Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[- rob -]

I'm a week into my use of the 13" tbMBP 3.1/16gb/1TB on MacOS 10.12.3.

I had weak battery performance, getting just 3+ hours on general office tasks and some audio conferencing for my first few days of use. I had left the machine plugged in and on over night to work on background tasks.

As per my posts in this thread, I took the machine in to the Apple Store yesterday. They offered an immediate replacement even though nothing was detectably wrong. I've already invested time in setting this machine up, so I'm hoping to keep it.

They reset the PRAM and SMC as a troubleshooting method and said to give it a shot.

Today I was able to get about 4.25 hours without a charge. A fair amount of that time was completely idle, so I am not sure it is lasting longer.

Unfortunately, this is way less than what I was expecting out of this product. I really expected 6 hours on moderate usage. With closer to 8 or even 10 hours on light usage.

As is the 13" is perhaps a bit stronger than 2013 MBA with 490 cycles on it.

I'm continuing to test and log with Battery Health. But I am really bummed that this otherwise cool machine is so crippled by battery. I feel particularly bummed that as a five year+ 11" MBA user, Apple ended our product line without an obviously better price / performance upgrade route.

 

[Eduardboon]

I'm a week into my use of the 13" tbMBP 3.1/16gb/1TB on MacOS 10.12.3.

I had weak battery performance, getting just 3+ hours on general office tasks and some audio conferencing for my first few days of use. I had left the machine plugged in and on over night to work on background tasks.

As per my posts in this thread, I took the machine in to the Apple Store yesterday. They offered an immediate replacement even though nothing was detectably wrong. I've already invested time in setting this machine up, so I'm hoping to keep it.

They reset the PRAM and SMC as a troubleshooting method and said to give it a shot.

Today I was able to get about 4.25 hours without a charge. A fair amount of that time was completely idle, so I am not sure it is lasting longer.

Unfortunately, this is way less than what I was expecting out of this product. I really expected 6 hours on moderate usage. With closer to 8 or even 10 hours on light usage.

As is the 13" is perhaps a bit stronger than 2013 MBA with 490 cycles on it.

I'm continuing to test and log with Battery Health. But I am really bummed that this otherwise cool machine is so crippled by battery. I feel particularly bummed that as a five year+ 11" MBA user, Apple was not able to create an obvious upgrade route.

People in my area can easily get 6 hours out of that machine and even that is low. You should really consider swapping the machine. In this thread some people are even getting around 10 hours now!

 

[- rob -]

People in my area can easily get 6 hours out of that machine and even that is low. You should really consider swapping the machine. In this thread some people are even getting around 10 hours now!

I feel like I've seen this for the 15", but haven't noticed this is the case for the tb13" consistently. Are you talking about the 13?

 

[Eduardboon]

I feel like I've seen this for the 15", but haven't noticed this is the case for the tb13" consistently. Are you talking about the 13?

I am absolutely talking about the 13". I've not seen more than 6-7 hours of battery life around me on the 15" pro's. And since somehow the 15"'s have weaker iGPU's they also perform worse when not in dGPU mode, so all in all meh for me.

 

[Sanpete]

I'm a week into my use of the 13" tbMBP 3.1/16gb/1TB on MacOS 10.12.3.

I had weak battery performance, getting just 3+ hours on general office tasks and some audio conferencing for my first few days of use. I had left the machine plugged in and on over night to work on background tasks.

As per my posts in this thread, I took the machine in to the Apple Store yesterday. They offered an immediate replacement even though nothing was detectably wrong. I've already invested time in setting this machine up, so I'm hoping to keep it.

They reset the PRAM and SMC as a troubleshooting method and said to give it a shot.

Today I was able to get about 4.25 hours without a charge. A fair amount of that time was completely idle, so I am not sure it is lasting longer.

Unfortunately, this is way less than what I was expecting out of this product. I really expected 6 hours on moderate usage. With closer to 8 or even 10 hours on light usage.

As is the 13" is perhaps a bit stronger than 2013 MBA with 490 cycles on it.

