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M1 Pro vs M1 Max: cooler system with better battery life?
- Thread starter yurkennis
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I have a theory that these new macs, specially the Max, take up power and battery regardless of what you do. So a typical workload wouldn’t really tax the system so it would end up being similar battery to being idle.
So it’s not a power sipping SOC, it’s a power consuming SOC and it consumes power even while doing nothing. But, because it’s so quick, light workloads shouldn’t affect battery life too much.
Let’s see
I have a theory that these new macs, specially the Max, take up power and battery regardless of what you do. So a typical workload wouldn’t really tax the system so it would end up being similar battery to being idle.
So it’s not a power sipping SOC, it’s a power consuming SOC and it consumes power even while doing nothing. But, because it’s so quick, light workloads shouldn’t affect battery life too much.
Let’s see
Apple did verify (according to one person's YT comments lol) that the max chips do draw more power, "even at idle".
Could they provide us with the ability to turn off cores when not in use? Maybe low power mode is "OK" doing most tasks.
Ya, I wonder as the CPU cores having same number as M1 Pro, how can it be draining more? Could it be the processor frequency is higher than M1 Pro? Or more GPU cores could also be affecting somehow?
I think the comment mentioned the GPU cores. It would be nice to disable them if possible lol. Kind of like how some laptops disable discrete GPU to save battery until the discrete is needed.
EDIT: Actually there's a good post in this forum saying it's probably RAM related (64GB here), can't fully turn off RAM or it'll lose the data!
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Thank you for your results. Looking forward about your "real daily" battery life with VS Code, Safari browsing.
The 14'' battery is only 70Wh vs the 16" 100Wh so the battery life difference is normal, even more if you put high components such as the M1 Max in it.
Frankly, whatever the battery life is, we made the choose of the M1 Max for its performances and the 14'' for its small size. With fast charging, half an hour of charge will bring 50% of battery back so battery should never be a real problem.
If there is no real use of the extra GPU cores, then M1 Max may not be the best choose indeed.
The 14'' battery is only 70Wh vs the 16" 100Wh so the battery life difference is normal, even more if you put high components such as the M1 Max in it.
Frankly, whatever the battery life is, we made the choose of the M1 Max for its performances and the 14'' for its small size. With fast charging, half an hour of charge will bring 50% of battery back so battery should never be a real problem.
If there is no real use of the extra GPU cores, then M1 Max may not be the best choose indeed.
Damn, that's disappointing. I hope there are software optimizations to come that will extend the battery life. The main reason I wanted this upgrade was to get a lot more battery life than I was getting out of my i7 Vega20. If I'm doing heavy photo editing, I can get 2-3 hours out of it. If the Max only gets 9.5 hours while doing nothing that does not bode well for photo editing on battery power.
14 M1 MAX, 32 GPU, 64 GB RAM. It's probably going to be the worst performing combination for battery if we structure these tests.
We'll see, like another poster above said, they have a theory for doing trivial tasks, the battery won't drain much (vs. idle).
I did mention this to my friend too though, if some heavy gaming laptops can game for hours and I can't program for much more than that - something would be difficult to swallow lol.
The fast charge is there, kind of like Tesla I guess lol. May run out during the day but plug it in for 30 minutes and you'll get another X hours.
I did know the 14" would have less battery life, we'll see with some more normal usage.
I do plan to do some coding in Unity (metal), 3D/2D. I thought/hoped I could stress the GPU cores with that someday.
I think it might be the RAM that is playing a factor in this. I'm comfortably getting around 10 hours of usage while browsing, watching YouTube. Discord open, Spotify playing music through the speakers. And using iMessage in between. Brightness is mostly set at 7 dots from 0 or 8 dots from 0.
I'm on a 14" M1 Max 32 GPU / 32GB RAM
How did you find that config? Did you get it shipped? Nice! I wanted 32GB but the store only had 64GB. My 32GB config showed mid december delivery so I said, nah, lol.
I did use some very lightweight google chatting last night and the battery didn't seem to deplete much. I'll try doing some discord and youtube today amongst other things, I'm OK with less battery life running a max config.
Definitely worth sacrificing some battery for maximum performance! I got it shipped to me. Ordered in that config
Here is a brand new review from "Wired" about the 14 M1 Max 32GPU 64 RAM.
They have about 7 hours on a normal day.
>> The glaring issue? Battery life. Apple claims up to 17 hours of video playback. During a typical workday, using apps like Chrome, iMessage, Slack, Telegram, and Zoom, I hit seven hours at most. That's good enough. But good luck staying away from the charger for long when using it for power-hungry tasks. Editing heavy-duty video footage or playing video games saw the battery dying after just an hour, at most. So yes, it's a portable machine. But power users will want to sit near an outlet. At least it recharges fast. I hit the advertised 50 percent in just 30 minutes of charging.
www.wired.com
They have about 7 hours on a normal day.
>> The glaring issue? Battery life. Apple claims up to 17 hours of video playback. During a typical workday, using apps like Chrome, iMessage, Slack, Telegram, and Zoom, I hit seven hours at most. That's good enough. But good luck staying away from the charger for long when using it for power-hungry tasks. Editing heavy-duty video footage or playing video games saw the battery dying after just an hour, at most. So yes, it's a portable machine. But power users will want to sit near an outlet. At least it recharges fast. I hit the advertised 50 percent in just 30 minutes of charging.
Apple's New MacBook Pro Is a Notch Above the Rest
This creator-first machine is powerful, with the ports to prove it.
@elmalloc @Exorthium would you mind posting the results of the powermertics tool run while idling?
Let it run for ~30 seconds in terminal while idling to settle (it will refresh the results every 5 seconds).
Then stop it with CTRL+C and post the last result.
Bash:
sudo powermetrics --samplers cpu_power,gpu_powerThen stop it with CTRL+C and post the last result.
If that pans out, that'll satisfy my needs as I don't need to get all day battery life. I just need to be able to put in a few hours of photo editing or running a debugger and coding with resource hogging VM servers running. Those two things will kill the battery of my 2018 i7 in 2 to 3 hours so if I'm traveling, I often have to stop working prematurely.
That's good to know I have that option to get a quick top-off. I presume that the fast charge will stress the battery though so I'd like to avoid using the fast charge option unless I really have to.
Hi Exorthium,
Are u able to help us verify the run times again with more browser-based activities?
Many thanks!
EK
~7hrs with 15% left. Probably I'll get another 8hrs just like every day since I bought it.
16" M1 PRO/ 16gb / 512SSD
Yes, im kind of disappointed... also saw a lot of YouTubers/users here, get 10+hrs. I really don't know how..
I'm on a Pro 10-core 16 GB. I've been using it for about 80-90 minutes and it's down to 89%. That would suggest about 13 hours of use. I doubt I'll get that much, but I'd be shocked if I don't get 11 hours at least. That's enough for me—it's all-day use without charging.
I wonder how much screen brightness has to do with it? I'm 7-8 clicks from the left most of the time.
I wonder how much screen brightness has to do with it? I'm 7-8 clicks from the left most of the time.