Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[bohrsatom]

I'm pretty happy with my new machine (13 touchbar, i5 2.9, 1tb SSD, 16Gb) but am also finding battery life to be really variable on 10.12.2.

Browsing with Chrome I 5h03m from 100% to 0%, using a menubar timer app to measure time. Watching HD video in iTunes I got 8h48m before the machine shut down. Doing a second 'regular usage' test now and looks like it'll get around 5h30m.

Update - got just under 5 hours before the machine went to sleep, so similar results to the first test:

Would be much happier if I could get a couple hours extra browsing time, 5h is pretty rubbish for a machine rated at 10h.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

It does seem like battery life is really variable across different users, and even for individual users. The best I can get is 8 hours (13" TB), and that's with very light usage. Usually it's more like 6.5-7 hours. Sometimes with my normal usage I can get close to 8 hours, other times it's closer to 6.5... and I can't really tell why in those cases.

 

[Roller]

It does seem like battery life is really variable across different users, and even for individual users. The best I can get is 8 hours (13" TB), and that's with very light usage. Usually it's more like 6.5-7 hours. Sometimes with my normal usage I can get close to 8 hours, other times it's closer to 6.5... and I can't really tell why in those cases.

This thread grows more quickly than the 2016 MBP battery drains.

I think you're right about variability, which I attribute to these systems' high sensitivity to factors that affect power draw. (I used the word "systems" because its the interplay of the OS, non-OS software, hardware, and battery that determines this, and there are essentially an infinite number of combinations.) So test conditions that may seem identical or nearly so really aren't as far as battery usage goes. Couple that with batteries that have a lower capacity than previous MBPs and you get disparate actual run times.

A few people are reporting better results with Sierra 10.12.3 beta. I didn't see much of a difference a few days ago, but I didn't get much time to try it. I'm going to see what happens today.

 

[MrGuder]

Why does google chrome require the dedicated gpu?

 

[DB4AW]

is this normal? i'm watching videos on youtube, screen 50% brightness, volume 50%. laptop fully charged, battery unplugged for ~1 hour, started watching videos maybe 40 minutes ago? i have 4:42 left?

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update- still watching videos. time on battery 1:32, time left 3:30

View attachment 682230

I see 2 Google apps that appear to need the power hungry discrete graphics card. I don't know why those Google apps would require the discrete graphics card but when that card is in use your battery will drain significantly faster. If you can, try running Apple's native equivalent software to see if you fare better.
[doublepost=1483806691][/doublepost]Apple has spoiled us and so we expect more battery life out of our MBPs. But I'm starting to think that the battery life of the 2016 MBPs will only be so so even with upcoming OS and app updates. And today there is yet another article on how Apple may try to improve the battery life of the MacBook Pros in the next refresh using better screen technology: http://wccftech.com/macbook-pro-new-display-better-battery-life/

Now I personally love the design of the 2016 MBP. Touch ID is my favorite new feature as it is utterly wonderful and a big time saver. But I can see battery life in the next refresh being something that Apple would target and could definitely improve by using a power saving display and a more efficient Kaby Lake chip. So the battery horror stories and the news of what may be in the next refresh is subtly nudging me to return the 2016 MBP and WAIT for the next refresh. It's telling me that I paid much and should expect better. So I'm very tempted to do so because I would be rather upset if the next refresh comes out with consistent to die for battery life. But I'm stuck with so so battery life for next 3 years since I was planning to keep my new MBP for that long.

Unfortunately, I realize some of you can't wait for the next yearly refresh because you had been waiting for the 2016 refresh to replace your much older MBPs than my 2014 MBP. So I hope Apple can make needed OS and/or software fixes so you can get the most battery life you can get out of your 2016 MBPs. But it is just so damn annoying that Apple doesn't even bother to offer comments or reassurances to customers who purchased the 2016 in good faith but have been vexed with annoying battery issues from Day 1.

 

[MrGuder]

This is why it's not hard to understand why some are getting great battery life and others terrible. There are people who will be using chrome or other apps that use the dGPU and other users who only use Safari and don't use apps that use the dGPU so it stands to reason why some are getting 3-4 hrs and others getting 8-10 hrs. So how does Apple fix an issue like that?