I'm continuing to test and log with Battery Health. But I am really bummed that this otherwise cool machine is so crippled by battery. I feel particularly bummed that as a five year+ 11" MBA user, Apple ended our product line without an obviously better price / performance upgrade route.

What does the Activity Monitor Energy tab show is using the power? You should be able to see moment by moment just where it's going, and compare to others to see if programs are using more power than usual. That should help you decide whether to replace or not.

 

[- rob -]

What does the Activity Monitor Energy tab show is using the power? You should be able to see moment by moment just where it's going, and compare to others to see if programs are using more power than usual. That should help you decide whether to replace or not.

Thanks for this. It is primarily going to Chrome. The thing is that I am not using Chrome any differently from how I use it on my MBA.

 

[Sanpete]

Thanks for this. It is primarily going to Chrome. The thing is that I am not using Chrome any differently from how I use it on my MBA.

Right, but to know if that's a hardware issue peculiar to your machine, you can compare to other MBPs. Maybe watch the average energy impact for Chrome and the next couple highest programs for a while, and post the figures here for comparison. If you have a program like Coconut battery, I think you can also see if some hardware element is using more power than usual. Seems you'd prefer not to return the machine if it's behaving normally (which makes sense), so maybe you can figure out if it is.

 

[OldMacUser]

Received my 13-in TB-MBP on Monday and thoroughly enjoying it so far. Only thing that is niggling is the battery. On the first night, battery dropped about 5% at night (about 8 hours in sleep). I then applied the "fix" found on MacRumors in another thread yesterday BUT the battery loss became even greater - 11% loss over 8 hours in sleep. Ouch.

I have now reset the SMC and will monitor again tonight. If there is still excessive battery loss in sleep, might have to wipe and reinstall macOS next. In comparison, my 2013 13-in MacBook Air would not drop a single % overnight, so this is very perplexing.

 

[WRONG]

To know what your battery life will be you have to actually run the battery to see. Don't rely on the time remaining functions.

Make sense, but then what's the purpose of the "current usage" estimation?
Just for fun?

 

[nincompoop]

As per my posts in this thread, I took the machine in to the Apple Store yesterday. They offered an immediate replacement even though nothing was detectably wrong. I've already invested time in setting this machine up, so I'm hoping to keep it.
.

Did you buy it from the apple store?
I am just curious what would happen if it was bought from Adorama who doesn't have the no questions asked return policy within 14 days of purchase. Would apple store replace those too?

 

[steve62388]

Macworld has done some testing:- http://www.macworld.com/article/315...d-the-macbook-pros-terrible-battery-life.html

It will probably answer a lot of questions.

 

[christophermdia]

MBP - 13 12:51 remaining at 97% running Parallels Windows 10 in coherence mode, running Chats, powerpoint (Mac and Windows versions), word, outlook, and safari ... brightness approximately 50%, 31 cycles, so I thin some of you need to just give this time.

 

[Sanpete]

Make sense, but then what's the purpose of the "current usage" estimation?
Just for fun?

Pretty close. They give you an idea how long you'll get, but they can be off quite a bit.
[doublepost=1486060489][/doublepost]

Macworld has done some testing:- http://www.macworld.com/article/315...d-the-macbook-pros-terrible-battery-life.html

It will probably answer a lot of questions.

Good piece. Too bad it doesn't address the model with the most trouble, the 13" with touch bar.

 

[mahcus36]

Pretty close. They give you an idea how long you'll get, but they can be off quite a bit.
[doublepost=1486060489][/doublepost]

Good piece. Too bad it doesn't address the model with the most trouble, the 13" with touch bar.

exactly! the 15" is getting all the attention, with the GPU issues and all, but the 13" TB model has (imo) had the same issues as launch

 

[tCC_]

MBP - 13 12:51 remaining at 97% running Parallels Windows 10 in coherence mode, running Chats, powerpoint (Mac and Windows versions), word, outlook, and safari ... brightness approximately 50%, 31 cycles, so I thin some of you need to just give this time.

Useless post with 97% juice left, the thing is just running

 

[nincompoop]

I find a lot of updates for the 15" MBpro with Touch bar. Would be great if people with a 13" MBpro with touch bar could kindly report their battery lives after the 10.12.3 Sieera update. Thank you.

