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Battery life on M1X PRO vs M1X MAX?
- Thread starter Starfyre
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If I recall correctly from one post, the GPUs under light use are taking very, very little battle power. Battery hit was mostly DRAM.
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I canceled my Max order and went with a 16" 16GB Pro instead because of battery life concerns. I wouldn't likely encounter usage scenarios that would have me tapping out an M1 Max in 3 hours, but I do have to push my machines pretty hard and I believe as a result of the hard drain I put on my laptops, they almost always suffer premature battery degradation.
A larger battery and less drain on the battery will hopefully result in less stressful conditions conditions so that I can finally have a laptop that's not going to leave me stranded while it gets a battery replacement every 2 years.
That's awesome - thanks for pointing that out! I picked mine up Thursday night and used it for a couple hours without ever plugging it in. Did the same on Friday for about 8 hours and then again Saturday morning for a couple more hours. By that point the battery level was under 10% but knowing everything I was doing during that timeframe makes me realize this is easily the best battery life I've ever had in a notebook, let alone a Mac. Reviews are one thing but based on my own personal use, I am a believer. For what appears to be a small reduction in battery life, I'll most certainly take the extra horsepower
What spec machine? Max or Pro? Thanks!
[Edit: just saw it’s a 32GB Max with 32-core GPU - 14” or 16” though?]
This is exactly right - it's totally fair if there is a trade-off between GPU performance and battery, makes perfect sense actually!
But that's a choice people have to make for their own use case, it's not fair to just omit that information - some of us would be willing to sacrifice the Max for the Pro if we knew about the major battery differences.
Depends on what you find sweet. It might be more efficient by some measure, but the 24-core isn't as fast as the 32 in testing.
Well, I am two weeks into working with mine. Since I use this as my desktop, I went crazy and got the 14/Max/32/64 so I could have multiple monitors.
Battery life is not as amazing as some of you are posting -- I never see more than 6.5 estimated hours in my activity window, and I haven't gotten more than 6 yet, so I hold it as accurate. If I fire up Teams, it drops amazingly fast, but that's normal for Teams, the Giant Battery Killer.
If I had to do it again, I would go Pro with less GPU cores to get a few more hours of battery, but I'm past the two week window, so this is my machine now.
Battery life is not as amazing as some of you are posting -- I never see more than 6.5 estimated hours in my activity window, and I haven't gotten more than 6 yet, so I hold it as accurate. If I fire up Teams, it drops amazingly fast, but that's normal for Teams, the Giant Battery Killer.
If I had to do it again, I would go Pro with less GPU cores to get a few more hours of battery, but I'm past the two week window, so this is my machine now.
Doubt you'd get a few more hours with the Pro. What's your screen brightness? 6 does seem short if it's just office work.
So to be clear, there are 50 different configurations for the 14 inch and 50 different configurations for the 16 inch.
Some people want to compare
two of the same size with different processor
two of different size (14 and 16inch) but with the same processor
two of the same size with same processor but different SSD
two of the same size with different processor using this specific app
two of different size but same processor but different SSD using two different app
two of the same size with different processor using this exact workflow but with wifi turned of
all M1 pro configuration for the 16 only with 1TB SSD
Anyways, you get my point... you get to the millions of possible way to test the battery. I found some test where the max was better than the pro, other test it was the opposite.
Hell, even I purchased the maxed out 14" because of FOMO without thinking about battery life and ended up returning it for the 16" M1 pro model because I knew the M1 Max to be overkill for my needs and that I would prefer to get more battery life.
We all have different needs and unfortunately without testing for ourselves, we can only make educated guesses base on the reviews that are out right now, understanding that the specific test that we want might never come out in a review since there are so many possibilities.
Some people want to compare
two of the same size with different processor
two of different size (14 and 16inch) but with the same processor
two of the same size with same processor but different SSD
two of the same size with different processor using this specific app
two of different size but same processor but different SSD using two different app
two of the same size with different processor using this exact workflow but with wifi turned of
all M1 pro configuration for the 16 only with 1TB SSD
Anyways, you get my point... you get to the millions of possible way to test the battery. I found some test where the max was better than the pro, other test it was the opposite.
