I have a similar config and get about 8 hours with nominal use with screen about 80% on 16". I think your use is normal. If you want the best battery life the M1 Pro 16" base model with 16gb RAM is the battery KING! It lasts a long time. The Max uses double the bandwidth even at idle so that uses more battery doing any task. The difference is that for most tasks you should be able to get them done faster so even though battery life is less you get more done in a shorter time. That is the trade off.I'm pretty happy with my M1 Max 32GB, but not sure about the battery life. I have the feeling that it lasts for 5-6 hours for "normal" use which is browsing, a bit of video calls and 1-2 design tools. I usually use almost full display brightness. Could that be the reason for the short battery life?
What is the best way for me to check the battery life, like in which conditions and is there a tutorial to how to test it best?
Thanks
The issue really is the video calls especially if it's Teams, if I check my energy impact on Activity Monitor or Powermetrics, you will definitely see Microsoft Teams / Zoom is the culript of the high wattage usage during work.I'm pretty happy with my M1 Max 32GB, but not sure about the battery life. I have the feeling that it lasts for 5-6 hours for "normal" use which is browsing, a bit of video calls and 1-2 design tools. I usually use almost full display brightness. Could that be the reason for the short battery life?
What is the best way for me to check the battery life, like in which conditions and is there a tutorial to how to test it best?
Thanks
My new strategy during the day is putting the Macbook in Low Mode Power around 50%, gets that extra 1h if you need it. I also take this strategy during Microsoft Teams calls as it reduces the wattage used by the computer.
I'm really hoping that with the M2 Pro or M3 Pro, we get more efficiency cores instead of having 2 extra performance cores, that would be really nice and it would allow us to have 12h-14h battery life.
At the end of the day if you want max CPU performance there should be an option for M1 Max to have more P cores and leave the M1 Pro with more E cores.
Just my thoughts.
The issue really is the video calls especially if it's Teams, if I check my energy impact on Activity Monitor or Powermetrics, you will definitely see Microsoft Teams / Zoom is the culript of the high wattage usage during work.
On days I only do quick 5-8 mins call with like 2-3 persons I can reach the end of the day of 7h-8h of work with 20%, If I spend like 3-4h in meetings I have to charge 2 hours before 18H or my computer will die.
Everything I have besides What’s App and FB Messenger are Apple Silicon NativeMake sure the application you use is Apple Silicon type. You can check this on Activity Monitor and see "kind" column.
Intel kind use a lot of power.
Out of interest I wondered whether a phone charger would work with the MBP and was happy to find that my 20W iPad charger (which is a relatively small and light USB-C charger) is able to charge the MBP14 while I am still using using it. It is slow (estimates 6-7 hours to charge from 10% battery) when using the machine, but seems to get to full charge in about 3-4 hours when the machine is sleeping).