M1 Pro & Max battery life in reality (apart from fairy tales)

[Micka88]

There are many stories around about 20, 15 etc. hours on battery ... But in reality, it seems to be as usually: you see some great numbers in the beginning (like 15, 12 hours etc.) but in half an hour you get 8 hours, in one hour 4 hours etc. So kind of usual fairy tales and the battery life is more or less the same as always ? The pictures below (M1Pro) are just while doing almost nothing - writing emails etc.

slightly better here ... but those usual 13:24 etc. in the beginning fade quite fast ... and even here it will get half value soon. Those referring 15-20 hours probably have probably different kind of machines from Middle Earth or they use screen brightness 0,01%?

 

[Sanpete]

People typically determine what their battery life is by seeing how long it takes for it to run down. There are many posts about that for these new machines here, mostly from the month or two after they came out. 15-20 hours would be for something simple like just watching videos for the 16", which is what Apple makes claims about. For more energy-intensive things you'll get less.

Yes, screen brightness matters a lot.

 

[Juraj22]

xcode development + safari + teams, I get about 10+h on M1 Max 32gb, 1TB. Much better than on Intel, were max I could get was about 3h. Also, bonus points: total silence. I don't miss days of Intel macbook acting as vacuum cleaner.

But If you push GPU + CPU at the same time to the limits, you can get battery to zero under 2h.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

So, basically... other users are lying? ?

 

[Micka88]

So, basically... other users are lying? ?

Maybe reporting only the enthusiastic beginning ?

 

[mashoutposse]

I get a legit ~15 hours on my 16” M1 Pro. Brightness at about 50%, web browsing, video consumption, Terminal/dev stuff. Full screen video sips the juice at about 5W.

The battery life is completely night and day with my old Touch Bar 15” Intel MBP.

 

[white7561]

I get a legit ~15 hours on my 16” M1 Pro. Brightness at about 50%, web browsing, video consumption, Terminal/dev stuff. Full screen video sips the juice at about 5W.

The battery life is completely night and day with my old Touch Bar 15” Intel MBP.

What kind of videos are you watching to get it to only draw 5w? Even on 8 clicks of brightness? The lowest I can get is 8w . Playing local 1080p30fps h264 video. With the screen turned on ofc in 16:9 . The only way im getting 5w is if the screen is all mostly black. Then yeah it's 5w.

 

[Juraj22]

in terminal app: sudo powermetrics

Macbook pro M1 Max 32gb ram, 1tb sdd, screen brightness 8 clicks from left.

Doing nothing:
ANE Power: 0 mW
DRAM Power: 140 mW
CPU Power: 22 mW
GPU Power: 6 mW
Package Power: 28 mW

Playing h264 youtube video:

ANE Power: 0 mW
DRAM Power: 525 mW
CPU Power: 168 mW
GPU Power: 23 mW
Package Power: 386 mW

shadertoy.com, seascape shader, https://www.shadertoy.com/view/Ms2SD1
ANE Power: 0 mW
DRAM Power: 1388 mW
CPU Power: 489 mW
GPU Power: 27565 mW
Package Power: 33095 mW

xcode compiling obj-c code:
ANE Power: 0 mW
DRAM Power: 2017 mW
CPU Power: 18312 mW
GPU Power: 30 mW
Package Power: 25021 mW

Noise level zero.
Not sure how can I measure display power consumption.

 

[mashoutposse]

What kind of videos are you watching to get it to only draw 5w? Even on 8 clicks of brightness? The lowest I can get is 8w . Playing local 1080p30fps h264 video. With the screen turned on ofc in 16:9 . The only way im getting 5w is if the screen is all mostly black. Then yeah it's 5w.

Full screen streaming video at as high as 2K 60fps (YouTube, NBA League Pass, Spectrum Live, etc). I've seen as low as 3.5W sustained at 50% brightness. I use Safari.