Is my battery normal?

[felixen]

Hey everyone. I got a new MBP 2018 yesterday and I love it, but I think the battery feels.. not so great. I'm spending about 20% per hour, and I don't feel I've been doing super heavy stuff.

Here is a 4 minute video watching a MacRumors video and then browsing a bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/naffw83cfqimnzm/MBP Battery.mov?dl=0 The battery drops from 33% to 30% in this video, and now, 6 minutes after I ended the video, I'm down to 26%. I've been strictly on MacRumors in this time period.

As seen in the video I have Mail, Safari, and iTunes open. I also have some stuff open in the top bar like NightOwl, Dropbox, Amphetamine, and Dropzone 3. Important to note that Dropbox is NOT syncing anything right now. I have the brightness set to 100% and have keyboard brightness to zero.

Is this really normal? Because this almost feels like my 2012 Air which had a horrible battery after so much usage. What puzzles me is that if I use CoconutBattery to check my battery, it says my battery health is 101%, so according to that app the battery is fine. But I really don't feel like I am doing much heavy stuff here, yet it drops quickly.


Is this similar on your MBPs? There's no way I'll get close to the 10 hours as it is right now.

 

[leman]

You have brightness set to 100%. The MBP has one of the brightest - possibly the brightest - display of any laptop. At full brightness it consumes power like crazy. The 10 hours are what Apple claims the battery to last at 50% brightness (which is still brighter than most laptops out there).

Anyway, when you click on the battery icon, it will give you a hint to what consumes abnormal amount of power.

 

[felixen]

Cool. Maybe I should just get used to turning it down then. It just looks so nice at full scale

So what I’m experiencing is fully normal considering I’ve had the brightness all the way up? Because I was seriously surprised by how quickly it went

 

[tamara6]

Of course, the first couple of days the computer is doing all of its "set up" stuff - like indexing your document, etc. (if you have any). I have a 13" MBP (5 weeks old, now), and after the first couple of days, it has settled down to about 10% an hour under normal usage. My screen is about about 60% brightness, usually.

It was draining faster than that for a while, but then I discovered that Box Sync was running all the time and sucking battery life away. So, if your battery is draining quickly, you might want to check the Energy tab in the activity monitor to see what is using a lot of energy, and if it is something you can do without or set preferences for to reduce its energy draw.
[doublepost=1542302362][/doublepost]what app did you use to record your screen?

 

[felixen]

Awesome, I was actually hoping for something like that but wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking. What does Box Sync do?

I’ve usually used QuickTime to record screens, but since Mojave they also have a built-in Screenshots app, which can do both video and picture screen captures. It’s pretty cool

Of course, the first couple of days the computer is doing all of its "set up" stuff - like indexing your document, etc. (if you have any). I have a 13" MBP (5 weeks old, now), and after the first couple of days, it has settled down to about 10% an hour under normal usage. My screen is about about 60% brightness, usually.

It was draining faster than that for a while, but then I discovered that Box Sync was running all the time and sucking battery life away. So, if your battery is draining quickly, you might want to check the Energy tab in the activity monitor to see what is using a lot of energy, and if it is something you can do without or set preferences for to reduce its energy draw.
[doublepost=1542302362][/doublepost]what app did you use to record your screen?

wesome

 

[tamara6]

So you used the new screenshots app? I have heard about that, but I haven't updated to Mojave, yet, so I wasn't sure. I'm glad to see it works pretty well.

Where I work supplies us with a Box.com account - it is similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, etc. where you can store your files in the cloud. Box sync keeps copies of your files on your computer and syncs them with the copies that it has on the Box servers. But it turns out that it is always watching for a change in your files, and it takes up quite a bit of energy to do that, which kills the battery quickly. So if you are signed up with this sort of service, it might be that they are energy hogs. Checking Activity Monitor will let you know if you have an app like that.

 

[felixen]

So you used the new screenshots app? I have heard about that, but I haven't updated to Mojave, yet, so I wasn't sure. I'm glad to see it works pretty well.

Where I work supplies us with a Box.com account - it is similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, etc. where you can store your files in the cloud. Box sync keeps copies of your files on your computer and syncs them with the copies that it has on the Box servers. But it turns out that it is always watching for a change in your files, and it takes up quite a bit of energy to do that, which kills the battery quickly. So if you are signed up with this sort of service, it might be that they are energy hogs. Checking Activity Monitor will let you know if you have an app like that.

Aah, gotcha. I’ll take a look at that, Dropbox might do the same thing.

Yup, I used the new screenshots app. It’s quite nice and works smoothly. You can adjust which portions of the screen you want to capture, which is nice. And similarly to on iPhone, when you capture your photo/video, it briefly shows as a thumbnail in the lower right corner for quick access. Quite convenient