Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[marcel500]

Haha that's amazing!

Lol
[doublepost=1481214316][/doublepost]

This is exactly my point. Certainly there are a couple people on the thread, like @tjleonard, that are getting consistently good battery life after a Sierra reinstall.

There are many more, like me, who've done these "fixes" and experienced a temporary improvement, but then seen that disappear over subsequent cycles.

I'm curious about the comment made on page 53 of the thread by someone that was told "off the record" by Apple Store staff that it's a hardware issue with a batch of these MBPs. If that's the case, it would explain why some people are seeing 9-10 hours of battery life, and others (like me) only 6-7 no matter what they do.

I see no reason not to wait until the final day of Apple's extended holiday return policy to see how this plays out. I don't feel any guilt over that; why should I? This is their problem, not mine. I've been a loyal Apple customer for 25 years. I've never even owned a PC or non-Apple smartphone.

I had made contact with a Senior Apple Advisor about 2 weeks ago, and she acknowledged that 6-6.5 hours of battery life is NOT acceptable or normal. I will try to get back in touch with her today and see what I can learn.

How do we know that @tjleonard is not working for Apple or is invested in Apple and trying to be positive? I am buying Apple products since 10 years+ and this is ridiculous. My battery is done in 3.5 hours but I also have to be fair here and admit I am using a virtual machine. The engineers from parallels brought the discharge down from 22 to 12 watt. The engineer was also clueless why the mbp suddenly performs so badly. You can ask now why don't u give it back and stop complaining? The reason is simple I still think it is an amazing piece of hardware. I am so irritated with Apple u have no idea!! Sue them so they finally learn you cant f over loyal customers.

 

[Queen6]

I mean I literally got just over ten hours of battery yesterday on wifi so I can definitely see the other user getting 14 hours on airplane mode.

Really I think the new MBP will be like the rMB, in that it will be more sensitive to usage, this is why you are seeing 10 hours and others just 4 hours. I don't mean that they are hammering the system, just a little higher load and it tips the scales. You will be able to get long running hours on the battery, however the usage will need to as light as possible, for some this will be impractical versus their usage/workflow, hence some unhappiness.

My own 2014 13" rMB gets a solid 8 hours on battery, 10 hours at a squeeze, which is good as Apple only rates it for 8 hours. What I "think" now is that to reach the recommend limits it will be more of a squeeze than previously. I have a feeling that Apple is looking further down the line, knowing that Intel will make ever more power saving gains in the up coming generations of CPU, Kaby Lake is just around the corner and Apple will very likely silently update the MPB as quickly as it reasonably can.

Personally I don't care for the fact that Apple has deprecated the battery capacity of the MBP, as opposed to offering the best runtime in class, Apple has clearly designed the MBP to specific values; weight, dimension & runtime. From Apple`s data they very likely consider the 2016 MBP`s runtime is adequate for "their average user"

I have a Surface Book and it can really run for long periods of time on battery even with moderate loads, easily exceeding any other portable I have owned. My own thoughts are that it`s better to have that additional capacity as things can and do change off the wire, equally portable devices are all about compromise, just a question of peoples priorities.

If someone was to ask me directly I would recommend that they hold of until Gen 2 unless they have a pressing need. As Apple will have resolved any issues, Apple will have had more time to develop the Touch Bar to be more useful and very good chance the battery life will be back to Apple previous very strong performance.

Q-6

 

[montanaco]

Really I think the new MBP will be like the rMB, in that it will be more sensitive to usage, this is why you are seeing 10 hours and others just 4 hours. I don't mean that they are hammering the system, just a little higher load and it tips the scales. You will be able to get long running hours on the battery, however the usage will need to as light as possible, for some this will be impractical versus their usage/workflow, hence some unhappiness.

My own 2014 13" rMB gets a solid 8 hours on battery, 10 hours at a squeeze, which is good as Apple only rates it for 8 hours. What I "think" now is that to reach the recommend limits it will be more of a squeeze than previously. I have a feeling that Apple is looking further down the line, knowing that Intel will make ever more power saving gains in the up coming generations of CPU, Kaby Lake is just around the corner and Apple will very likely silently update the MPB as quickly as it reasonably can.

Personally I don't care for the fact that Apple has deprecated the battery capacity of the MBP, as opposed to offering the best runtime in class, Apple has clearly designed the MBP to specific values; weight, dimension & runtime. From Apple`s data they very likely consider the 2016 MBP`s runtime is adequate for "their average user"

I have a Surface Book and it can really run for long periods of time on battery even with moderate loads, easily exceeding any other portable I have owned. My own thoughts are that it`s better to have that additional capacity as things can and do change off the wire, equally portable devices are all about compromise, just a question of peoples priorities.

