How's the performance and Battery life on MacOS 13 Ventura?

[applegoldfish]

Hello guys, how's the new MacOS 13 on your MacBook Pro. Is the performance, and battery same as MacOS 12 or gotten better/worse in terms of speed and snappiness?

Please state your Mac model.

Thanks!

 

[JFH333]

If you haven't upgraded to MacOS Ventura and are considering doing so, from my experience so far I say don't upgrade. I upgraded my MacBook Pro which I bought new in April to Ventura on the day it was released. Performance is fine, but battery life is significantly less. To test, I started it in safe mode, and let it sit without my touching it for a couple of hours. The battery level dropped almost 30% during that time. I spent some time chatting with Apple's tech support. After about 45 minutes of trying different things, they said to let it go for a few days to see if battery life improves. That was not a good sign. Here it is now a few days after that, and I'm running my test again. The battery level is still dropping just as fast. It has dropped 3% just while I'm typing this response, and I'm not typing it on the MacBook. Don't upgrade!

 

[VineRider]

I have a MacBook Pro 14, 1TB 16GB and I am running Ventura with no issues in performance or battery life. Granted, I did a clean install (due to another unrelated issue).

So, my results may be different than someone who did an upgrade from a prior version. But, so far so good.

 

[chevyboy60013]

I am running Ventura on my early 2015 MacBook Air via the OCLP tool, and so far it seems to work as well as Monterey which was the last official version of macOS for that laptop. Had a minor issue with it because I did not run the post install patch which made the display as unknown, and prevented it from completely sleeping when closing the lid, but ran the post install patch this morning and now it works the same as it did with Monterey as it should. As far as battery life on it, used it yesterday for pretty much the whole day and it seems about the same, roughly 5 to 7 hours on the original battery which has about 600 cycles.

 

[applegoldfish]

If you haven't upgraded to MacOS Ventura and are considering doing so, from my experience so far I say don't upgrade. I upgraded my MacBook Pro which I bought new in April to Ventura on the day it was released. Performance is fine, but battery life is significantly less. To test, I started it in safe mode, and let it sit without my touching it for a couple of hours. The battery level dropped almost 30% during that time. I spent some time chatting with Apple's tech support. After about 45 minutes of trying different things, they said to let it go for a few days to see if battery life improves. That was not a good sign. Here it is now a few days after that, and I'm running my test again. The battery level is still dropping just as fast. It has dropped 3% just while I'm typing this response, and I'm not typing it on the MacBook. Don't upgrade!

Thanks a lot for this useful information. I'll refrain myself from the upgrade.

 

[applegoldfish]

I have a MacBook Pro 14, 1TB 16GB and I am running Ventura with no issues in performance or battery life. Granted, I did a clean install (due to another unrelated issue).

So, my results may be different than someone who did an upgrade from a prior version. But, so far so good.

Thanks, but I can't afford a clean install.

 

[chabig]

No problems on my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. And don't even consider a clean install. That's not a thing anymore. Every macOS installation is bit for bit identical to every other macOS installation of the same version. The system volume is read only, sealed, and cryptographically signed. If even a single bit changed, the security checks at boot would stop the machine from booting. There is no benefit to erasing and reinstalling the operating system.

 

[RiderX]

And don't even consider a clean install. That's not a thing anymore. Every macOS installation is bit for bit identical to every other macOS installation of the same version. The system volume is read only, sealed, and cryptographically signed. If even a single bit changed, the security checks at boot would stop the machine from booting. There is no benefit to erasing and reinstalling the operating system.

"Clean install" was always a sort of Mac Voodoo. Similar to "repairing permissions" in the past. I never had a clean install since 2008 and it was never a problem.

 

[katastropoulos]

I am noticing drastically reduced efficiency on my Macbook Pro M1 16".
Usually when watching Videos on YouTube in Safari I was using under 8 Watts. Now it is fluctuating between 10 Watts up to 14 Watts and more.

Also in idle mode it consumes more energy than before with Monterey. I was using about 4,5 to 5 Watts before in idle and am now at about 8 Watts.

