Do you think Apple Silicon 16 MBP will have 30 hours battery life?

[senttoschool]

Most of display power costs come from the backlight and it scales linear with area... again, power usage measurements for laptops with different display size are available. Screen size alone (from 13" to 15") adds couple of watts.

Again, I'm not an expert here.

I'd love to see a break down of components in Apple's LCD, how much power each uses, and how does it scale if the total LCD size is increased. Anything other than this breakdown is pretty much based on "gut feelings".

Suppose it's linear, the 16" has a 72% bigger battery life, more than enough to negate the 50% increase in power linearly.

Lowest M1 power consumption (based on Appel powermetrics) is around 0.5 watts. As I said before, later Mac SoC will have more RAM chips, wider buses and more cache — all that stuff costs active power.

I fail to understand what big.LITTLE has to do with this discussion. Apple's implementation has unique characteristics. You can't just take some random ARM SoC and extrapolate from there.

My point was, I want to know exactly how you came up with the idle power of M1X, which you "think" will be anywhere from 0x - 6x.

Also, so what is it? Is it 0x or is it 6x? If it's 0x, doesn't that defeat your argument?

We have plenty of actual numbers from third-party measurements and diagnostics tools. Average idle power consumption for various Apple laptops (including M1) are a known quantity.

I'm not referring to the idle power consumption of M1. I want to know how you know that the idle power of M1X is 0x-6x higher.

Efficiency cores are there for background tasks and other low-priority stuff. You focus on efficiency core but leave out everything else.

I thought we're talking about Apple's official battery bench here right? If so, Apple's 20-hour claim is playing an Apple TV video, which mainly or only uses efficiency cores/accelerators.

Of course it's sitting idle, on low display brightness to boot. How else are you supposed to get 20 hours out of M1 Pro? Again, 20 hours with that battery capacity means average power draw of 3 watts. Notebookcheck measured average power usage on idle at over 5 watts.

No, it's not idle.

In the end, if you are serious about a certain claim, you have to provide at least some evidence that supports it. All we've heard so far is "I think", "I believe", "big.LITLE here or there".

Again, we're all speculating and extrapolating here.

 

[leman]

Again, I'm not an expert here.

I'd love to see a break down of components in Apple's LCD, how much power each uses, and how does it scale if the total LCD size is increased. Anything other than this breakdown is pretty much based on "gut feelings".

I am basing it on average idle power draw figures measured for 13" and 16" MacBook Pro. The difference is more than three watts — you can't claim it's all just because of larger CPU.

Suppose it's linear, the 16" has a 72% bigger battery life, more than enough to negate the 50% increase in power linearly.

Yes, but not enough to get 30 hours battery life. I don't understand what is so difficult about the concept. The 16" would only get to 30 hours battery life if it consumed the same amount of power as the current M1 13" Mac. And if they use comparable display technology there is no way that would happen — even if all other components stay at the same power consumption level.

My point was, I want to know exactly how you came up with the idle power of M1X, which you "think" will be anywhere from 0x - 6x.

Also, so what is it? Is it 0x or is it 6x? If it's 0x, doesn't that defeat your argument?

I don't know what "M1X" is, no chip with that name exists. I am talking about whatever chip will power the Apple Silicon 16" model. That chip will need to have 3x memory bandwidth to offer competitive performance, which means at least 2x wider memory bus and more cache.

Also, I don't know where you get the 0-6x. In my post I wrote that I expect the bigger SoC to use 2-3 times more baseline power compared to the M1 in order to maintain it's more complex circuitry. This would mean an overhead of somewhere between 0.5 and 1 watts. And yes, these numbers are completely arbitrary. I am basing them on the fact that the larger SoC will have a wider memory interface.

But even if Apple pulls some magic here and manages to keep the idle SoC power usage at the same level as M1, you still have to deal with the display power consumption. As I shown you before, a single watt already shaves 5 hours off your claim.