If someone was to ask me directly I would recommend that they hold of until Gen 2 unless they have a pressing need. As Apple will have resolved any issues, Apple will have had more time to develop the Touch Bar to be more useful and very good chance the battery life will be back to Apple previous very strong performance.

Q-6

Yeah, I dunno! At work I use Chrome and Slack 24/7, plus photoshop and illustrator and I still got around 7 hours of use, post update. I think that's pretty respectable considering how much energy Chrome has been hogging. But other users are reporting like 3 hours with just Safari so this whole situation has me pretty confused tbh. Maybe those users haven't updated yet, or are going off of estimates and not accurate run time, or perhaps there is some hardware epidemic? If I were to go off of the battery estimates the system gives me, I would be getting 4 hours on battery per charge, but in reality I'm getting 7-10 hours. I'm cautiously standing by the belief that this is all some weird software issue that Apple is ironing out quickly.

 

[Queen6]

Yeah, I dunno! At work I use Chrome and Slack 24/7, plus photoshop and illustrator and I still got around 7 hours of use, post update. I think that's pretty respectable considering how much energy Chrome has been hogging. But other users are reporting like 3 hours with just Safari so this whole situation has me pretty confused tbh. Maybe those users haven't updated yet, or are going off of estimates and not accurate run time, or perhaps there is some hardware epidemic? If I were to go off of the battery estimates the system gives me, I would be getting 4 hours on battery per charge, but in reality I'm getting 7-10 hours. I'm cautiously standing by the belief that this is all some weird software issue that Apple is ironing out quickly.

Truthfully it`s a difficult subject as everyone has differing usage patterns and then of course there are the extremes with some determined to prove near pointless opinion. You right in what your doing, getting on with using the MBP and ignoring the battery percentage as displayed by the OS. My Surface Book is the same it can literally display 20 hours or just 3-4 hours both I know from experience are not truly representative of battery runtime, rather just a snapshot of power consumption at that period in time. I use the Surface Book as example not my Mac`s as it`s on the same CPU architecture as your MBP. Skylake very rapidly boost frequency and clocks back down.

So with this in mind you can imagine it being difficult to get accurate numbers. May be wrong, however I believe I read that Apple is deprecating the feature (%) on the next OS point release and to me Windows 10 does not permanently display the same information, looks like the OS waits for the CPU to stabilise before predicting the runtime. I don't use it on my Mac`s for the same reason, being generally all over the place.

What your describing is indeed respectable, it`s not 10 hours, nor would I expect the same with that usage. Also Sierra is still relatively fresh with a bunch of new features which pretty confident Apple will work on to get the power consumption down. Read on another thread the one member upgraded to Sierra on an older MBP and had an immediate loss in runtime of 2-3 hours, so that`s a fair indicator that Sierra is pulling more power.

If people are only seeing 3-4 hours of basic web, use they should speak with Apple, as that shouldn't be case. Overall my opinion stands that if you use the 2016 MBP in anger it will fall short of the 2015 MBP, as it has less power reserves to draw on, equally moderate use, such as yours it should be OK. We kind of see this in multiple YT reviews as for the most part the reviews are quoting times in FCPX and or Adobe Premier which both impact the system heavily.

I think lot of the guy`s here if they have the time jump over to the Retina MacBook posts on the same subject, as they may well be surprised at the similariatlity. My personal biggest concern with 2016 MBP battery is that Apple may be using the same technology as the Retina MacBooks and truthfully they are rubbish, my own 2015 Retina MacBook battery is down to 85% in just 18 months. This 2014 13" rMBP is over 96% and the 15" from 2012 over 91%, so not entirely impressed with that. Nor is it an isolated case.

Might be worth trying Chrome Canary as it `s often better optimised for OS X

Q-6

 

[fodaveg]

Yeah, I dunno! At work I use Chrome and Slack 24/7, plus photoshop and illustrator and I still got around 7 hours of use, post update. I think that's pretty respectable considering how much energy Chrome has been hogging. But other users are reporting like 3 hours with just Safari so this whole situation has me pretty confused tbh. Maybe those users haven't updated yet, or are going off of estimates and not accurate run time, or perhaps there is some hardware epidemic? If I were to go off of the battery estimates the system gives me, I would be getting 4 hours on battery per charge, but in reality I'm getting 7-10 hours. I'm cautiously standing by the belief that this is all some weird software issue that Apple is ironing out quickly.

update? to 10.12.2 beta?

