At the 5 hour mark with Safari, Mail and Message, (and a bit of Photoshop) on the 16in MAX 32GB and its at 88% battery.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Battery life on M1X PRO vs M1X MAX?
- Thread starter Starfyre
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I’m also doing my own battery tests on my base config 14-inch MBP w/M1 Pro SoC: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/14-inch-m1-pro-base-config-battery-life.2320295/page-2
Same here with my 16" m1 pro. since I got it, reach about 8hrs of light usage (Safari-browsing, little ytb, mail).
Bluetooth/wifi on, brightness 6 levels below max, promotion on.
Last edited:
Oh boy...people seem to be getting wildly different battery life results. YouTube channels are also showing a mix of video in which M1 Pro and M1 Max are almost the same, but there are others showing M1 Max to be much faster for certain tasks...
It's making a decision really hard!
It's making a decision really hard!
Yeah, it's confusing. Have you seen videos of people performing the same tasks but showing different results between the Max/Pro? Or are the videos showing people doing different tasks?
Most of the videos I've seen show almost no difference with CPU-intensive tasks and even photo editing in Lightroom/Photoshop and video editing in FCP. But the Max does come out ahead with very GPU-dependent tasks, including gaming. If you've seen differently, I'd love to check out those links.
Aside from editing some cinematic videos from the iPhone in iMovie, I'm not a video editor. Nor am I a gamer. I do a lot of Lightroom and Photoshop editing, though, so I'll be able to comment on the difference there between the Pro (which I have now) and Max (which I'm getting on Wednesday)—and how that affects battery life.
It's a bummer that none of the very detailed reviews comparing performance said anything about battery life.
I wold love the see the battery comparison between m1 pro, m1 max 24 cores and 32 cores. This would be interesting!
My best (complete) guess scenario now here is that the M1 Max is an inherently more power intensive chip as its bigger, and has more memory controllers. The GPU cores likely draw minimal power. If I had to wager I'd guess that there will be a 2 hours difference between M1 Max vs M1 Pro in "normal" use, with no significant difference between 24 or 32 core GPU M1 Max model. This would make my ordered machine (24 core MAX) of the worst ones to get.
But oh well. You live and learn. I don't think if its a 2 hour difference in battery life I will mind it that much.
But oh well. You live and learn. I don't think if its a 2 hour difference in battery life I will mind it that much.
Could you provide more detail on why you think the GPU cores won’t use a lot of power? The Verge cited the additional GPU cores in the Max as being a draw on power, and this is what gave me the idea that a 24 core Max might be a way to eke out more battery life vs a 32 core Max.
I’ve also seen cited that the Max CPU can draw up to 30 watts while the Max GPU can draw up to 60 watts. My thinking was that perhaps lowering the GPU cores to 24 might lower the GPU power draw.
Last edited:
After using the 16in MAX 32GB for the last six days I feel like if you use the Apple apps (Safari, Mail, Messages, etc,) the battery will last a VERY long time as long as your brightness setting is below half. I haven't gotten there yet but I feel like I could easily reach 15+ hours (see usage in above posts.) I also have my keyboard backlight low. With Pro Apps it will definitely go down a lot quicker; somewhere around 30% faster (with Capture One Pro and PS) but still very respectable and much longer than I ever had with my 2017 15in MacBook Pro.
Last edited:
Lets not forget to watch what apps you are using. Many, like Discord, Dropbox and OneDrive, are still Intel apps and are not ARM yet. These will end up using more battery. If you use say Discord and OneDrive heavily then you will likely see a battery increase once the ARM versions are released.
Good point. I use Dropbox and this probably has an impact. At least they've said they will upgrade their client by Q1 next year.
here's what i'd love to see. good to remove as many variables as possible.
- spotlight loves taking up lot of cpu on my machine so make sure it's not running.
- the photos app spins up a process for its machine learning thing to id faces, memories and etc, so make sure this isn't running
- weekend project from a high schooler just learning javascript? big variability in how much power websites consume.
- have antivirus malware detection software running?
- got intel based apps running thru rosetta?
- use electron based apps?
- xcode has a bug where if the sim has siri and search enabled, it consumes 100% cpu even if you're not doing anything with it. this one murdered my m1's battery repeatedly until i figured it out
on and on. point being, kill everything. set brightness to a fixed amount. disable auto sleep. step away and come back when battery is dead. having baseline idle energy consumption would be great service to many and help them make decisions. would be good to have this baseline for both the pro and the max (esp from 64gb users -- so far ive only seen 32gb users).
- spotlight loves taking up lot of cpu on my machine so make sure it's not running.
- the photos app spins up a process for its machine learning thing to id faces, memories and etc, so make sure this isn't running
- weekend project from a high schooler just learning javascript? big variability in how much power websites consume.
- have antivirus malware detection software running?
- got intel based apps running thru rosetta?
- use electron based apps?
- xcode has a bug where if the sim has siri and search enabled, it consumes 100% cpu even if you're not doing anything with it. this one murdered my m1's battery repeatedly until i figured it out
on and on. point being, kill everything. set brightness to a fixed amount. disable auto sleep. step away and come back when battery is dead. having baseline idle energy consumption would be great service to many and help them make decisions. would be good to have this baseline for both the pro and the max (esp from 64gb users -- so far ive only seen 32gb users).
I think thats really the big difference. A lot of the reviewers on line are running the screens pretty bright. I almost always have mine right below half.
How hot does it feel under light usage on your lap? And then whoever has the 16 inch pro m1 pro? Same question.
Some of us want the increased real estate for couch use, but don't to lose the coolness of the m1 air: )
And like the idea of plugging more than 3 monitors, even if you're not going to use it : ))
dont have to disable it. just make sure its fully indexed. else it'll consume high cpu until its done throwing off the battery test. interested in getting as close to idle expenditure as possible.
Folks, the thread is too long to read fully.
Can somebody just tell me if the PRO runs cooler than the MAX or the difference is negligent and unnoticable?
Can somebody just tell me if the PRO runs cooler than the MAX or the difference is negligent and unnoticable?
Not just temperatures....the important thing for many of us is the expected battery life difference. I would like the extra power of the M1 Max (it's only $200 for 8 more GPU cores, double the video codec hardware, double the memory bandwidth)...but if this comes at the cost of underwhelming battery life, I would need to reconsider.
Lol, tell me about it! Teams is a force to be reckoned with! My 16" Pro's battery drained 10X faster when I was doing videoconferencing! Can't Microsoft use some of the built in encoders for video so that it isn't as taxing on the system?
Not necessarily. If the battery drains faster it means it's consuming more power, but the fans might keep the temperature under control. By "hotter" I assume you mean "to the touch" rather than the actual reported component temperatures.
Personally, I'm not bothered so much by the component temperatures provided they are not going to reduce the life-expectancy of the machine, as long as the cooling system can do its job without greatly reducing battery life.