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M1 Pro vs M1 Max battery
- Thread starter Someirishguy
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Still streaming music. In that 100 minutes of use I've:
- Working in Day One & notes with Backlit keyboard on
- Brightness (2 points below mid-brightness)
- Using Pixelmator Pro for 10-15 minutes of edits, balancing online banking, surfing the web, streaming music, replying to occasional iMessages, checking Twitter.
- Battery down 8%
This is helping me to feel that the M1 Max can definitely be used in light workflows without the GPU guzzling power even when not being taxed. My concern from reading/seeing comments is that this computer really only shines in GPU intensive tasks, and that to use it in light workflows will result in a miserable battery over the Pro/Air. Certainly those machines might do even better, but this will comfortably get 11+ hours of use on a charge.
AbsolutelyGotcha. Yeah I was just curious what kind of battery life The Verge got on the older Intel model.
I looked up the old Verge review for comparison:
2019 16" Intel....... 8 hours
2021 16" M1 Pro.... 16 hours
Yes... the M1 Max will have slightly less battery life than the M1 Pro. But it's still soooo much better than the previous Intel models. You should be happy with the M1 Max. Enjoy!
I use a M1 MBP now and the battery life is phenomenal. It's going to hurt when I switch to the Max because I'm spoiled by the 2020 M1. I will be upgrading to the Max and I'd be lying if I said battery anxiety isn't on my mind. If it's 10 hours of mixed usage, I know it will be much less knowing my habits. I have used the 2019 16" Intel and it lasts me less than 3 hours.
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This is not scientific but I had a 16” Pro Max 32GB RAM 32 GPU. I watched a movie for 1 hour and the battery drained 12%.
I returned that machine and got the 14” 16 GB RAM 16 GPU. I watched another show for 1 hour and the battery drained 3%.
Not scientific as the 14” is pushing less pixels. But it does seem like the pro uses less power.
I returned that machine and got the 14” 16 GB RAM 16 GPU. I watched another show for 1 hour and the battery drained 3%.
Not scientific as the 14” is pushing less pixels. But it does seem like the pro uses less power.
With the battery drain tests, I think we need to be testing in the "middle of the range" from 0-100%, and not from fully charged.
Anyone who has used mobile devices will have seen that they often take quite a while to drop from 100% to high 90s, so I don't think the behaviour is linear when fully charged (and some devices may some "overcharge" capability where they charge to more than the 100% baseline)
Can some please try this test with starting point somewhere between 50-80%?
So far the results are a bit inconsistent.
Anyone who has used mobile devices will have seen that they often take quite a while to drop from 100% to high 90s, so I don't think the behaviour is linear when fully charged (and some devices may some "overcharge" capability where they charge to more than the 100% baseline)
Can some please try this test with starting point somewhere between 50-80%?
So far the results are a bit inconsistent.
So we still have variables in the RAM, screen size and of course, GPUs.
It's good that the 14" seems to show better usage than the 16" though.
i actually encountered a weird issue on my 10/16 m1 pro 14”. One of the first things I did when I got it was go to the steam store and download Cities Skylines. This thing handled it no problem… However, she was not happy. Fans came on full blast (nearly as loud as an intel model) and it got pretty hot. It blasted through 50% battery in only 15 minutes. Yes that’s right 15 minutes. Not sure what would cause this but it’s concerning, because it was definitely consuming more power than what it’s rated to consume, and certainly more than what the 96w charger would be able to supply it, had it been on ac power.
BTW: The Tech Chap (channel that stated that battery life is identical on Pro and Max) added a pinned comment:
"? UPDATE: On further tests - the M1 Max DOES significantly impact battery. I'm removing the battery part of this video, and will cover it in my review. Stay tuned!"
"? UPDATE: On further tests - the M1 Max DOES significantly impact battery. I'm removing the battery part of this video, and will cover it in my review. Stay tuned!"
it's definitely screen/gpu related.
This morning I've been using safari to do gmail, whilst reading news/reddit in other tabs, whilst playing a YouTube video in background the whole time (the wan show) and battery is still 100% after 35-40mins.
The difference is I selected the 500nits profile, not the 1600 one. Maybe there's something in the 1600 profile that makes the gpu work harder, even when the screen brightness isn't cranked up?
This morning I've been using safari to do gmail, whilst reading news/reddit in other tabs, whilst playing a YouTube video in background the whole time (the wan show) and battery is still 100% after 35-40mins.
The difference is I selected the 500nits profile, not the 1600 one. Maybe there's something in the 1600 profile that makes the gpu work harder, even when the screen brightness isn't cranked up?
Interesting ? Does using the 500nits profile affect image quality, does HDR content have the ‘correct’ contrast between dark and light etc.? What does changing the profile do to image, can you tell?
I used my M1 Max 16" 32GB, 32 GPU unplugged for the whole day yesterday for the purpose of testing the battery. Brightness between 6 and 7.
It lasted just over 11.5 hours of screen time. My workload over the day:
- Light web browsing in Safari
- Youtube videos
- A lot of Citrix workspace
- MS Teams, messaging
- MS Teams, calls
- Zoom calls
- Playing music through the built-in speakers for a couple of hours
I'm pretty happy with that performance.
It lasted just over 11.5 hours of screen time. My workload over the day:
- Light web browsing in Safari
- Youtube videos
- A lot of Citrix workspace
- MS Teams, messaging
- MS Teams, calls
- Zoom calls
- Playing music through the built-in speakers for a couple of hours
I'm pretty happy with that performance.
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No way. I would be lucky to get 3-4 hours with video calls in the mix.
Finally a more scientific test.
So, the M1 Max got 10% to 15% less battery under light usage. But his M1 Max had 64 GB ram, vs 16 GB for the pro (so the 32 GB Max might fair a little better).
The M1 Max got 40% to 45% less battery under heady load, but also got about 40% more done.
From this, I’m thinking the battery penalty for the Max is well worth it, call it 10% per work done ?
the guy also mentions a good point at the end. if task can complete before battery dies, it'll finish quicker and somewhat offset the worse battery life.
i woulda loved to see some more tests with low perf mode enabled and 500 nits profile chosen (some folks here were seeing improvements w/ that enabled).
I have been using this 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro (base config, look up the specs on apple.com, too lazy to post), and here is my battery life on this laptop:
iStat Menus:
From System Preferences:
From Actvity Monitor's Energy Tab:
Usage:
iStat Menus:
From System Preferences:
From Actvity Monitor's Energy Tab:
Usage:
- loads of Chrome tabs (~80-100 easily)
- occasionally connected to an external 34-inch Ultrawide monitor or a 27-inch monitor
- ProMotion is enabled