Catastrophic battery life on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro

[topcat001]

I think the OP’s issue was due to a bug in WindowServer/ProMotion which caused high CPU usage (fixable only by rebooting) when ProMotion was enabled and video was played under certain conditions. It was fixed in a recent update to Monterey.

Incidentally when planning to watch lots of Netflix I turn off ProMotion and manually set the refresh rate to 2x the video’s native framerate (otherwise you get motion artifacts but very few people are aware) or set it to 60 for normal work and it seems to give me even better battery life. I was using this to work around the bug before it was fixed but kept using it afterwards. I also no longer have any issues even with ProMotion enabled.

On the average I get about 4% per hour while streaming videos which is completely unreal.

 

[thenukes]

I have the exact problem. My 16" Macbook M1 is exactly 2 weeks old and the battery drains the same way you describe. I watched a movie on Netflix last night starting at 100%. When the movie was over, I was at 11%. So yes... for a $4k machine, that is indeed catastrophic.

Feel free to message me if you have any ideas. It says the battery health is fine, but I've never had a machine drain this quickly. Extremely disappointed with this aspect, because everything else is great.

 

[Sanpete]

I have the exact problem. My 16" Macbook M1 is exactly 2 weeks old and the battery drains the same way you describe. I watched a movie on Netflix last night starting at 100%. When the movie was over, I was at 11%. So yes... for a $4k machine, that is indeed catastrophic.

Feel free to message me if you have any ideas. It says the battery health is fine, but I've never had a machine drain this quickly. Extremely disappointed with this aspect, because everything else is great.

What does Activity Monitor show energy is going to?

In watching movies, a major source of drain that doesn't show in Activity Monitor is screen brightness. If you have it cranked up all the way, it goes fast, especially for HDR.

 

[thenukes]

What does Activity Monitor show energy is going to?

In watching movies, a major source of drain that doesn't show in Activity Monitor is screen brightness. If you have it cranked up all the way, it goes fast, especially for HDR.

My brightness was at about 60%.

I had 3 programs open, mostly idle. Mail, and Safari open with 10 tabs. But nothing else actively running.

It was definitely much worse when streaming than just regular use off of the charger. But still very disappointing. I mean... this would mean you couldn't take a brand new 4K computer on a flight and watch a full movie without it dying?

Something isn't right. My 2013 Retina lasted longer.

 

[cp1160]

I have 14” and Have been playing with the laptop for the last few days. Just normal use and initial setup. Installed some apps, did a few benchmarks, some YT videos… and the battery is draining pretty fast.
Also have some issues with running some Windows based apps - very slow response compared to Windows.

I also purchased new Lenovo X1 Gen 9 (high specs) and trying to compare. Same initial usage - and the battery is pretty comparable.

I wanted to keep the Mac, but besides the iOS integration it’s not any better.

Fact confirming here. So in November 2021 you installed Parallels and ran Windows ARM and got poor Windows based app response. Is that correct? Or what is going on here? I'm running mine today and I don't see any of the issues that you indicated. And you bought a Mac and Windows machine? So was this the first Mac? Not any better in what regards? What is the basis of that opinion? Do you look at device integration, etc. as a feature?

 

[cp1160]

The Verge review mentioned the battery consumption of the M1 Max. But this much battery consumption over a relatively short time is still weird.

Have you installed latest OS update? Interested to see if still have drain issue.

 

[Sanpete]

My brightness was at about 60%.

I had 3 programs open, mostly idle. Mail, and Safari open with 10 tabs. But nothing else actively running.

It was definitely much worse when streaming than just regular use off of the charger. But still very disappointing. I mean... this would mean you couldn't take a brand new 4K computer on a flight and watch a full movie without it dying?

Something isn't right. My 2013 Retina lasted longer.

Activity Monitor can also show some of the processes that run in the background without you starting them, such as Spotlight indexing, which sometimes gets called up for no obvious reason.

In any case, your case isn't normal, far from it. I'd call Apple if you don't get any better ideas here.

 

[TheRdungeon]

Honestly, it's beyond me why so many people are buying the Max models. They are only useful for very specific workloads involving the GPU and are actually detrimental in everyday use because the cores never turn off, so they're draining battery and getting even sitting idle at the desktop. There's a clear difference in people reporting battery life between the normal Pro and the Pro Max models.

Look at the small print on the bottom of Apple's website, these are the respective models they use for their battery life testing:

Testing conducted by Apple in September 2021 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD; and preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD.

 

[iarerob]

Hi! So i have my experience regarding this whole topic!
Started with me buying th 14'' m1 pro with upgraded core and stuff. Imidietly after turning it on of the first time i noticed that something was off with the battery - while doing all the installs and things it didnt hold out even 4 hours. While my friend just bought his 16''m1 max with all setting to max and his batter while editing 4k video in Premere still held up crazy good.
As i used the 14'' for few days i got really upset with the performance, so took it to Apple store here in Dubai, the thing they do is that they dont check the battery performance, all they do is run theyr diagnostic on the system does it show up the terrible battery performance as a thing, it just drains out, even showing them screenshots with my iStat menue they just said that its normal and its working. So the guy at apple said to me, just give the computer back and receive the money back for it. As I did. thinking that the problem was only with the 14' maybe, i bought the 16'' m1 with upgraded setting again. AND I AM HERE AGAIN WITH THE SAME PROBLEM. been using the laptop now for half a year and while editing pictures in Lightroom it hold up two hours. TWO FREAKING HOURS.

there is no way to inform Apple about their faulty machines.

