Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[badlydrawnboy]

Unfortunately I feel like I have to make a compromise this year no matter which model I choose. The non-TB one is missing flagship features, the 13" TB has ****** battery life, and the 15" version is just too big for me.

That is exactly how I feel.

I'm going to call the Apple advisor now.
[doublepost=1479503277][/doublepost]

The Touch ID sensor is the power button. If you hold it down for awhile it will reboot...

But it reboots automatically when you open it.

I tried holding the key combo down just after I opened it, but not sure if the SMC is resetting. If it did, it didn't affect the battery life.

 

[javiergenesisx]

That is exactly how I feel.

I'm going to call the Apple advisor now.
[doublepost=1479503277][/doublepost]

But it reboots automatically when you open it.

I tried holding the key combo down just after I opened it, but not sure if the SMC is resetting. If it did, it didn't affect the battery life.

do it like this click on the apple on the top left side and just click on shut down once it does that i know it says to plug in the charger but don't do it as it will just turn the on the computer automatically and then press don't the three keys plus the power button which is touch id button down hold those 4 things down for 10 sec , then let them all go and just press the power button by itself once again , i been using the laptop ever since i first posted , watched a few videos and im at 73% i probably used it like 3 hours and half alredy or so

 

[lobo1978]

People you can't estimate battery life by battery remaining time.

Copy paste graph from activity monitor when you are close to 10-20% of charge:

+We can see slope of battery discharge - if it is steep, you have power intensive tasks.

 

[javiergenesisx]

Non-TB 13":

View attachment 673300

you have the exact problem i had , read what i wrote earlier do the smc reset and it will be way better hope it helps

 

[dyn]

On every single thread on here and reddit talking about the 13" TB MBP, someone mentions their bad experience with battery life.

Exactly the same with previous versions so nothing new there. Also not new is the fact that people are using the wrong tools for battery life due to not knowing how modern day computers work. As can be seen in nearly all the screenshots in this topic (and previous ones) is the use of the battery life estimation in OS X. This is an estimation that is made after looking at the past 5 minutes or so and it can (and will) change greatly. The problem is that this is changing even more so with modern day hardware. In the old days CPUs ran at a certain speed and used a certain amount of power. Modern day CPUs are idle and throttle up when necessary as do modern day GPUs and even the controllers in SSDs. This makes it extremely difficult to calculate the estimated battery life and causes the estimation displayed to change often. It is an extremely inaccurate way of retrieving battery life and you actually shouldn't be using it (Apple needs to remove the estimation).

If you really want to know your battery life then you need to use a stopwatch or a tool as mentioned by Kimcha and monitor it for a week. Average the measurements and you have a proper battery life measurement, one that is actually meaningful. The way most people here are measuring it, is just completely useless as it says absolutely nothing (hence the reason why the estimation should be removed in macOS).

Now, if Apple could drop off my ordered MBP I could actually do the measuring myself...

 

[lobo1978]

Yes. Who can think of something. Hmm that's a difficult one

No worries, Apple is already screwed

 

[JackDaniels3]

What blows my mind is that in the chassis of the 13TB model there is enough space for at least 10% bigger battery pack.
Look at the center battery at the 13 without TB and then at the 13 with TB.
Also the side banks have a little free space too.
This is absurd!

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/rHEntBKH24INysSo
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/gKHAnRHKaCjSYa3L

 

[tjleonard]

Exactly the same with previous versions so nothing new there. Also not new is the fact that people are using the wrong tools for battery life due to not knowing how modern day computers work. As can be seen in nearly all the screenshots in this topic (and previous ones) is the use of the battery life estimation in OS X. This is an estimation that is made after looking at the past 5 minutes or so and it can (and will) change greatly. The problem is that this is changing even more so with modern day hardware. In the old days CPUs ran at a certain speed and used a certain amount of power. Modern day CPUs are idle and throttle up when necessary as do modern day GPUs and even the controllers in SSDs. This makes it extremely difficult to calculate the estimated battery life and causes the estimation displayed to change often. It is an extremely inaccurate way of retrieving battery life and you actually shouldn't be using it (Apple needs to remove the estimation).