 

[badlydrawnboy]

This is why it's not hard to understand why some are getting great battery life and others terrible. There are people who will be using chrome or other apps that use the dGPU and other users who only use Safari and don't use apps that use the dGPU so it stands to reason why some are getting 3-4 hrs and others getting 8-10 hrs. So how does Apple fix an issue like that?

What about those of us without a dGPU (13") but are still having variable battery times?

 

[Mannaerts]

About 8h/9h watching Netflix on Safari on a non-TB 13"

 

[Wildkraut]

This is why it's not hard to understand why some are getting great battery life and others terrible. There are people who will be using chrome or other apps that use the dGPU and other users who only use Safari and don't use apps that use the dGPU so it stands to reason why some are getting 3-4 hrs and others getting 8-10 hrs. So how does Apple fix an issue like that?

I use only Safari and also have no tools installed that ads itself to the upper toolbar, except 1password and little snitch.
I don't use facebook, i don't use twitter or any other social network application that remains running in the background.
My power hungry Tools i usually close completely and don't keep em minimised or frozen in the background.
I also don't use stuff like iStatMenues or Battery monitors, etc.
Well I have an IRC client "limeChat" running in the background.
I use Apple Music and not Spotify.
I don't use any cloud solutions other than iCloud, means no Dropbox,Box,OneDrive,AmazonDrive.
Brightness is set to 50%.
Usually there is a Terminal session open.
Mail is running all the time minimised.

Thats what usually is open here, in addition to my work stuff like xCode or 3DTools.
But its normal, 3D Tools sucks juice.

Battery is fine.
We have winter now. -6°c
Maybe the weather "temperature + humidity" also have sideeffects?

 

[Reniboy]

guys, plz !! help me/us, who else having an older generation MBP 15", with latest Sierra....is Sierra making the battery last shorter? and not the new late 2016 MBP? i mean on my late 2013 15" MBP, i was having 8-8.20 min usage with safari for example in EL CAP, now im having around 6.30 min...with my new MBP i have around the same 6-7 hours...so i wonder IF THE PROBLEM IS NOT SOFTWARE. please anyone else with an older MBP can confirm that the battery usage is less since Sierra?

Yes I can confirm this too. My 15 inch Macbook Pro 2013 has had a slight reduction in battery life in Sierra without a doubt. It lasts about 5 and a half hours instead of the 8 in Capitan and what we were promised. I'm surprised this hasn't been noticed by more.

 

[DB4AW]

I use only Safari and also have no tools installed that ads itself to the upper toolbar, except 1password and little snitch.
I don't use facebook, i don't use twitter or any other social network application that remains running in the background.
My power hungry Tools i usually close completely and don't keep em minimised or frozen in the background.
I also don't use stuff like iStatMenues or Battery monitors, etc.
Well I have an IRC client "limeChat" running in the background.
I use Apple Music and not Spotify.
I don't use any cloud solutions other than iCloud, means no Dropbox,Box,OneDrive,AmazonDrive.
Brightness is set to 50%.
Usually there is a Terminal session open.
Mail is running all the time minimised.

Thats what usually is open here, in addition to my work stuff like xCode or 3DTools.
But its normal, 3D Tools sucks juice.

Battery is fine.
We have winter now. -6°c
Maybe the weather "temperature + humidity" also have sideeffects?

That's you. Your particular usage may not tax the MBP that much but others use their MBP much differently. Many people do use cloud services and Google apps and Facebook. They should be able to expect decent battery life out of something Apple charges much money for. Apple customers are willing to pay Apple that premium but in return we expect more including battery life. Apple has been able to deliver consistently good battery life with prior MBPs. So what happened here? Apple should not be charging customers all that money and then expect them to compromise on battery life expectations. That's bs!

