Where did you see that? I can't find where he mentions the battery usage numbers, just that each is consistent with itself whether on battery or plugged in.
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M1 Pro vs M1 Max: cooler system with better battery life?
- Thread starter yurkennis
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I wonder if something got lost in translation (or more likely lost in my comprehension), because if the battery dies after 2 hours of exporting video, then a 10 minute export would be closer to 8% than 1%. If it really took 1% the battery would last almost 17 hours while exporting, or closer to 8 hours if we are generous in rounding...
He back peddled, deleted that part, and posted a better test (which did show a difference.
It‘s just strange that in the high usage test the max was the silver coloured MBP and in the light usage test it was the spacecraft coloured one. So either he just put them in a wrong order or the max was really longer lasting (which I highly doubt)
That depends. Both have the same single thread performance. It's when you get into heavier multithread performance where the differences occur.
Um, both have the same single, AND multithreaded cpu performance (for the 10-core M1 Pro). Where they differ is graphics performance.
That seems like an entirely appropriate tradeoff between performance and battery life. This is the performance end of the product line. If you value battery life more than performance, the Air would be a better choice. 7 hours is a very respectable battery life, earlier models didn't get close to that and never had the power that these MBPs have.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.
Apple's New MacBook Pro Is a Notch Above the Rest
This creator-first machine is powerful, with the ports to prove it.www.wired.com
The issue is not that the M1 Max machines use more battery when doing heavy-weight tasks (which is expected); it's that they appear to be using more battery doing the *same* low-level tasks as the M1 Pro or M1.
From the Wired review: "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."
Those apps are nothing that can't run well on a base M1 machine that gets a solid 10-12 hours. If you can only get 7 hours on a top-end M1 Max doing the same things then that is a big deal for some people.
Obviously a bigger SoC means more power usage whether it's idling or not - same as large petrol engines in cars. I'm hoping that low-power mode is the solution here
Powermetrics on a m1 Max with 64gb vs 32gb, show a difference of approx 50% more dram power draw for the 64gb model (227 mW vs 150 mW) when idling (just after rebooting the machine). This is information from two single measurements. This could have consequences for battery life, maybe (probably?) that are bigger then the gpu difference between the max and the pro would amount to… And this could mean that the sheer amount of memory plays a bigger factor than the max / pro difference. It’s astonishing that reviewers conclude that the GPU cores are the main reason for the lower battery life of the Max, while they are all testing 64gb Max MacBook Pro’s (See The Verge, Wired,…). But the GPU cores (16 and 32 versions) seem to be only consuming 1 to 5 mW at idle use, versus more then 200 mW dram power draw. GPU’s can be turned down in frequency, but RAM can’t be turned off. Of course this is when the system is idling, but this will affect average battery life.
This could mislead people to buy a m1 Pro just out of concerns for battery life.
It would be nice to see further tests confirming these differences (or not) in idle or low to heavy load conditions! If someone has a 64 gb model please try the powermetrics readouts at idle use…
This could mislead people to buy a m1 Pro just out of concerns for battery life.
It would be nice to see further tests confirming these differences (or not) in idle or low to heavy load conditions! If someone has a 64 gb model please try the powermetrics readouts at idle use…
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Comparison between 16" 16GB M1 Pro 10/16 cores and 32GB 14" M1 Max 10/24 cores, XCode heavy compilation:
14" comparison while doing CPU only benchmark (Cinebench):
Pro 8/14 16GB: -35% battery
Pro 10/16 16GB: -40% battery
Max 10/24 32GB: -47% battery
So:
- Max 10/24 32GB uses 17% more battery than Pro 10/16 16GB
- Pro 10-cores uses 14% more battery than Pro 8-cores (for +25% cores, same RAM)
Max run hotter than either of the above Pros:
Pro 8/14 16GB: -35% battery
Pro 10/16 16GB: -40% battery
Max 10/24 32GB: -47% battery
So:
- Max 10/24 32GB uses 17% more battery than Pro 10/16 16GB
- Pro 10-cores uses 14% more battery than Pro 8-cores (for +25% cores, same RAM)
Max run hotter than either of the above Pros:
Attachments
I saw these tests as well. Again we are not comparing m1 Max and m1 pro with the same amount of memory so again difficult to draw any conclusions. It would be useful if we could witness the powermetrics readouts. There is a recent video by Max Tech comparing 32gb and 64gb ram MacBook Pro’s as well, but I was disappointed they didn’t even compare them in light of power draw or battery life.
Also, probably people would be more willing to accept some shorter battery life in return for faster speed in heavy use (in this video 7% more then a MacBook Pro, but again, with half of the memory), but if battery life is significantly shorter in everyday use (not pushing the gpu nor cpu) this would seem a more important drawback.
Also, probably people would be more willing to accept some shorter battery life in return for faster speed in heavy use (in this video 7% more then a MacBook Pro, but again, with half of the memory), but if battery life is significantly shorter in everyday use (not pushing the gpu nor cpu) this would seem a more important drawback.
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Agreed - an ideal comparison for this would be between 1) M1 Pro 32GB / 1TB and 2) M1 Max 32GB / 1TB. I actually got #1 for my MBP, which I feel like many people did not. As many reviewers were recommending that if you're going to go 32GB memory, you might as well may the $200 extra and upgrade to the M1 Max, as you'd get an extra 8 GPU cores (16 > 24 cores) and double the memory bandwidth.
I'm happy I stuck with the M1 Pro, as I knew I didn't need the Max, and it looks like there's not insignificant battery differences between the 2 as well.
Ordered the same config myself. People tell me anything from one week to two for Silver, and Space Grey usually comes sooner.
Looks like a good decision, anyhow differences in either way are probably not that big.
? I feel like this the bombshell… super important info. Is there any more places we can look for testing results.
A quick anecdotal comment on battery life:
When playing the game Factorio (installed via Steam), my MBP 14" gave me a little under 4 hours of runtime.
When doing more normal things I am getting around 10 hours of runtime.
My gut sense is that if I was only watching videos I would get a few extra hours; but that's not something I usually do for that long
I am quite satisfied with my M1 Max 32 core GPU/32GB Ram w/ 1TB storage. When a game is using up all the CPU cores and most of the GPU cores I expect it to really burn through the battery. I like having the Max because I have the option of that really high performance when I want it.
That said, it would be nice if Apple gave us some method of reducing GPU power draw when we need some extra run time. Low power mode doesn't really seem to make much difference for me.
When playing the game Factorio (installed via Steam), my MBP 14" gave me a little under 4 hours of runtime.
When doing more normal things I am getting around 10 hours of runtime.
My gut sense is that if I was only watching videos I would get a few extra hours; but that's not something I usually do for that long
I am quite satisfied with my M1 Max 32 core GPU/32GB Ram w/ 1TB storage. When a game is using up all the CPU cores and most of the GPU cores I expect it to really burn through the battery. I like having the Max because I have the option of that really high performance when I want it.
That said, it would be nice if Apple gave us some method of reducing GPU power draw when we need some extra run time. Low power mode doesn't really seem to make much difference for me.
The M1 Max chips conclusively consume significantly more battery than the Pro chips at idle, with no known software optimizations inbound. Even my 24 core Max 16' can only eek out eight hours with word/safari/occasionally music (at low volume), with brightness turned down 2-3 notches from maximum.
How much RAM does your Max have? Have you tried Low Power Mode; does it result in significant change?
The Pro with 32GB might only get 20-40 minutes more battery life if reviewers’ tests are to be believed.
32GB RAM. Low power mode gives me 30-40 more minutes of battery life.
I think he's making fun of the verge's flawed testing methods.