Something is different. I upgraded to Ventura the day it released and it had enough time to do background indexing, etc. I used the laptop a lot in the last days and also have it connected to my Caldigit TS4 Dock over night.

I added two screenshots. In these screenshots I am only watching YouTube in Safari. The laptop is not connected to power. Maybe others have the same problem.

I am feeling that my battery life is nearly half of that before the Ventura update.

 

[katastropoulos]

I think I may have found a clue for the higher energy consumption of Ventura in comparison to Monterey. I was analyzing what new feature in Ventura I am now using constantly after having upgraded. The new feature that I am using is Stage Manager! So this is the difference to my previously perfectly running Monterey system!

I then turned off Stage Manager and now my energy consumption in idle dropped to 4-4,5 Watts with the display at about 30% brightness, great!

The energy consumption while playing YouTube in Safari also dropped significantly. I suspect that the WindowServer process consumes more energy when Stage Manager is active. I am also astonished why the WindowServer consumes 2,36 GB on my system with only Safari open and one YouTube and one MacRumors tab!

I will leave Stage Manager disabled and continue testing.

Greetings Janni

 

[applegoldfish]

I think I may have found a clue for the higher energy consumption of Ventura in comparison to Monterey. I was analyzing what new feature in Ventura I am now using constantly after having upgraded. The new feature that I am using is Stage Manager! So this is the difference to my previously perfectly running Monterey system!

I then turned off Stage Manager and now my energy consumption in idle dropped to 4-4,5 Watts with the display at about 30% brightness, great!

The energy consumption while playing YouTube in Safari also dropped significantly. I suspect that the WindowServer process consumes more energy when Stage Manager is active. I am also astonished why the WindowServer consumes 2,36 GB on my system with only Safari open and one YouTube and one MacRumors tab!

I will leave Stage Manager disabled and continue testing.

Greetings Janni

Thanks for sharing such detailed insights. Please let us know how it goes after disabling stage manager?

 

[CasualFanboy]

they said to let it go for a few days to see if battery life improves.

The "Genius Bar" 🧠

 

[unrigestered]

I am noticing drastically reduced efficiency on my Macbook Pro M1 16".
Usually when watching Videos on YouTube in Safari I was using under 8 Watts. Now it is fluctuating between 10 Watts up to 14 Watts and more.

Also in idle mode it consumes more energy than before with Monterey. I was using about 4,5 to 5 Watts before in idle and am now at about 8 Watts.

Something is different. I upgraded to Ventura the day it released and it had enough time to do background indexing, etc. I used the laptop a lot in the last days and also have it connected to my Caldigit TS4 Dock over night.

I added two screenshots. In these screenshots I am only watching YouTube in Safari. The laptop is not connected to power. Maybe others have the same problem.

I am feeling that my battery life is nearly half of that before the Ventura update.

how much RAM do you have, and how much RAM does Stage Manager use when disabled?

 

[harv525]

I am currently using a Macbook Pro 2021 with M1Pro. The battery life decreases significantly (30% at least). It was obvious that even the battery usage of chrome has increased a lot. Not sure if later updates could fix it, but it annoyed me

 

[ersheido]

Hello guys, how's the new MacOS 13 on your MacBook Pro. Is the performance, and battery same as MacOS 12 or gotten better/worse in terms of speed and snappiness?

Please state your Mac model.

Thanks!

Macbook Air 2020 having major issues with batter. Immediately after the upgrade, my batter which lasted all day, is drained in 4-5 hours. Even on standby, I lost 8% in a few hours.

 

[chipooh11]

I am noticing drastically reduced efficiency on my Macbook Pro M1 16".
Usually when watching Videos on YouTube in Safari I was using under 8 Watts. Now it is fluctuating between 10 Watts up to 14 Watts and more.

Also in idle mode it consumes more energy than before with Monterey. I was using about 4,5 to 5 Watts before in idle and am now at about 8 Watts.

Something is different. I upgraded to Ventura the day it released and it had enough time to do background indexing, etc. I used the laptop a lot in the last days and also have it connected to my Caldigit TS4 Dock over night.