Looking to get a 13" TB MBpro soon. Just wanted to be sure that I am making the good choice. Thank you so much for your help.

 

[leman]

One of our employees with a 13" TB model also experienced issues with the battery life, just as described in this thread (max 3-4 hours). He has reported that the 10.12.3 update has completely fixed this problem and that he is getting full day of battery post the update. He didn't specify more precise numbers, but he said it was on the same level as his previous 13" MBA.

 

[- rob -]

One of our employees with a 13" TB model also experienced issues with the battery life, just as described in this thread (max 3-4 hours). He has reported that the 10.12.3 update has completely fixed this problem and that he is getting full day of battery post the update. He didn't specify more precise numbers, but he said it was on the same level as his previous 13" MBA.

Which browser(s) does your employee use?

 

[leman]

Which browser(s) does your employee use?

Safari. And this part of the message is just to get over the word limit

 

[teerexx52]

I have a 15" 2.7 and I am currently surfing and checking email at Dunkin Donuts. Time remaining shows about 9hrs 15 mins. Been here about 15 minutes. I come several times a week and this seems to be about right for my use. Have latest Sierra update not beta

 

[- rob -]

I don't have data, but it feels like people who moved from using Chrome on other macbooks to the new MBP are getting bad (or worse) battery performance than safari users.

Can someone recommend browser-based battery test program I can run on my tbMBP 13" under Chrome and Safari under 10.12.3 to measure performance difference? Or can someone link to where this been done already?

 

[Sanpete]

I don't have data, but it feels like people who moved from using Chrome on other macbooks to the new MBP are getting bad (or worse) battery performance than safari users.

Can someone recommend browser-based battery test program I can run on my tbMBP 13" under Chrome and Safari under 10.12.3 to measure performance difference? Or can someone link to where this been done already?

Not a real rigorous test, but:

http://www.guidingtech.com/59385/battery-conserving-mac-browsers/

This site compared several browsers including those two for battery life and performance, but the results about battery life are merely impressionistic:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/8-best-web-browsers-for-mac-2017-3639500/

You can use Activity Monitor Energy tab to track how much energy impact each program has for your usage.

 

[bohrsatom]

I'm a week into my use of the 13" tbMBP 3.1/16gb/1TB on MacOS 10.12.3.

I had weak battery performance, getting just 3+ hours on general office tasks and some audio conferencing for my first few days of use. I had left the machine plugged in and on over night to work on background tasks.

I have this same spec 13 tbMBP. First machine would only give me around 5hrs of web browsing in Chrome so I got a replacement from Apple. So far the second appears to give around 6hrs which is better but still not great compared with the tech specs. I do however get around 9hrs of HD video playback in iTunes. All my testing has been with 75% brightness.

No idea how others are getting 8/9/10hrs from the same spec machines. I suspect not everybody with these claims is running a full test from 100%-0% but relying on estimates from Activity Monitor instead.

Overall I think the TB and faster CPU twinned with the smaller battery means the machine just isn't good enough for working away from power for too long. 95% of the time my Mac is connected to power so I can accept this limitation, but it's not ideal given the cost.

 

[Bobthemonkey]

Just adding my experience of my 2nd 2016 MBP. (First one, bought at launch went back as battery never went above 6hr - both machines were i7/16/512)


Using it for two weeks now, bought on the day 10.12.3 came out.

I'm getting everyday usage consistent with a 8-10 hr battery life based on a general workflow of word/excel/safari/mail. One battery life killer seems to be Outlook 2016 so I'm just using the web app instead - and let my phone handle notifications etc. Only tweak I've made is disabling Siri.

Test methodology is using 'Battery Logger' to measure start and end discharge times, and how long in each period was spent active and how much was in sleep.

I am noticing excessive battery drain on sleep, but that seems to be getting better on the last few cycles. The output graph did really show just how much battery was being used in the sleep cycles. I do wonder if some background indexing was still running, hence the lower drain seen recently.

 

[Sanpete]

No idea how others are getting 8/9/10hrs from the same spec machines.

By not using Chrome, for one thing. You can check in your Activity Monitor to see where your energy is going.