsession here. If the next update of Sierra doesn't fix the issue, and the next batch of machines don't have any unannounced fixes, I'd say we have to settle for ~7 hours of battery life with conservative use. Ideally Apple would either update the product specs or do something to at least acknowledge the issue.

I don't like to settle for ~7 hours. In a way I would prefer to settle on the old weight of the previous MBP and getting back the larger capacity battery if it means getting back the 10 hrs or more. But then Apple has stated a new level of portability with lighter weight and with the same 10 hours. I just hope Apple get this fixed.

 

[Karnicopia]

thanks for the tips! my keyboard backlight was already at 0% though. my brightness was a little too high perhaps, i'll try to lower that a bit. activity monitor was really high for "google chrome helper" or something like that...

it's not connected to any monitor or anything, and i was at maybe 25% volume. even when i plugged it out of the power, at 100%, it was showing around 6 hours left. and quickly plummeted from there. mine was a clean install.

how do you see watts for a task? is it also in activity monitor? sorry, i'm new to this OS, not sure where everything is still.

I downloaded an app, battery life 2 I think but I found that the app was actually kind of a battery hog even in the background so I just uninstalled it. Sounds like people really like coconut battery, but once I got my battery sorted I didn't really care so I just look at the percentage to see if I need to. I think with both of these apps you can add them to the menu bar and have them display the wattage in real time, so you can start doing something and directly see how many watts it's burning. Again you don't care about spikes in wattage as much as consistently high wattage. Like I get about 7-10 watts on web browsing on a 15" and was getting about 4-7 watts browsing on at 13". I don't know how attached you are to chrome but maybe try Sierra for a bit just to see if that has a difference. I know you shouldn't have to change your behavior but it's helpful to find out if it kills your battery. That's the only thing that really stands out to me. The speakers really don't even kill my battery at this point, I think they have an impact but they don't put me at 6 hours browsing.

If you just received the computer this kind of sounds like what I had out of the box. I got about 6 hours of browsing because stuff was running in the background so you may be seeing some of that too. I really do think some of the biggest changes came just because eventually all this stopped running. This was like by day 3 this it was done but I have a large mail inbox which took up a bunch of power at the beginning and my photo agent was running for a while too. Both of which just seemed to run in the background no matter what so my machine was just burning up energy while they ran. So when I hear people are burning up a lot of battery in sleep I think that's why there could just be something running in the background. Once those stopped my battery life seemed to settle in around 9 hours browsing for the 13" and I ended up going for a 15" and that gets about 10 hours browsing.

 

[tjleonard]

I jumped through zero hoops, beta update came out and I've actually gotten over ten hours on my battery with the 13" touchbar model. Definitely happy I didn't just return it within weeks of buying it.

How much were you getting before the beta update? I am a little afraid to do the beta because my battery life is good now, didn't want it to go bad again!

 

[montanaco]

How much were you getting before the beta update? I am a little afraid to do the beta because my battery life is good now, didn't want it to go bad again!

Ehh, like 4-5 hours at work, 6ish hours at home? Tonight I'm on track to get about 11 hours with pretty light usage. Just safari and iMessage. At work I got about 7 hours with Chrome open and photoshop&illustrator today. So idk I saw a pretty crazy improvement with the update.

 

[Queen6]

Simple answer the battery capacity had been significantly depreciated, math 101 smaller batteries equals less runtime...

Q-6

 

[DB4AW]

I jumped through zero hoops, beta update came out and I've actually gotten over ten hours on my battery with the 13" touchbar model. Definitely happy I didn't just return it within weeks of buying it.

I hope that it continues to stay that way for you. But as for me, if I have issues when I receive my new MBP then I'll be taking advantage of Apple's 14 day return policy. The 2016 MacBook Pro costs too much to not expect it to deliver the battery life that Apple pointed out during their keynote and still advertises on their website and product literature. Is Apple offering us a discount for this issue? No. A buyer should not cut them any slack either.