For those of us who can wait, let's send Apple a message by returning the 2016 MBP and letting them know we expect better. I feel like Apple is beta testing customers again like they did with the initial introduction of the Apple Watch which had terrible battery life and not so good an interface. Finally, after receiving various feedback and criticism, Apple corrected those oversights in their annual refresh. I think that's gonna happen again with this latest MBP redesign. So I'll wait for the annual refresh. I'm not gonna be an unwitting Apple beta tester again. No one should. I may be one of Apple's fanboys for life but I'm not Apple sheep.
[doublepost=1483818563][/doublepost]

Yes I can confirm this too. My 15 inch Macbook Pro 2013 has had a slight reduction in battery life in Sierra without a doubt. It lasts about 5 and a half hours instead of the 8 in Capitan and what we were promised. I'm surprised this hasn't been noticed by more.

One of the problems is Apple is not saying anything so we simple customers are left to draw our own conclusions. And some of them may be wild but Apple's silence is not helping to calm matters.

 

[JackDaniels3]

Okay, so...
Here's how I use my tbMBP 13':
- Notifications are allowed but only for a few apps.
- Disabled power nap on battery.
- I do not use Spotlight so I've included my home folder in the exception list.
- I set my keyboard brightness to 1. The screen is brighter enough to light the keyboard so I don't need more than 1.
- I close (with command+q) apps after I finish my work with them. Only Safari and Sparks are minimized.
- I turned off the type suggestions. They are useless to me.
- I do not use Photos app.
- Using iCloud sync only for apps data.
- Display brightness - 85%. I like my screen brighter. Automatic adjustment is off of course.

I didn't do any MacOS reinstalls, tweaks, resets, I don't have battery loggers, ad-blockers, etc.
I just use the Mac as I like.

It's too early for solid battery results, but here's what I saw for three days usage:
Safari with Macrumors forums - below 3.2 energy impact. Honestly, the activity monitor uses more power than the Safari
Sleep drain - 1% for 7-8 hours (two nights - same result).

In the next few days after everything is set and done, I'll test the battery with normal daily workflow and I'll share my observation.

Keep in mind that this is my first Mac. I have no idea what si normal and what is not. I'm still exploring and testing

 

[JackDaniels3]

Here's my last results:

Charged the battery last night. After 11:30h of sleep, only 1% drained power again.

Today's workflow - mid and heavy work:
Plugged external hard drive and moving huge files constantly.
FTP client - transfer files for three hours.
PHPStorm running.
Two Safari windows with 5-6 tabs.
Sparks and Fantastical running all the time.
Compress and decompress massive zip archives constantly.

The result - five hours till now and only 10% left.

I think it's a good result, considering the heavy lifting during the day.

 

[Samtb]

Should it lose any battery life whilst it's shut down? I think mine lost 4% while shut down over night.

 

[thesaint024]

Here's my last results:

Charged the battery last night. After 11:30h of sleep, only 1% drained power again.

Today's workflow - mid and heavy work:
Plugged external hard drive and moving huge files constantly.
FTP client - transfer files for three hours.
PHPStorm running.
Two Safari windows with 5-6 tabs.
Sparks and Fantastical running all the time.
Compress and decompress massive zip archives constantly.

The result - five hours till now and only 10% left.

I think it's a good result, considering the heavy lifting during the day.

Sounds like a reasonable result for what you were doing. I would be fine with that as well. Good to hear you have reasonable expectations for different uses. All that file moving and manipulating and external drive use is taxing.

 

[thesaint024]

Should it lose any battery life whilst it's shut down? I think mine lost 4% while shut down over night.

4% for shut down overnight might be a little high. That's an expected number for sleep overnight. You sure it was actually shutdown?

 

[Samtb]

4% for shut down overnight might be a little high. That's an expected number for sleep overnight. You sure it was actually shutdown?

Yeah. Shut down. Not sleep.

 

[Roller]

Today was the last day to return my 13" MBP TB. I've been using it on battery since I fully charged it last night doing what I consider light to moderate work: web with some video, Evernote, some Keynote, Mail, Outlook, and a couple of cloud services running. When not in use, the computer was either off or asleep. It shut down at 0% at 9 hours, 2 minutes. All I care about is not having to carry the power brick and cords during the day, so this is fine for my use case. (I'm running 10.12.3 beta, BTW.)