Hell, even I purchased the maxed out 14" because of FOMO without thinking about battery life and ended up returning it for the 16" M1 pro model because I knew the M1 Max to be overkill for my needs and that I would prefer to get more battery life.
We all have different needs and unfortunately without testing for ourselves, we can only make educated guesses base on the reviews that are out right now, understanding that the specific test that we want might never come out in a review since there are so many possibilities.
Is it possible that you have external monitors attached in mentioned scenario?
I got a 13“ M1 Pro. It easily gets 12 hrs on the go. Different story when attached to a 4k monitor - which isn‘t a big deal coz I plug in the power cord in this case
No, this is separate from the monitor, so this is just me sitting here. Apps open:
- Safari
- Edge
- Day One
- Teams
- Krisp (when Teams is in a video call)
- Outlook
- Tweetbot
The apps that suck the energy are Safari and Teams. I try not to use Teams if I'm not plugged in because I think it just engages all of the GPU's, which then drains the battery. Also, Electron.
I'm guessing that if I dump Teams out and act normally, I will see about 8 hours of battery as long as I don't run into any website that drives high energy use, which happens from time to time where I see the warning at the top of the page.
I find a cool lap to be super sweet, more battery is icing on the cake, as long as it's within 10-15% of the less robust model. I also find a third 4k monitor to be really appealing, but its a nice to have more than a requirement.
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woah.... 24h of battery life watching youtube at 33% display brightness for the 14" says linus tech tips... can this be? This would be insane!
edit: I have a theory:
VERY dark video + dimming zones, so please test twice with the screen inverted for instance What implications for dark mode though... limit your editor window to 1/3rd the screen and get 5h additional battery runtime?, LOL could this be? Nobody showed such scores before, not that I've seen. It must have been the dark video and thus 90% of the screen backlight LEDs actually switched off!
Now I'm really wondering about those 8-14h of "normal office work" many seem to get with the 14" ones, that would show just how bad "normal apps" are optimized. Also by looking at it, the 13" MBP countdown letters seemed significantly brigher compared to the others.
edit: I have a theory:
VERY dark video + dimming zones, so please test twice with the screen inverted for instance
What implications for dark mode though... limit your editor window to 1/3rd the screen and get 5h additional battery runtime?, LOL could this be? Nobody showed such scores before, not that I've seen. It must have been the dark video and thus 90% of the screen backlight LEDs actually switched off!Now I'm really wondering about those 8-14h of "normal office work" many seem to get with the 14" ones, that would show just how bad "normal apps" are optimized. Also by looking at it, the 13" MBP countdown letters seemed significantly brigher compared to the others.
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I dont even understand why people suggest this.... if people wanted to lug around a 31000 mah external battery they'd just get teh 16"...
You can take the battery with you only when you need it. Maybe this is only once a month. If you buy the 16” you have to carry that extra weight every day.
I got the 14" M1 Max 10 core with 64GB ram and 2TB ssd. I am regularly seeing less than 3 hours on battery doing simple tasks. Any tasks requiring video seem to drain quickly - zoom sessions, youtube streaming, etc. I'm not doing anything else with the laptop at the time. I'm very close to the end of the return period. I don't think I can do an exchange because there don't seem to be any M1 Pros in stock anywhere. So I'm guessing I need to either return this and do without a laptop for awhile until an M1 pro can be secured or learn to start carrying batteries around again. I'm a little sad about it because I actually really liked my M1 13". By comparison the 14" M1 Max is hot and sucks on battery. I don't truthfully need all the extra horsepower. And now I am paying the price for choosing it. My experience over the last 10 days anyway.
That's odd. What are the simple tasks besides Zoom and Youtube? What's your screen brightness? Even at maximum brightness you should get a lot more than that just watching a video.
Honestly that's all I've been doing, web browser stuff, zoom sessions, or apple tv/youtube at the end of the day. I thought it was odd too. I had the screen brightness set to automatic. I tried turning it down and it helped a little bit. Next step is to backup the machine and reinstall and see if anything changes (per direction from support). I guess I'm bracing myself for this to be just the way it is. Thanks for replying. I'll post an update after the reinstall tomorrow.