I added two screenshots. In these screenshots I am only watching YouTube in Safari. The laptop is not connected to power. Maybe others have the same problem.

I am feeling that my battery life is nearly half of that before the Ventura update.

I wish I have read your post before upgrading. I also notice battery performance drop after upgrading to Ventura. While I tried googling before upgrading, no one mentioned about the battery performance drop - maybe it was still too early for people to comment/notice it. I use MBP M1 14", just purchased it last month. It usually lasts full day without charging for normal office use before but I have to charge twice a day now after upgrading to Ventura.

I really hope that Apple will resolve this issue soon.

 

[pshufd]

M1 Pro MacBook Pro. Performance and battery life are about the same as with Ventura.

 

[rmadsen3]

Big 'thank you' to all you reporters. I was tempted to do the update. Or, perhaps, install Ventura to a secondary partition. Now I've decided to wait!

 

[mstipic]

I am noticing drastically reduced efficiency on my Macbook Pro M1 16".
Usually when watching Videos on YouTube in Safari I was using under 8 Watts. Now it is fluctuating between 10 Watts up to 14 Watts and more.

Also in idle mode it consumes more energy than before with Monterey. I was using about 4,5 to 5 Watts before in idle and am now at about 8 Watts.

Something is different. I upgraded to Ventura the day it released and it had enough time to do background indexing, etc. I used the laptop a lot in the last days and also have it connected to my Caldigit TS4 Dock over night.

I added two screenshots. In these screenshots I am only watching YouTube in Safari. The laptop is not connected to power. Maybe others have the same problem.

I am feeling that my battery life is nearly half of that before the Ventura update.

I also noticed worse battery life on 16" M1 Pro cca 10-20%, thinking about clean install of Monterrey and then wait until 13.2 or newer.

 

[SaMMyS]

I have a 2017 15' MacBook Pro. Mission Control animation with Weather app opened seems laggy. Animations are slower here and there with integrated Intel HD Graphics 630, but if discrete graphic card is enabled everything seems fine.

 

[ryanpratama14]

nah, don't upgrade to Ventura!
MBA M1, 96% battery health

switched browser every 2 hrs, casual web browsing (twitter, reddit, YouTube, stack overflow)
idk if this accurate or not, but i notice significant battery drain

to everyone that has the same issue, please screenshot your 12 hr power

 

[katastropoulos]

I am still not satisfied with the battery performance with Stage manager off. It made things a bit better but there is another problem that I found today while playing around.

For some reason today with only Safari open playing one video my battery consumption was about 12 watts which is much too high.

After staring some time on the information page of iStat Menus I noticed the following:

If you watch the area named "Bilder pro Sekunde" which is german for frames per second, you will notice that my display is updating with about 119,9/120 frames per second. Per default my M1 Macbook Pro which uses the Pro-Motion technology uses a variable framerate from I think 1 fps up to 120fps.

The video that I am playing is 24 fps and I am not moving the mouse at all. So Ventura has no reason to update the display 120 times a second all the time without dropping the fps, which it obviously does in my case very unnecessarily. This probably causes the 12 watts consumption.

So I turned off ProMotion in the display settings and set it to 60fps.

After that the battery consumption with only Safari open, playing one video with 24 fps went down to about 6 watts again.

So to me this seems like a bug in Ventura. I will keep investigating that.

Greetings Janni

 

[ryanpratama14]

you guys have to check this

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-this-accurate-ridiculous-energy-impact-and-12-hr-power-values.2368449/

 

[chipooh11]

UPDATE: Don't wanna jinx it but after a week of upgrading, I notice that the battery performance has slowly gotten back to it was before with Monterey. It doesn't drain a lot on sleep anymore and I am back to one charge a day with daily usage.

I did nothing to the settings though. Hopefully it will stay like this, haha.

 

[ryanpratama14]

UPDATE: Don't wanna jinx it but after a week of upgrading, I notice that the battery performance has slowly gotten back to it was before with Monterey. It doesn't drain a lot on sleep anymore and I am back to one charge a day with daily usage.

I did nothing to the settings though. Hopefully it will stay like this, haha.

how about "12 hr power" on activity monitor?