I thought we're talking about Apple's official battery bench here right? If so, Apple's 20-hour claim is playing an Apple TV video, which mainly or only uses efficiency cores/accelerators.

Why does it matter? Notebookcheck measured same 20 hours for their web browsing and video playback tests. And yes, this counts as idle for these machines, as the average CPU/GPU uptime is close to zero. Web browsing only requires the CPU to wake up for very short periods of time to load and layout the page, video decoding is done on an energy-efficient accelerator and all it needs is just a little bit of bandwidth. In both tests most of the chip is in the energy saving state for most of the time. This is what "idle" means in computing.

Again, we're all speculating and extrapolating here.

Of course we are. But I am still waiting for your explanation how a larger 16" laptop with it's larger screen, larger chips and wider RAM is supposed to consume as little power as the 13" laptop.

 

[tonyr6]

I will take a larger 100 watt battery and a heavier laptop for better battery life. People like slim, but I always choose bigger laptops for more screen and better battery.

 

[Zazoh]

What if? Apple took the improved power performance and went the other direction, removing some battery to make way for ports or other technology or different form factor? Batteries are relatively cheap, but the real estate they consume is not.

I've been a member of this forum for 13 years, we seldom get the second guessing right.

 

[Never mind]

In other words OP, no one here knows the answer to your question, only apple

 

[leman]

I will take a larger 100 watt battery and a heavier laptop for better battery life. People like slim, but I always choose bigger laptops for more screen and better battery.

The current 16" MBP is thinner than the original retina 13" MBP and weights 2kg... and it has a 100W battery. You don't have to go "heavy" and "large" to get good battery life.

 

[pshufd]

I expect more cores on the 16 but my use case would likely not use the extra cores. The M1 is actually fine for me on a portable device. I just would want more ports and RAM. Would that improve battery specs? Probably not. Watching a full-screen video actually uses very little CPU these days and the specs would reflect that.

The iPads and iPhone are not to that level of battery life so I find it hard to see where they would do something with 30 hours of battery. You could always bring a USB-C charger with you too if you need that much and don't have a plug.

 

[jdb8167]

I will take a larger 100 watt battery and a heavier laptop for better battery life. People like slim, but I always choose bigger laptops for more screen and better battery.

If the rumors about more ports and SD card interface are correct, it isn't likely that the Mx 16" MacBook Pro will have a 100W battery. Ports and SD card slots take a fair amount of space. I don't expect Apple to change the basic size of the 16" case. I'm guessing 80 to 90 W battery based on the rumors.

 

[Clausewitz]

Expect 24 hours at best.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Honestly, I'm going to say no chance.

It's all well using the M1 as a benchmark for future Apple Silicon, but the differentiator between a 16" and 13/14" MBP model is the performance. I believe the modest increase in battery capacity will be off-set by considerably more powerful chips.

Keep in mind that the thermal capacity of M1 relative to its enclosure - including the new Mac mini and MBA - is the equivalent of Mac Pro's heat sink > fan > Xeon, in that performance is unconstrained. The enclosures, heatsinks and fans are, crazily for Apple, borderline overkill for the M1 to run unconstrained and only exist because Apple is reusing those parts.

So in the 16", consider now how much performance they squeeze out of a potential 'M1X' before the enclosure, heat pipes and fan become a bottleneck.

Furthermore, I actually don't think a battery life of over 20 hours is necessary selling point. I can think of very few situations where one would be away from a wall outlet doing work long enough that they would run out of battery at that capacity.

 

[leman]

It's all well using the M1 as a benchmark for future Apple Silicon, but the differentiator between a 16" and 13/14" MBP model is the performance. I believe the modest increase in battery capacity will be off-set by considerably more powerful chips.