I love Apple products but I don't love them so much to let Apple taken advantage of me. No way! I would rather return a troublesome product and either buy it later when the issues have been worked out or buy something else. A company such as Apple that expects high profit margins will more readily respond to issues when they see a high influx of returns adversely affecting their sales and minimizing that profit margin. But, for now, they are still bragging that their new 2016 MacBook Pros are selling better than hot cakes.

 

[montanaco]

I hope that it continues to stay that way for you. But as for me, if I have issues shin I receive my new MBP then I'll be taking advantage of Apple's 14 day return policy. The 2016 MacBook Pro costs too much to not expect it to deliver the battery life that Apple pointed out during their keynote and still advertises on their website and product literature. Is Apple offering us a discount for this issue? No. A buyer should not cut them any slack either.

I love Apple products but I don't love them so much to let Apple taken advantage of me. No way! I would rather return a troublesome product and either buy it later when the issues have been worked out or buy something else. A company such as Apple that expects high profit margins will more readily respond to issues when they see a high influx of returns adversely affecting their sales and minimizing that profit margin. But, for now, they are still bragging that their new 2016 MacBook Pros are selling better than hot cakes.

I suppose so. But I don't feel like I've been taken advantage of. The machine runs perfectly outside of the battery issue which was fixed within a couple weeks. There's not really anything for me to complain about even if I wanted to. I never felt that I had a troublesome product--I purchased a product that delivers on everything Apple promised it would.

 

[aioriya]

Guys with 15 inch TB battery issues, you are not alone:

 

[Queen6]

Guys with 15 inch TB battery issues, you are not alone:

Outstanding...

Q-6

 

[manuchis]

You won't believe it. After a Battery calibration, I got 15 hours. Let's see if it is real.

 

[suuuii]

You won't believe it. After a Battery calibration, I got 15 hours. Let's see if it is real.

how did you calibrate the battery?

 

[manuchis]

how did you calibrate the battery?

Here https://support.apple.com/es-es/HT1490

It says that is not necessary, but helps anyway.

 

[frankenstein94]

I have been using my 2016 macbook pro 15" 2.7GHz Radeon Pro 455 for 3 weeks. With the regular web browsing only able to go little over 3 hours. Anyone having this problem as well? I am wondering could it be the hardware problem? or is it just software something you can fix it through the future update ?

 

[DenMac]

I was at my university yesterday from 8 AM to 2 PM. Had it turned on browsing and using Office for maybe 5 of those 6 hours. When I got home it still had 52% battery left.
That was my first day with my new MBP, so let's see if it changes...

15" with Radeon 460

 

[JMac1996]

Hey,

you're not the only one. You should have a look at this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-15-macbook-pro.2015074/page-39#post-24007559

Many of us experiencing this issue. So far, it looks like Hardware is fine in general.
It's mabe improvable through a coming software-update. macOS 10.12.2 is not far away.

 

[creamz]

It is as popular as the Yosemite UI lag for only the newer models back in 2015.

 

[WhiteWhaleHolyGrail]

It is as popular as the Yosemite UI lag for only the newer models back in 2015.

What's your screen and keyboard brightness?

 

[Ries]

Don't worry, in 1.5-2 years they'll admit that "air" got into the batteries.

 

[sprockett]

Ehh, like 4-5 hours at work, 6ish hours at home? Tonight I'm on track to get about 11 hours with pretty light usage. Just safari and iMessage. At work I got about 7 hours with Chrome open and photoshop&illustrator today. So idk I saw a pretty crazy improvement with the update.

in my experience, chrome is a real battery killer. I was on the plane just reading an E BOOK (no wifi etc) and my battery estimate shot to 14hrs (97% remaining)

 

[fodaveg]

anyone is having short battery life with an external monitor plugged in? if so, could you please unplug it and see if your battery life/power consumption is better than before?

 

[manuchis]

Status update: 96% and 8:30hs remaining watching a video in QuickTime.