If you really want to know your battery life then you need to use a stopwatch or a tool as mentioned by Kimcha and monitor it for a week. Average the measurements and you have a proper battery life measurement, one that is actually meaningful. The way most people here are measuring it, is just completely useless as it says absolutely nothing (hence the reason why the estimation should be removed in macOS).

Now, if Apple could drop off my ordered MBP I could actually do the measuring myself...

With only Safari open, 1 tab, no flash, no plugins, I get just over 5 hours of web browsing. That's not using their estimator, that's me timing it.

 

[Hyloba]

What blows my mind is that in the chassis of the 13TB model there is enough space for at least 10% bigger battery pack.
Look at the center battery at the 13 without TB and then at the 13 with TB.
Also the side banks have a little free space too.
This is absurd!

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/rHEntBKH24INysSo
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/gKHAnRHKaCjSYa3L

I do too find this weird, it's as if they wait until next year to fill the empty space, so they can claim the new MBP magically has 50% more battery life.

I'm generally not this kind of thinker, but you do start to wonder.

 

[vddobrev]

What blows my mind is that in the chassis of the 13TB model there is enough space for at least 10% bigger battery pack.
Look at the center battery at the 13 without TB and then at the 13 with TB.
Also the side banks have a little free space too.
This is absurd!

https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/rHEntBKH24INysSo
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/gKHAnRHKaCjSYa3L

Nice catch! It is the same with the 15", definitely empty space around the battery parts.
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/cBFfrfQPrPBFgV1s

 

[Kimcha]

If they really limited the batteries, I think they did it to keep it close to 3 pounds.

 

[dyn]

More likely to prevent issues like the Samsung Note. If you are going to use li-ion or lipo batteries then you need to give them room. If you don't nasty things can happen as we've seen with many devices already.

 

[JackDaniels3]

If they really limited the batteries, I think they did it to keep it close to 3 pounds.

Yeah, to be light and mobile... so you can bring it with you everywhere... with no power

More likely to prevent issues like the Samsung Note. If you are going to use li-ion or lipo batteries then you need to give them room. If you don't nasty things can happen as we've seen with many devices already.

As you can see on the images, the 13 without TB use larger batteries, so this is not a problem obviously.

I do too find this weird, it's as if they wait until next year to fill the empty space, so they can claim the new MBP magically has 50% more battery life.

Yep. It will be... magical

 

[Hyloba]

If they really limited the batteries, I think they did it to keep it close to 3 pounds.

I think no one would complain if there were a few added grams. Unless it really puts the device off balance. Then again not utilizing all space you have in a laptop seems weird to me.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

I did an SMC reset and I think it may have helped. Battery seems to be running down more slowly. I've been on battery for 20 min and it's still at 99%. Estimated time remaining is 12:35.

Too soon to tell for sure, but this does seem different than before.

I haven't been able to reach the Apple advisor to follow up. Have called twice and emailed once, no response.

 

[mercedes27]

I've just discovered lot articles about Dell XPS 13 - there is a HUGE difference when you have this XPS with i7 or i5. All testers agreed, that with i7 was battery life 1-2h worse!!! (both the same Kaby Lake)
And Apple claims, that they conducted battery test of TB 13" using the worse i5 - 2,9GHz - maybe this is the reason.
In case of 15" MacBook Pro - there is only option i7 - so only GHz differs, which could not have that big impact.

And I've read some test with result of 8-9h battery life of 13 TB - all had i5 2,9GHz.

 

[javiergenesisx]

I did an SMC reset and I think it may have helped. Battery seems to be running down more slowly. I've been on battery for 20 min and it's still at 99%. Estimated time remaining is 12:35.

Too soon to tell for sure, but this does seem different than before.