 

[dreamquad]

Same problem with my 13 TB 16 256go. 5hours max but rather 3-4 hours in general. I hope that the 10.12.2 will fix it. Do you have an idea of 10.12.2 official release date?

 

[tjleonard]

This is exactly my point. Certainly there are a couple people on the thread, like @tjleonard, that are getting consistently good battery life after a Sierra reinstall.

There are many more, like me, who've done these "fixes" and experienced a temporary improvement, but then seen that disappear over subsequent cycles.

I'm curious about the comment made on page 53 of the thread by someone that was told "off the record" by Apple Store staff that it's a hardware issue with a batch of these MBPs. If that's the case, it would explain why some people are seeing 9-10 hours of battery life, and others (like me) only 6-7 no matter what they do.

I see no reason not to wait until the final day of Apple's extended holiday return policy to see how this plays out. I don't feel any guilt over that; why should I? This is their problem, not mine. I've been a loyal Apple customer for 25 years. I've never even owned a PC or non-Apple smartphone.

I had made contact with a Senior Apple Advisor about 2 weeks ago, and she acknowledged that 6-6.5 hours of battery life is NOT acceptable or normal. I will try to get back in touch with her today and see what I can learn.

Maybe returning yours for a replacement and see what happens there? I can't say that I would blame you at all. It's your hard earned money and you deserve to be happy with the product you purchase with it.
[doublepost=1481223380][/doublepost]

Lol
[doublepost=1481214316][/doublepost]

How do we know that @tjleonard is not working for Apple or is invested in Apple and trying to be positive? I am buying Apple products since 10 years+ and this is ridiculous. My battery is done in 3.5 hours but I also have to be fair here and admit I am using a virtual machine. The engineers from parallels brought the discharge down from 22 to 12 watt. The engineer was also clueless why the mbp suddenly performs so badly. You can ask now why don't u give it back and stop complaining? The reason is simple I still think it is an amazing piece of hardware. I am so irritated with Apple u have no idea!! Sue them so they finally learn you cant f over loyal customers.

Really? I'm working for Apple? No...I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I was offering people the solution that helped me. Whether anyone wants to try it, agree with me, return their MacBook, I could care less.

 

[BondFancy]

Same problem with my 13 TB 16 256go. 5hours max but rather 3-4 hours in general. I hope that the 10.12.2 will fix it. Do you have an idea of 10.12.2 official release date?

Probably next week if I had to guess.

 

[mahcus36]

Same problem with my 13 TB 16 256go. 5hours max but rather 3-4 hours in general. I hope that the 10.12.2 will fix it. Do you have an idea of 10.12.2 official release date?

yep, same. just unplugged from power, says the expected time remaining is 5:27. lets see if it can even go that long. I'm literally just browsing in safari, not even my preferred chrome

 

[technoholic]

Been using my 13" TB for couple weeks now, fresh Sierra install and now latest beta on there. Never got longer than 5 hours battery using light browsing in safari. Usually 3-4 hours tops. Thats ignoring the actual estimate and timing with a timer. Crazy.

 

[leon771]

Received my 13" touchbar 2.9ghz/16gb/512gb.
On day 1 after a full recharge I barely got 2h out of it with screen at dimmest setting. Was just using the notes app to jot down notes at a conference.
Since then I appear to get max of 2.5-3h use out of my machine.

Only using office 2016 (single app at a time). Wifi on and screen about 75%.

I have 10.12.2 beta installed and it's still poor battery life.

 

[technoholic]

Received my 13" touchbar 2.9ghz/16gb/512gb.
On day 1 after a full recharge I barely got 2h out of it with screen at dimmest setting. Was just using the notes app to jot down notes at a conference.
Since then I appear to get max of 2.5-3h use out of my machine.

Only using office 2016 (single app at a time). Wifi on and screen about 75%.

I have 10.12.2 beta installed and it's still poor battery life.

Yep same spec, same issue. Think I'm going to have to return it, it's too short to live with

 

[montanaco]

update? to 10.12.2 beta?

Yep! The last update from idk, a couple days ago I think it was, really helped me out battery wise. Some people have said it didn't help, but I'm fairly certain I saw a great increase in battery performance!

 

[fodaveg]

Yep! The last update from idk, a couple days ago I think it was, really helped me out battery wise. Some people have said it didn't help, but I'm fairly certain I saw a great increase in battery performance!

