M1 Battery Life [serious]

[petvas]

I just had a Skype Video call for 40 minutes. My MBP lost 9% of battery in these 40 minutes. Brightness was at Auto 100% since I sit on my couch and it's a really sunny day today.
With an Intel machine this would have been almost double and the best thing about it is that I never heard the fan going off while in the call. My MBP was though warmer during the call, but nothing serious. Skype is a Rosetta app.

 

[spiderman0616]

I just had a Skype Video call for 40 minutes. My MBP lost 9% of battery in these 40 minutes. Brightness was at Auto 100% since I sit on my couch and it's a really sunny day today.
With an Intel machine this would have been almost double and the best thing about it is that I never heard the fan going off while in the call. My MBP was though warmer during the call, but nothing serious. Skype is a Rosetta app.

Yep--this is the kind of thing I experience as well, no matter what video chat software I'm using. Even when playing games, my fan-less MBA never gets more than slightly above room temperature.

 

[guinnessduck]

I've had my MacBook Air since Dec. 24th and now that I've settled in to a routine with it I'd say I get around 12 or so hours of use time on the battery. I don't do anything overly intensive on it. Web browsing with between 5-10 tabs open, the mail app, more spreadsheet work then I care to think about, very amateurish photo editing, the occasional Zoom meeting or video watching.

I'm certainly happy with it, especially considering the last laptop I used regularly was a 2009 MacBook.

 

[Hustler1337]

Owned mine for a month now and I'm averaging around 8-12 hours.

This is with general web browsing/Youtube using Firefox, Evernote, and general productivity tasks using around 25-50% screen brightness.

Although the battery life is great, I'm a little dissapointed as it hasn't met expectations of around the 17hrs estimate from Apple.

 

[5425642]

This is hard. If I’m running the exact same test two different weeks for example I don’t know if it’s indexing during test 1 and not test 2 etc.
Also photos are doing stuff also in the bag round.

anyway I’m getting around 15h from my when I’m developing (vscode) using safari, horizon, Apple Music etc.
One thing that’s important is that m1 native apps are much nicer to the batter then the intel ones…

 

[5425642]

Owned mine for a month now and I'm averaging around 8-12 hours.

This is with general web browsing/Youtube using Firefox, Evernote, and general productivity tasks using around 25-50% screen brightness.

Although the battery life is great, I'm a little dissapointed as it hasn't met expectations of around the 17hrs estimate from Apple.

In your case replace Firefox with safari and Evernote’s with notes then you will see better batteritime.

when apple are trying things like this they are using there own apps that are better written then Firefox for example as apples engineers just cut the batteri draining functions.
And I can promise you that apple don’t have extensions I’m there test either

 

[Darkseth]

Had my M1 macbook pro since launch day, battery life started off great 9-10h, now it’s gone to crap, 6-7h usage.

Only using safari, brightness on 4-5 bars, apples battery life claims are a load crap.

There's most likely something wrong with your Unit. Defective, or something's running in the background?



I can hit 20 hours doing basic office stuff with 50% brightness on my M1 Macbook Pro.
Word, Excel, 2-3 PDFs, maybe a few Safari Tabs open for research purposes. Also, often Screenshotting stuff from the PDF to insert them into Word.
Safely like 5% battery loss per Hour.
Once, i had a 8h session with this, i lost 40%. Battery went from 45% to 5% there.

Highest usage i ever had so far was on a seminar day, where i was on Zoom with 40 People, Cam was on most of the time, and of course, Word/PDF editing, watching some videos.
Brightness 50-60%, Speakers above 60-70%~.
I lost around 8-11% Battery per hour.

Another time on Zoom with 100 people (my Cam was off, was just listening and watching), didn't "use" the Macbook at all, besides watching this Zoom session.
I lost 20% in 3 hours, which upscales to around 15 hours usage.


I can confirm Apple's claims, however their "up to 20h" is watching Streams in Apple TV, which is highly optimized. But it's also possible with just basic Office Tasks.


The thing is.. Different Workloads work different on M1 or Intel Chips.

Watching only videos, even Intel Chips can keep their power usage consistently low. But still won't reach M1 levels.
But when you actively start doing anything, the M1 power consumption stays low, and increases just a little bit. Because the high Efficiency Cores are working.
While on the x86 Machine, the Intel Chip starts boosting to 100% for every tiny little **** you're doing.

Example: If you don't just do Word typing or watching a Video, but instead start a Zoom session, M1's battery consumption maybe only doubles.
While on an Intel Mac, it more than triples.


Could anyone with a Intel Macbook Pro (8th Gen or 10th Gen Quad Core) try monitoring the Power consumption during Idle, and when you just start a Zoom Conference with Cam activated?
i'd like to compare the percentage difference

 

[LFC2020]

There's most likely something wrong with your Unit. Defective, or something's running in the background?



I can hit 20 hours doing basic office stuff with 50% brightness on my M1 Macbook Pro.
Word, Excel, 2-3 PDFs, maybe a few Safari Tabs open for research purposes. Also, often Screenshotting stuff from the PDF to insert them into Word.
Safely like 5% battery loss per Hour.
Once, i had a 8h session with this, i lost 40%. Battery went from 45% to 5% there.

Highest usage i ever had so far was on a seminar day, where i was on Zoom with 40 People, Cam was on most of the time, and of course, Word/PDF editing, watching some videos.
Brightness 50-60%, Speakers above 60-70%~.
I lost around 8-11% Battery per hour.

Another time on Zoom with 100 people (my Cam was off, was just listening and watching), didn't "use" the Macbook at all, besides watching this Zoom session.
I lost 20% in 3 hours, which upscales to around 15 hours usage.


I can confirm Apple's claims, however their "up to 20h" is watching Streams in Apple TV, which is highly optimized. But it's also possible with just basic Office Tasks.


The thing is.. Different Workloads work different on M1 or Intel Chips.

Watching only videos, even Intel Chips can keep their power usage consistently low. But still won't reach M1 levels.
But when you actively start doing anything, the M1 power consumption stays low, and increases just a little bit. Because the high Efficiency Cores are working.
While on the x86 Machine, the Intel Chip starts boosting to 100% for every tiny little **** you're doing.

Example: If you don't just do Word typing or watching a Video, but instead start a Zoom session, M1's battery consumption maybe only doubles.
While on an Intel Mac, it more than triples.


Could anyone with a Intel Macbook Pro (8th Gen or 10th Gen Quad Core) try monitoring the Power consumption during Idle, and when you just start a Zoom Conference with Cam activated?
i'd like to compare the percentage difference

All good now 👌

 

[jlc1978]

I get around 4 hours if I do web conferencing on WebEx or Teams, running camera and Mike. General usage seems to be about 8.

 

[5425642]

I get around 4 hours if I do web conferencing on WebEx or Teams, running camera and Mike. General usage seems to be about 8.

Teams and webex arr not arm native

 

[jlc1978]

Teams and webex arr not arm native

Yea, that's the current issue with M1's - performance may be great with native apps but since many apps aren't yet native the actual real world performance may be quite lower.

 

[satcomer]

When I'm out on any laptop (work&home) I turn the brightness half way down when on the road or at a park! that always seems to get ½ hour or better battery save time! Displays even on laptops draw huge amount of power!