I haven't been able to reach the Apple advisor to follow up. Have called twice and emailed once, no response.

[doublepost=1479509685][/doublepost]been using it for 5 hours still at 63% it helped for sure was told this by a live chat person from apple lol

 

[tjleonard]

[doublepost=1479509685][/doublepost]been using it for 5 hours still at 63% it helped for sure was told this by a live chat person from apple lol

How do you do the smc reset?

 

[fokmik]

so, the real thing is to do a SMC reset ?? i guess is recommended for all the new MBP 13" and 15" ?

 

[mercedes27]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/...o-more-battery-life-tests-display-evaluated/2
here the same
http://www.howtogeek.com/196582/why...ra-for-a-faster-cpu-in-your-laptop-or-tablet/

Old articles - but it is still the same. i5 is better about 9-11% in case of battery life. If you have 6,5h of batter life with i7, it should be around 1h better in case of i5. I don't know how much is this influenced by RAM and size of the SSD.

So i7 maybe is the main problem here, given the fact, that it runs at 3,3GHz and that is the difference.

 

[Impatientmac]

do it like this click on the apple on the top left side and just click on shut down once it does that i know it says to plug in the charger but don't do it as it will just turn the on the computer automatically and then press don't the three keys plus the power button which is touch id button down hold those 4 things down for 10 sec , then let them all go and just press the power button by itself once again , i been using the laptop ever since i first posted , watched a few videos and im at 73% i probably used it like 3 hours and half alredy or so

Thanks for explaining it clearly, I don't think I did the smc reset correctly the 1st time. I did what you did and at the very least it says that the battery has 6 hrs on less than 50% so it must have done something. I'm not sure if I'll get 10-12 hrs but it at least looks like its better so far

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Have to say, I do think the SMC reset helped. I've been using for 0:50 and it shows 9:21 remaining. That's pretty close to 10 hours if accurate. I'll report back.

 

[dyn]

As you can see on the images, the 13 without TB use larger batteries, so this is not a problem obviously.

It doesn't have to be but that's also what Samsung thought and we all know what happened next.

You are forgetting an important part: heat. Any computer will generate heat and this will affect the battery. In case of li-ion/lipo batteries heat can even be dangerous as it can set off a dangerous chemical reaction which can cause it to swell up and burst into flames or even explode. The components in the 13" without the touch bar (but with TB...aka be careful with abbreviations) are not as powerful as the one in the 13" with touch bar. The former generates less heat than the latter so it has more room in its thermal envelope. That may be the reason why one has bigger battery cells than the other. It also may very well be that the new hardware doesn't require as much power as the old and can use the smaller cells. Obviously it is much cheaper to be using similar housings for both models and that could explain why the cell areas in the housing are bigger than the cells themselves.

Either way, there is a good explanation for it and I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[skids929]

I've just discovered lot articles about Dell XPS 13 - there is a HUGE difference when you have this XPS with i7 or i5. All testers agreed, that with i7 was battery life 1-2h worse!!! (both the same Kaby Lake)
And Apple claims, that they conducted battery test of TB 13" using the worse i5 - 2,9GHz - maybe this is the reason.
In case of 15" MacBook Pro - there is only option i7 - so only GHz differs, which could not have that big impact.

And I've read some test with result of 8-9h battery life of 13 TB - all had i5 2,9GHz.

this was posted earlier in the thread..It's one theory but not fact. I believe it's either this or it's something with Sierra that needs a patch. I am on a 2.9ghz TB and I find the battery life to be reasonable. Although this SMC thing has me intrigued.

 

[mercedes27]

this was posted earlier in the thread..It's one theory but not fact. I believe it's either this or it's something with Sierra that needs a patch. I am on a 2.9ghz TB and I find the battery life to be reasonable. Although this SMC thing has me intrigued.

We will see. Maybe somebody will perform a comparison between those 2.
I checked reviews of previous generations and there is always a difference in favor of i5 by 5-15%.