I'm still not sold on the TB, but Touch ID more than makes up for it. Tapping with my finger is much more convenient than typing a password to wake the laptop, and it's great with 1Password too.

So even though there'll probably be a Kaby Lake version with a better battery and maybe a better display later this year, I'm keeping this one. I hope that everyone makes the decision that's best for them.

 

[tc47]

Returned my 13" MBP TB this weekend as it was the last chance. Picked up the nTB 13" and have been using it for a whole day now, and I have to say it's the better pick for me. I miss Touch ID, but the battery is significantly better with my usage and using the TB got messy at times the way I was using my laptop. So far so good with this model! (I do also miss charging my laptop on both sides from time to time!)

 

[christophermdia]

So, I've updated a few times as configurations change, but running a 13" TB MBP fully loaded, I continue to get fantastic battery life. At this moment, running Windows 10 in Parallels in Coherence mode, doing a myriad of tasks within both Windows and Mac and battery is at 94% with 8:00 left ... I get no less than the advertised 10 hours and many times even more ... again, I may have just gotten a good unit in comparison to many of you complaining about your 13's (15 could be another story because of GPU), but don't let the bad remarks deter you ... I can't imagine the nTB being that extreme in better battery life either ... not when I'm getting the numbers I'm getting at this point ...

 

[konnyaku]

15" users - please read this thread. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/discovered-a-possible-cause-of-battery-drain.2026110/ There may be a bug with the Radeon not switching off in certain situations and continuing to draw 10W of power.

 

[leman]

Having spent half a day on my 2016 15" MBP (2.9Ghz CPU, 460 Pro, 512GB SSD), I can clearly say that this laptop easily gets 9+ hours of mixed usage on battery. And I was copying data, installing stuff, washing youtube videos etc. — so not the lightest possible usage. This is so far the best battery life on any Mac laptop (or for what matters any laptop of this performance class) that I have ever experienced, so I am more than happy. Don't know what is wrong with other peoples machines

 

[d14b0ll0s]

For all those who based their stats on predictions -- a good app for measuring the actual usage is Better Battery, as it gives you battery history for the price of the app (2 EUR here).
coconutBattery, in turn, has a useful menubar stats bar that can show how fast the battery is discharging (in either W/h or mA/h) and how many hours you have left based on current usage (as opposed to both recent and predicted).

 

[lobo1978]

For all those who based their stats on predictions -- a good app for measuring the actual usage is Better Battery, as it gives you battery history for the price of the app (2 EUR here).
coconutBattery, in turn, has a useful menubar stats bar that can show how fast the battery is discharging (in either W/h or mA/h) and how many hours you have left based on current usage (as opposed to both recent and predicted).

I second to this - also recommend this nice app + it has % and time remaining in one.
[doublepost=1483979806][/doublepost]

Today was the last day to return my 13" MBP TB. I've been using it on battery since I fully charged it last night doing what I consider light to moderate work: web with some video, Evernote, some Keynote, Mail, Outlook, and a couple of cloud services running. When not in use, the computer was either off or asleep. It shut down at 0% at 9 hours, 2 minutes. All I care about is not having to carry the power brick and cords during the day, so this is fine for my use case. (I'm running 10.12.3 beta, BTW.)

I'm still not sold on the TB, but Touch ID more than makes up for it. Tapping with my finger is much more convenient than typing a password to wake the laptop, and it's great with 1Password too.

So even though there'll probably be a Kaby Lake version with a better battery and maybe a better display later this year, I'm keeping this one. I hope that everyone makes the decision that's best for them.

I was over the fence with TB (had nTB for a month before TB arrived) = I kept TB version. I love it. I just couldn't go back to previous retina - it is soooo outdated for me (keyboard, weight, thinness, new cool colour, Touch ID, TB, + I have USB-C transition 'drama' behind me already). Maybe I'm spoiled but it's true.

 

[badlydrawnboy]

Any other reports on battery life in 10.12.3 beta? A new build was just released today apparently.