I really hope someday Apple will do recall on these machines.

 

[Burnincoco]

Honestly, it's beyond me why so many people are buying the Max models. They are only useful for very specific workloads involving the GPU and are actually detrimental in everyday use because the cores never turn off, so they're draining battery and getting even sitting idle at the desktop. There's a clear difference in people reporting battery life between the normal Pro and the Pro Max models.

Look at the small print on the bottom of Apple's website, these are the respective models they use for their battery life testing:

Testing conducted by Apple in September 2021 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD; and preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD.

All unused cores turn completely off on my M2 MAX. Battery goes on for a full workday of editing in FCP and DaVinci with at least 30% left.
If I start doing AI stuff or playing RE Village all cores run at full speed and of course I can drain it in a few hours but I also get a ton of performance and stuff done not available on a normal PRO.

I will get a MacBook Pro Ultra when Apple goes sub 1N

 

[dmccloud]

Honestly, it's beyond me why so many people are buying the Max models. They are only useful for very specific workloads involving the GPU and are actually detrimental in everyday use because the cores never turn off, so they're draining battery and getting even sitting idle at the desktop. There's a clear difference in people reporting battery life between the normal Pro and the Pro Max models.

Look at the small print on the bottom of Apple's website, these are the respective models they use for their battery life testing:

Testing conducted by Apple in September 2021 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD; and preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 Pro, 10-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD.

I have no clue where you're getting your information from, because my experience has been the complete opposite with my 14" MBP (M2 Max). The Max cores can be turned off just like the M2 and M2 Pro variants, so there's no difference there either.

 

[dmccloud]

Hi! So i have my experience regarding this whole topic!
Started with me buying th 14'' m1 pro with upgraded core and stuff. Imidietly after turning it on of the first time i noticed that something was off with the battery - while doing all the installs and things it didnt hold out even 4 hours. While my friend just bought his 16''m1 max with all setting to max and his batter while editing 4k video in Premere still held up crazy good.
As i used the 14'' for few days i got really upset with the performance, so took it to Apple store here in Dubai, the thing they do is that they dont check the battery performance, all they do is run theyr diagnostic on the system does it show up the terrible battery performance as a thing, it just drains out, even showing them screenshots with my iStat menue they just said that its normal and its working. So the guy at apple said to me, just give the computer back and receive the money back for it. As I did. thinking that the problem was only with the 14' maybe, i bought the 16'' m1 with upgraded setting again. AND I AM HERE AGAIN WITH THE SAME PROBLEM. been using the laptop now for half a year and while editing pictures in Lightroom it hold up two hours. TWO FREAKING HOURS.

there is no way to inform Apple about their faulty machines.

I really hope someday Apple will do recall on these machines.

You might want to check for any background processes that are running down your battery. If this was a big enough issue to warrant a recall, there would be significantly more people complaining about issues like this. When the M1 Macs were first released, Chrome would absolutely kill battery on Apple Silicon systems because the background updater would run constantly. That wasn't an Apple issue, but an issue with Chrome itself (which Google had to fix).

 

[BigMcGuire]

Not seeing this on my 16 M1 Max. Same for my wife on her 14 M1 Pro. But we use Safari.

 

[xraydoc]

Hi! So i have my experience regarding this whole topic!
Started with me buying th 14'' m1 pro with upgraded core and stuff. Imidietly after turning it on of the first time i noticed that something was off with the battery - while doing all the installs and things it didnt hold out even 4 hours. While my friend just bought his 16''m1 max with all setting to max and his batter while editing 4k video in Premere still held up crazy good.
As i used the 14'' for few days i got really upset with the performance, so took it to Apple store here in Dubai, the thing they do is that they dont check the battery performance, all they do is run theyr diagnostic on the system does it show up the terrible battery performance as a thing, it just drains out, even showing them screenshots with my iStat menue they just said that its normal and its working. So the guy at apple said to me, just give the computer back and receive the money back for it. As I did. thinking that the problem was only with the 14' maybe, i bought the 16'' m1 with upgraded setting again. AND I AM HERE AGAIN WITH THE SAME PROBLEM. been using the laptop now for half a year and while editing pictures in Lightroom it hold up two hours. TWO FREAKING HOURS.

there is no way to inform Apple about their faulty machines.

I really hope someday Apple will do recall on these machines.

Your experience is not normal. I'm not sure if you're still using the Intel versions of the software or if something else installed is causing the battery drain (or you're using your machine with 100% screen brightness at all times), but clearly your experience is atypical.