Battery life for 13" and 15" Macbook Pro

[dsg76]

Glad I am not the only one here, I have the MB Pro 13 TB as my new work laptop.

I've been convinced since i got it that the battery is awful, as I was coming from a MB Air for the past 2+ years that was great on battery.

At 100% charge, i have never seen the time remaining above 7 hours (from the energy tab). Latest update on everything, i am not a developer or heavy user. Chrome, outlook, office, nothing major.

Has anyone gone to Genius Bar? Any luck?

 

[Sanpete]

Chrome

Known battery hog. You can get more battery time with Safari, probably.

 

[sixers3]

quick question please

tbMBP 15` few days old.. temperature raise to 60°-65° when i working with CAD app. i noticed FAN speed doesnt speed up even if temperature raise that high. both fans are runing around 2000. Why? is this normal? must manual turn up the speed?

thanks

 

[dsg76]

Known battery hog. You can get more battery time with Safari, probably.

So... what is acceptable here? 5 hours? 3 hours? 8?

I find the battery life on this laptop horrendous overall.

 

[Sanpete]

So... what is acceptable here? 5 hours? 3 hours? 8?

I find the battery life on this laptop horrendous overall.

That's entirely up to you. If it matters to you, and you'd like to improve it, you probably can. If you don't care about improving it, then complaining is a good outlet too.

 

[- rob -]

...I've been convinced since i got it that the battery is awful, as I was coming from a MB Air for the past 2+ years that was great on battery....Has anyone gone to Genius Bar? Any luck?

Hey, go back a few pages and read my posts on my experience with the TB 13". It is basically the same as you describe. I never was able to get more than 6.5 hours out of it, and that was changing my work habits. More commonly it was 4.8-5.5 hours.

I ended up returning it for this reason, and got an exact copy to try again. I had planned to pick this up on 3/1 but for reasons ended up waiting longer. This morning I decided to 'return' that one unopened as well.

I'm convinced that the 2016 MBP was rushed to market. I also am a MBA user, 11" for many years and felt Apple has MBA users in a lurch.

I'm making my ol' 2013 work for now, and instead waiting for a Macbook announcement. After that, I'll either pick up a MB or hope it drives down price on 2015 MBA 11" and pick one of those off ebay and just get a new big 4k monitor to run off it. Then wait until late this year / early next year to upgrade to the 'finished' MBP with the tiered battery etc.

 

[dsg76]

That's entirely up to you. If it matters to you, and you'd like to improve it, you probably can. If you don't care about improving it, then complaining is a good outlet too.

I think you are missing the point. This isn't 2003, why suddenly does Apple expect us to not use certain apps (such as the most popular browser) because they use too much power. This is a Pro laptop, and should not get half the battery life of a laptop from 4 years ago.

 

[- rob -]

I think you are missing the point. This isn't 2003, why suddenly does Apple expect us to not use certain apps (such as the most popular browser) because they use too much power. This is a Pro laptop, and should not get half the battery life of a laptop from 4 years ago.

This is the exact same sentiment that I had about this 'switch browsers to get the battery life you expect' idea.

Fwiw, Sanpete has been tracking this very carefully. I don't think he's saying it is the way things are supposed to be, but rather how things are. Don't shoot the messenger.

I have total empathy though. The machine I returned was like $2700. 4.5 hour battery life on mundane tasks and maybe try using safari instead? Get out of town.

 

[leman]

I ended up returning it for this reason, and got an exact copy to try again. I had planned to pick this up on 3/1 but for reasons ended up waiting longer. This morning I decided to 'return' that one unopened as well.

I'm convinced that the 2016 MBP was rushed to market.

You are an interesting person. Gets a replacement laptop, returns it back unopened, concludes that the laptop was rushed to the market. Ever entertained the possibility that your first laptop was defective and the replacement could have fixed your issues?

BTW, we had some battery issues on the 13" at work, but they were all fixed by latest OS X updates.
[doublepost=1489176167][/doublepost]

I think you are missing the point. This isn't 2003

Exactly, its 2003, why shouldn't the developers use the advanced APIs available to them and take care that their software doesn't burn your battery needlessly. Apple has some very advanced and easy to use tools to make sure that your software is energy-efficient. Most of your battery issues are simply because some devs are too lazy and/or don't test their software properly.

The point is — modern computing is all about power-saving. Current CPUs and GPUs can be very economic but they can also deliver a lot of punch when necessary. To properly take care of the system resources, appropriate programming patterns are required.

 

[Sanpete]

I think you are missing the point. This isn't 2003, why suddenly does Apple expect us to not use certain apps (such as the most popular browser) because they use too much power. This is a Pro laptop, and should not get half the battery life of a laptop from 4 years ago.

Apple enables you to use whatever browser you like, but they can't control how much power it uses. That's up to the folks who make the browser. Apple designs Safari to be power efficient. The 13" model with touch bar has a small battery with a decently powerful processor, so it's tricky to get good battery life with it.

 

[- rob -]

You are an interesting person. Gets a replacement laptop, returns it back unopened, concludes that the laptop was rushed to the market. Ever entertained the possibility that your first laptop was defective and the replacement could have fixed your issues?

If you go back in this thread you will find someone who thought it was lunacy to try the same thing and try again. I looked at reconfiguring this machine thoroughly. The Apple biz person I interacted with also thought it might be have an issue despite passing all Genius Bar tests. This person ordered the replacement for me as a worthwhile test, so long as I was "okay potentially dealing with the same issue and needing to return it."

