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Battery Life Is Horrible - Macbook Pro

T

TheOutspokenMan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 18, 2023
16
1
I recently purchased a Macbook Pro 2018, i7 with 16gb of RAM. The Macbook is in excellent condition, but the battery life is so poor. I've sat here monitoring for hours in total and I've come to the conclusion that the battery drops about 1% every 2-3 minutes, which is beyond poor performance. I've contacted Apple support, searched for hours to find any potential wrongdoings on my end, I've done everything and I just can't figure it out.

In system settings, the battery condition is listed as "normal" and Apple support also said my battery looked perfectly fine upon taking a look via pictures and videos. I wasn't monitoring the battery heavily before I updated to Ventura 13.3.1, but my guess is the issue is from updating to 13.3.1 from 13.3. I couldn't be sure though, as stated, I didn't monitor the battery to much before, but I believe it was a tad better.

I'm not doing anything that puts stress on my system, just a few tabs open as well as Spotify. I'm just so confused on why the battery quality is so poor.

I keep a short little notepad of the battery, at XX:24, it was at 93%, and now at XX:50, it's at 86%. This surely cannot be working properly.

What can I do to troubleshoot or potentially fix this poor battery life? This Macbook is intended for work & school, so a long lasting battery is a necessity, I can't go hours without charging my Macbook.
 
TheOutspokenMan said:
I keep a short little notepad of the battery, at XX:24, it was at 93%, and now at XX:50, it's at 86%. This surely cannot be working properly.

What can I do to troubleshoot or potentially fix this poor battery life? This Macbook is intended for work & school, so a long lasting battery is a necessity, I can't go hours without charging my Macbook.
Click to expand...

So 25 min=7% of the battery. Extrapolate that out to about 15% per hour, and you should have about 6 hours of battery life, with a bit left just in case. Considering it's a 5 year old device which inevitably had prior battery cycles put on it, I dunno, that seems on point to me? Especially cause i7s are much thirstier for power than the M1/M2 models.

That said, there are a bunch of ways to increase your battery life. Turn off the keyboard backlight and find a good low spot to keep your screen brightness. What's made my M1 Pro battery last much longer is turning off bluetooth whenever I'm not using it. Another tip is to pick up a small USB-C portable battery. I keep one in my messenger bag all the time, more for my camera batteries than anything, but it can juice up the MacBook in a pinch.
 
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Also reduce your screen brightness. The screen backlight will take a lot of energy. You don’t have it over 50% do you? The lower the better.
 
You didn’t say whether it’s a 13” or 15” but either way, what you’re describing isn’t “Horrible” battery life by any means. You’re certainly trending for 6+ hours. The 15” originally could get “Up to” 10 hours on wireless web (that’s using Safari, not Chrome) and the 13” could get “Up to” 12 hours. That’s with a new battery, not a 5-year-old battery. And of course those are the MAX times, some websites cause the computer to draw more power than others.

Check Activity Monitor like @Weaselboy said, and this article shows some tips to increase battery life. Regardless, count on needing to recharge AT LEAST once during the day.
 
TheOutspokenMan said:
I've sat here monitoring for hours in total and I've come to the conclusion that the battery drops about 1% every 2-3 minutes, which is beyond poor performance.
Click to expand...
That's at least 3 hours. On par for an intel, I'd imagine...

If 1% per 2 minutes:
2 * 100 = 200 mins. battery
200 / 60 = 3.3 hrs. battery (OK)

If 1% per 3 minutes:
3 * 100 = 300 mins. battery
300 / 60 = 5 hrs. battery (Decent)

And on your second test:
TheOutspokenMan said:
I keep a short little notepad of the battery, at XX:24, it was at 93%, and now at XX:50, it's at 86%.
Click to expand...
Time diff: 26 mins.
Batt. diff: 7%

Multiply by 7: 49% per 182 mins.
Multiply again by 2: 98% per 364 mins.
364 / 60 = 6 hrs. battery (Good)
 
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I don't think I was ever once able to get through an entire workday on battery on my Intel MacBook Pros.
 
"I only had a couple tabs open" is meaningless when one tab is capable of completely sucking your machine dry. It very much depends on what those tabs are doing, and perhaps which browser has those tabs open.

Until the M1Pro, I had an 2013 i7 15" MBP. When ordering from "Skip The Dishes" (like UberEats), after a driver was found and it started tracking the driver's location, my fan would ramp up to maximum speed, the CPU temperature would exceed 100C, and the battery would begin to drain very quickly.

Thankfully this doesn't appear to happen on the M1, and I'm not sure if it's the efficiency of the CPU or the switch to using Safari instead of Chrome.
 
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