I've just update to beta 6 and what before consumed around 11w now consumes 18w

 

[technoholic]

I've just update to beta 6 and what before consumed around 11w now consumes 18w

Yep I just updated to beta 6 and battery life is even worse!

 

[RobinInOR]

Yep I just updated to beta 6 and battery life is even worse!

Well, at least you know software can affect battery life so that's a positive?

 

[jozero]

13" TB 8/512
It is now about 3 weeks old.
8 or 9 apps "running" but nothing is actually going.
Fully just charged ....

5 Hours 30 Minutes. Full battery. Jeebus.

 

[technoholic]

Well, at least you know software can affect battery life so that's a positive?

It is, although I didn't think that wasn't the case before, but I just would have thought they might have gone the other way, but its a beta, can't complain too much
[doublepost=1481235319][/doublepost]

It is, although I didn't think that wasn't the case before, but I just would have thought they might have gone the other way, but its a beta, can't complain too much

Jeez, as I said I know it's a beta but the percentage is dropping minute by minute

 

[montanaco]

I've just update to beta 6 and what before consumed around 11w now consumes 18w

NOOOOOOOO. Ugh, I'll wait to update then. Damn that blows.
[doublepost=1481235825][/doublepost]

13" TB 8/512
It is now about 3 weeks old.
8 or 9 apps "running" but nothing is actually going.
Fully just charged ....

5 Hours 30 Minutes. Full battery. Jeebus.

View attachment 676980

Ignore those estimates they are so inaccurate! I get the same ratings or lower and the battery actually lasts like 7-10 hrs.

 

[technoholic]

NOOOOOOOO. Ugh, I'll wait to update then. Damn that blows.
[doublepost=1481235825][/doublepost]

Ignore those estimates they are so inaccurate! I get the same ratings or lower and the battery actually lasts like 7-10 hrs.

The estimates are definitely very inaccurate but the percentage does give a fairly good estimate of how quickly it's draining.

 

[justabirdy]

Silver/2.0/16GB/512GB user for a couple weeks. Been consistently getting 8-10 hours (occasionally closer to 11) with screen at 66-75% brightness and resolution scaled to 1680x1050. My typical day consists of Chrome (15-20 Tabs), Chrome remote desktop, Windows via a VM (~1 hours worth of use), Spotify, Messages, Slack, Mail, Tweetbot, Terminal and some word processing. Couldn't be happier with this machine, it's been a lag free power house so far (Though my needs are fairly light).

 

[technoholic]

Silver/2.0/16GB/512GB user for a couple weeks. Been consistently getting 8-10 hours (occasionally closer to 11) with screen at 66-75% brightness and resolution scaled to 1680x1050. My typical day consists of Chrome (15-20 Tabs), Chrome remote desktop, Windows via a VM (~1 hours worth of use), Spotify, Messages, Slack, Mail, Tweetbot, Terminal and some word processing. Couldn't be happier with this machine, it's been a lag free power house so far (Though my needs are fairly light).

Sounds like the non touch bar version right? That one doesn't seem to be experiencing the same issue that the touch bar versions have

 

[jozero]

NOOOOOOOO. Ugh, I'll wait to update then. Damn that blows.
[doublepost=1481235825][/doublepost]

Ignore those estimates they are so inaccurate! I get the same ratings or lower and the battery actually lasts like 7-10 hrs.

Well the one time it said 11 hours, then 6 hours, then crashed down to 2:30, then within about 20 some minutes went to 11 minutes, then shut off. All within around 5 to 6 hours.

How am I supposed to trust this thing ?

 

[Karnicopia]

The time estimate is just a measure of what you were doing recently. I could play a heavy visual game and take a screenshot showing that I have horrible battery life. I could put my computer to sleep bring it awake and do hardly anything and show that I get amazing battery life. I could do either within probably 10 minutes. It's completely useless unless you are trying to measure the impact of what you have been doing recently. Track the percentage of battery that you lose per hour of doing various activities. That's a much better measure. Also in activity monitor tracking which apps are taking up the most energy over time is really helpful.

 

[montanaco]

Well the one time it said 11 hours, then 6 hours, then crashed down to 2:30, then within about 20 some minutes went to 11 minutes, then shut off. All within around 5 to 6 hours.

How am I supposed to trust this thing ?

If you check activity monitor, it'll tell you how long you've been on battery power! So I check it every now and then and that's how I can accurately gauge how long it has lasted me. Tbh, theres no way to accurately know how much battery life you're going to get out of these guys haha in the moment lol, you only find out at the end.