I'm pretty disappointed with the MBP 16" battery health situation.

[simonmet]

Where do you see the manufacturer? System Information says mine is "SMP". I don't have a problem, not that I'd expect one after 6 cycles. It's saying 99% design capacity.

I agree that Apple probably had to impose a strict upper limit rather than a flexible one because of flight regulations, so that's why starting capacities never seem to be at or above 100%, unlike my phone which is still above design capacity after 81 cycles.

 

[khalitzy]

Where do you see the manufacturer? System Information says mine is "SMP". I don't have a problem, not that I'd expect one after 6 cycles. It's saying 99% design capacity.

I agree that Apple had to impose a strict upper limit rather than a flexible one because of flight regulations, so that's why starting capacities never seem to be at or above 100%, unlike my phone which is still above design capacity after 81 cycles.

coconut battery

 

[Bob-Lee]

Hi khalitzy

I was struggling to find a solution for my fast battery drain too, for about 4 weeks. Started with:

2h 14min - from 100% to 6%

and ended up with:

11h 44min - from 100% to 5%

After reading through several forums, having phone calls with Apple experts and doing live testing (without using tons of 3rd party apps) I could finally solve my fast battery drain. Here is how I managed it:

Battery Life on MacBook Pro 16.

Battery Life issue on MacBook Pro 16 finally solved (>11hours) i9 2.4GHz 8core | 64GB DDR4 | 5500M 8GB | 4TB I purchased my MBP 16 on 19.02.2020, received it on 21.02.2020 and then the testing began. After a performance analysis with Cinebench from Maxon I was pretty excited about my new...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[khalitzy]

Hi khalitzy

I was struggling to find a solution for my fast battery drain too, for about 4 weeks. Started with:

2h 14min - from 100% to 6%

and ended up with:

11h 44min - from 100% to 5%

After reading through several forums, having phone calls with Apple experts and doing live testing (without using tons of 3rd party apps) I could finally solve my fast battery drain. Here is how I managed it:

Battery Life on MacBook Pro 16.

Battery Life issue on MacBook Pro 16 finally solved (>11hours) i9 2.4GHz 8core | 64GB DDR4 | 5500M 8GB | 4TB I purchased my MBP 16 on 19.02.2020, received it on 21.02.2020 and then the testing began. After a performance analysis with Cinebench from Maxon I was pretty excited about my new...

forums.macrumors.com

thank you!
what’s your battery health capacity on coconutbattery?
[automerge]1587128622[/automerge]

 

[simonmet]

coconut battery

Thanks, I don't know how I missed it! "SMP" is indeed Simplo, but I'm not concerned. It's stating 99% and I have AppleCare+.

 

[simonmet]

Hi khalitzy

I was struggling to find a solution for my fast battery drain too, for about 4 weeks. Started with:

2h 14min - from 100% to 6%

and ended up with:

11h 44min - from 100% to 5%

After reading through several forums, having phone calls with Apple experts and doing live testing (without using tons of 3rd party apps) I could finally solve my fast battery drain. Here is how I managed it:

Battery Life on MacBook Pro 16.

Battery Life issue on MacBook Pro 16 finally solved (>11hours) i9 2.4GHz 8core | 64GB DDR4 | 5500M 8GB | 4TB I purchased my MBP 16 on 19.02.2020, received it on 21.02.2020 and then the testing began. After a performance analysis with Cinebench from Maxon I was pretty excited about my new...

forums.macrumors.com

Very glad you managed to figure it out. I followed your advice and did the NVRAM+PRAM and SMC reset; just for the hell of it if nothing else. I have a feeling that like you I was getting underwhelming battery life, though perhaps not quite so bad. That's a very dramatic and weird change so I wonder what on earth was happening to drain it so fast. I know the i9 chips are power hungry, but that doesn't explain why it went from so bad to quite good. I'm also currently doing a Wi-Fi browsing test on the battery to see what I get.