The more powerful chip does not need to consume more power all the time however. There is no doubt that at it's peak the chip in the 16" MBP will need much more power than the M1. But for "normal" operation such as watching videos or writing emails it shouldn't be that much more power hungry. So I think your way of looking at this is a bit misleading. None of these machines will last too long on battery only, even the M1 laptops will burn their battery in under two hours if you sit there all day pushing the CPU to 100%

Keep in mind that the thermal capacity of M1 relative to its enclosure - including the new Mac mini and MBA - is the equivalent of Mac Pro's heat sink > fan > Xeon, in that performance is unconstrained. The enclosures, heatsinks and fans are, crazily for Apple, borderline overkill for the M1 to run unconstrained and only exist because Apple is reusing those parts.

I don't think they are an overkill at all. They seem to be quite precisely designed to maintain certain sustained power level. Looking at M1 behavior, I suspect that 3.2ghz is not the true limit for the chip, it can probably run even faster. I kind of understand where this impression comes from — Intel chips are simply much more power-hungry if you want them to deliver high performance.

 

[mi7chy]

I'd rather they make it lighter than 4.3# with still plenty usable battery life. If you're really away from civilization and wall sockets for over 15 hours which would an exception and not norm you can use a powerbank. I have a 2400Wh that would probably last almost two months for those situations.

 

[bill-p]

Again, I'm not an expert here.

I'd love to see a break down of components in Apple's LCD, how much power each uses, and how does it scale if the total LCD size is increased. Anything other than this breakdown is pretty much based on "gut feelings".

Suppose it's linear, the 16" has a 72% bigger battery life, more than enough to negate the 50% increase in power linearly.

The 16" screen vs 13" is about 20% bigger. That means the backlight is 20% larger... and even if power consumption scaling is linear (hint: it's not!), we're looking at 20% more power required to maintain about the same brightness level.

So the battery advantage of the 16" MacBook is negated. It's more like about 40% after accounting for that extra 20% power requirement by the screen (13 / 16 = 81% and 81% of 172% is 140%). All else equal.

40% improvement over 20 hours is just about 28 hours. That's assuming we're basically getting a 16" MacBook that has exactly the same components as the 13" M1. But alas... the 16" does have more speakers, with dedicated subwoofer, and probably more USB 4.0 ports, and maybe more WIFI antenna as well.

That's why we're "never" getting 30 hours unless Apple expands the battery or uses a screen that's much more efficient.

I'd guess... realistically, the 16" MacBook may be able to get about 20 hours of wireless web browsing and 24 hours of light usage at most.

 

[darngooddesign]

Whatever % increase in battery life the Intel 16 has over the Intel 13, the M1 16 should have over the M1 13.

 

[Falhófnir]

If they used the same chassis, yes I think you could achieve that sort of endurance for light tasks using primarily the low power CPU cores. Possibly (probably?) there will be a slightly smaller battery (weight reduction more than thinness) as we know it will be a redesign, so that makes it more difficult though probably still not impossible for light usage. All high performance laptops can drain their batteries in way under the rated time if you're doing something intensive, I don't really expect the high performance Apple Silicon chips to be much different there.

 

[leman]

The 16" screen vs 13" is about 20% bigger. That means the backlight is 20% larger... and even if power consumption scaling is linear (hint: it's not!), we're looking at 20% more power required to maintain about the same brightness level.

50% bigger... you need to look at the area, not the diagonal size. The relationship is quadratic.

 

[bill-p]

50% bigger... you need to look at the area, not the diagonal size. The relationship is quadratic.

Yeah, you're right. I neglected the overall area. That makes the battery size advantage even less impressive...

But of course, many others don't see that. They just think the battery is bigger.

 

[darngooddesign]

Apple claims that the Intel 16" only gets one extra hour of wireless web compared to the Intel 13" so I expect the M1 16" to only have a modest increase in battery life.

 

[senttoschool]

Expect 24 hours at best.

I think 24 hours is the exact number Apple will target for. "All day. All Night." It's catchier for marketing and they can probably remove some battery capacity to lower the weight.