I'm going off my experience and research in this thread. If an update with a shaped battery and new specs comes in the fall, you can call it what you want but that will be a superior machine. I don't update often and I want to get it right.

.... appropriate programming patterns are required.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chrome market share

 

[leman]

I'm going off my experience and research in this thread.

I apologise in advance if I missed something, but didn't you write that you only tried out a single machine? If so, what kind of experience can you refer to? We have five of 13" models so far, all of them exhibiting good battery life after updates. As to the research in this thread: the synopsis is that some people are experiencing issues and many report that their issues have been fixed with OS updates.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chrome market share

What relevance does the Chrome market share have here? It is widely known that it has efficiency issues on OS X.

 

[biosci]

Has anyone taken in their 4-5 hour 13" TB MBP to Apple after the initial return period to see what they would do under warranty? Any luck or insights into the whole battery situation from them when clearly, what is seen/observed is drastically different from what was announced?

 

[matram]

Any luck or insights into the whole battery situation from them when clearly, what is seen/observed is drastically different from what was announced?

Having watched this thread from the start and done my own measurements I am not sure that we are seeing (current OS version) substantial deviations from what was announced.

Many who have reported deviations seems to running under other conditions than the ones Apple are specifying. For instance have external equipment connected, running with the dGPU active or running applications that make heavy use of the CPU.

Lack of proven deviations from spec may be the reasons we are not hearing about Apple repairing / replacing MBP due to power / battery issues.

 

[MrGuder]

Many who have reported deviations seems to running under other conditions than the ones Apple are specifying. For instance have external equipment connected, running with the dGPU active or running applications that make heavy use of the CPU.

Lack of proven deviations from spec may be the reasons we are not hearing about Apple repairing / replacing MBP due to power / battery issues.

Sounds a lot like when consumer reports did there testing first poor results and then came back later and suddenly got great battery results.

 

[thesaint024]

Glad I am not the only one here, I have the MB Pro 13 TB as my new work laptop.

I've been convinced since i got it that the battery is awful, as I was coming from a MB Air for the past 2+ years that was great on battery.

At 100% charge, i have never seen the time remaining above 7 hours (from the energy tab). Latest update on everything, i am not a developer or heavy user. Chrome, outlook, office, nothing major.

Has anyone gone to Genius Bar? Any luck?

MBA is a different animal. You should get a nTB if you want a battery champ. Bigger battery, less variability in power for some reason. That being said, TB can get close to nTB life, but it does take a little love. Older computers like the MBA simply have larger batteries and weren't as "smart" turning on and off resources. That's why you get great battery life at ALL times. But you also don't get the access to faster processor, ridiculous screen (comparatively), speakers, etc. It's a trade I'm willing to take as a former MBA shopper, but I realize others just need max battery at all costs. Btw, Chrome, Outlook, Office all use significant battery at times, very dependent on use. I use them all the time, but I also know that I'm not going to win a battery-off while doing it. Battery life is not as simple as it used to be. Welcome to Intel's new lineup.

 

[Nik]

No new replies for more than two weeks now. Is this issue resolved?

 

[nameste]

should we charge MacBook Pro battery before going down from %20 .I heard its better for battery life just like iPhone?

 

[- rob -]

No new replies for more than two weeks now. Is this issue resolved?

Yes I resolved it by returning the machine and waiting for an update for the retina mac book.

 

[09872738]

No new replies for more than two weeks now. Is this issue resolved?

Kinda is and is not at the same time: Battery life is acceptable as long as display brightness is below 75 % and processor load is low.
That said, processor loads any higher than close-to-idle drain the battery at rather high rate. E.g. running a Windows XP VMware instance (with with rather low processor loads within XP) - at 50% monitor brightness - lead to one logical processor at almost constant 100%.
Despite all other logical processors close to idle, battery life under described circumstances drops to less than 3:30.

From that I'd conclude that the OS does a pretty good job at keeping the energy footprint low. However, because battery capacity seems way too small, battery life dramatically drops as soon as the power preservation algorithms are no longer able to do their magic due to power requirements.

 

[Sanpete]

battery capacity seems way too small

The largest allowed is only 23 watt-hours bigger for the 15", so it would give you about a 30% increase, probably not what you'd like if you think the current one is way too small.

 

[09872738]

You may have a point there. Anyway, battery life is ok if work loads are low.
Battery life is nowhere near Apples claims (and close to unacceptable) in all other scenarios

 

[thesaint024]

Yes I resolved it by returning the machine and waiting for an update for the retina mac book.

I've heard on this forum that battery on the rMB is "wack" for lack of a better term. Is that not the case from what you've heard? Since it's a mobile processor, I imagine that it relies just as much, if not more, on power algorithms to get it's battery life. Not sure what you're expecting, but the days of CONSISTENT, long battery life are over from what I understand, but there are smarter people than me who probably know better.

 

[Sanpete]

Battery life is nowhere near Apples claims (and close to unacceptable) in all other scenarios

Right, Apple doesn't make any claims for other scenarios. Their 10-hour spec is for light use, streaming video and browsing, which is what most people depend on the battery for. People who need to use their laptop for heavy-duty stuff unplugged may want to get an external power pack.

 

[09872738]

Not talking about real heavy duty. Just talking about non-idle scenarios.
Besides: you consider light use like streaming video and browsing as what most people depend on? I seriously doubt that. After all, this device is intended for professionals (hence the "Pro" moniker), one should be inclined to think professionals do whatever their field of expertise is. Certainly not using a 4000 bucks machine for a little streaming and browsing.