If you really value battery life, you should definitely check out Turbo Boost Switcher if you haven't already. Turning off turbo boost does affect performance somewhat, but most people claim some significant battery savings. I'm doing a test with it enabled and after half an hour Activity Monitor is estimating 15.5 hours remaining, which is very good.

 

[Bob-Lee]

Very glad you managed to figure it out. I followed your advice and did the NVRAM+PRAM and SMC reset; just for the hell of it if nothing else. I have a feeling that like you I was getting underwhelming battery life, though I don't think quite so bad. That's a very dramatic and weird change so I wonder what on earth was happening to drain it so fast. I know the i9 chips are power hungry but that doesn't explain why it went from so bad to pretty good. I'm also currently doing a Wi-Fi browsing test on the battery to see what I get.

If you really value battery life, you should definitely check out Turbo Boost Switcher if you haven't already. Turning off turbo boost does affect performance somewhat, but most people claim some significant battery savings. I'm doing a test with it enabled and after half an hour Activity Monitor is estimating 15.5 hours remaining, which is very good.

Wow, that's great it also worked for you. Yes indeed a "strange thing" is going on and not explainable why there is this difference in battery performance after all. I guess it has to do with basic installations, which are made before the MacBooks are shipped. What do you mean by Turbo Boost Switcher? Actually I am very new to the Mac world, because when I was using an iMac about 8 years ago I was just a user

By the way do you have any recommendations what program to use when I want to check downloaded programs or files (malware, virus, ...). On windows there is this integrated Windows Defender App and worked quite well for me. I hope you won't say "Clean My Mac", because this is often causing extrem battery drain too.

 

[Bob-Lee]

thank you!
what’s your battery health capacity on coconutbattery?
[automerge]1587128622[/automerge]

Hi khalitzy

Unfortunately, I haven't installed CoconutBattery. I try to avoid any of these 3rd party apps, which I do not know. I'm still new to the Mac world But my battery stats since then are pretty awesome. Even installing several ADOBE apps and Ableton Live an my battery runs well. And as usual when the Macbook uses the discrete GPU for certain program like Adobe Premiere, After Effects and so on, the battery doesn't last for very long.

What about you? How is your machine running at the moment? How many hours your Macbook runs on battery?

 

[jr69]

Battery health is horrible on these devices, I have almost 85% battery health since launch day, and my cycle count is just under 50. (According to coconut battery)

I don't know why I read comments of people just ignoring this or just pretending that this issue doesn't exist. Burying your head under the sand won't make problems go away. And if you say anything bad against Apple, you get lynched by the mob.

Why do I feel like Apple cheaped out on an inferior battery that degrades so easily, just so they can ensure their 30% profit from the new 16"? Surely this isn't acceptable, on an expensive device. Also the battery health longevity seems worse than the older models. At least those didn't lose their maximum capacity over time as fast as the 16" does.

Edit: Also I've had my iPhone for years and that is only at 90% battery health. It's unbelievable that a laptop battery would degrade faster than a phone battery, given that they're using the same technology (lithium ion).

 

[simonmet]

Wow, that's great it also worked for you. Yes indeed a "strange thing" is going on and not explainable why there is this difference in battery performance after all. I guess it has to do with basic installations, which are made before the MacBooks are shipped. What do you mean by Turbo Boost Switcher? Actually I am very new to the Mac world, because when I was using an iMac about 8 years ago I was just a user

By the way do you have any recommendations what program to use when I want to check downloaded programs or files (malware, virus, ...). On windows there is this integrated Windows Defender App and worked quite well for me. I hope you won't say "Clean My Mac", because this is often causing extrem battery drain too.

You don't need any extra anti-virus or similar software on Mac; in fact they can do more harm than good (they have a suspect security record themselves).

Like Windows, Mac has a built-in malware detector called Gatekeeper. The OS also requires software to be signed by default. It will prompt you (and you have to allow it in System Preferences) to run software that isn't signed. If you encounter such software, just make sure you got it from a trusted source. Security problems on the Mac are inevitably publicised on Mac sites like this.

In general you don't have to worry. If you value battery life, just minimise use of third-party software that runs in the background to those you really want or need.

Turbo Boost Switcher is an app many are using to extend battery life. I gave up on my test, but it was trending at > 15 hours of Wi-Fi browsing with turbo boost disabled. That was after a few hours. Battery life was excellent! See: http://tbswitcher.rugarciap.com

Coconut Battery is well known and very safe. It's just a small utility application. See: https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

 

[Jacolee]

Hey, guess what? I beat all you guys. Check my screenshot.
I have been plugged in since I bought this machine, still it has 6 cycle counts. My charger is 94W.
And I notice my laptop would have 20 minutes 'battery drop time' for about 7% every day after I installed Windows via boot camp (but not running on it).
SO i guess this has something to do with Windows existing in my SSD... didn't have a better thought about this.

 

[jenicekk]

I have a DSY battery, after unpacking from the box it had 100% After 4 cycles 92.9% am very sad what Apple has been showing in recent years...

 

[tasty17]

This is definetly a serious issue that needs to be adressed by apple.

 

[petvas]

I have the MacBook Pro since last week and battery health is at 101%

 

[mcvaughan]

97% here with 24 cycles.

 

[Nalmezar]

94%, less than a month in use.

 

[no girls]

DSY battery here with 92.7% at 4 months use.

 

[magbarn]

My 6 month old DSY battery is at 92%. DSY seems to be a piece of crap brand...

 

[jenicekk]

I let the Macbook completely discharge. Then we put it on the charger and let it charge for a few hours, until then we turned it on again. Currently showing me a battery healt of 100.1%. Let's see how long it lasts in this healt

 

[petvas]

I am using Battery Health 2 and everything is ok. My Mac has 5 cycles only, but there are no signs of erratic behaviour from the battery.

 

[brickslate]

Same here @OP, mine's even worse 85.4% on 25 cycles
Simplo battery too, out of the box 96%, got mine february 2020

[automerge]1593243103[/automerge]

I let the Macbook completely discharge. Then we put it on the charger and let it charge for a few hours, until then we turned it on again. Currently showing me a battery healt of 100.1%. Let's see how long it lasts in this healt View attachment 914647

Which battery manufacture do you have DSY or simplo?

 

[leman]

What you all guys seeing are fluctuations in battery capacity measurements (and of course the manufacturing process). You are looking for a symptom without the sickness. It is kind of meaningless. These diagnostics are for when you experience actual battery issues. Looking at them in a “healthy” situation gives you very little information to go by.

 

[brickslate]

What you all guys seeing are fluctuations in battery capacity measurements (and of course the manufacturing process). You are looking for a symptom without the sickness. It is kind of meaningless. These diagnostics are for when you experience actual battery issues. Looking at them in a “healthy” situation gives you very little information to go by.

Might wanna check mine reply just above 85% in less 25 cycles

 

[leman]

Might wanna check mine reply just above 85% in less 25 cycles

Your's might indeed be defective. What is your reported battery voltage? If it's 11 volts like mine, then you are at 82Wh battery capacity, which is almost 20% under what Apple advertises. Did you contact Apple about it?

 

[Broko Fankone]

Slightly defective doesn't sound all that great to me, specially given where I live and the whole warranty thing, it's a long story. I hope it's just the battery controller reporting wrong readings :x. 5% is indeed not much but for a brand new expensive machine that cost me upwards of 3.9k USD it's much ;x.

Slightly or highly defective is all good to authorized resellers. Welcome to the Apple family. My 2020 13inch MBP has a 'slight' defect where all USB 2.0 devices randomly lose connection between every few hours. The 'authorized' service said they 'couldn't reproduce the issue' and then they returned my MBP with a damaged corpus below the track pad. They said, I kid you not, it's a 'slight factory defect' - even though the original service protocol has a description of the unit and it says 'no physical damage'. It's all good to them Paying 3k USD, or way more, for all these 'slight' defects and this 'slightly unprofessional authorized service' is the Apple experience these days, it seems. And you will still find people defending this bs.