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M3 Pro Battery Life

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tekksan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
282
142
The battery life on the 14" M3 Pro is killer with what I use it for. I've been working in Citrix, multiple browser tabs, email, etc for about an hour on battery and it's still at 100% and shows 20:00 time remaining (which may be the highest this thing will show as I've never seen it go over 20:00). My M1 Pro would top out at around 12 or 13 hours under the same conditions.

The M3 Pro gets a lot of hate but people may be missing something. A lot of people are fine with slightly better performance over the M2 Pro but also getting much better battery life. From what I've seen, the M3 Pro is about as powerful as the M2 Max but gets WAY better battery life.

I don't think most people who are a good fit for the M3 Pro are going to notice the difference between 10% improvement vs 20% improvement in CPU in their day to day tasks BUT they will notice an extra 2-3 hours of battery life. If you are looking that closely at performance, the Max is probably a good fit. I don't think the vast majority of people need a Max though.

IMHO,

M3 - the best battery life, good performance
M3 Pro - great battery life and great performance
M3 Max - good battery life and the best performance

It all depends on what matter most to you. The M3 Pro is a great middle ground.
 
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mailman199

mailman199

macrumors 6502
Nov 4, 2008
301
234
New York
Battery life is the big feature for me this year. I know a lot of reviewers aren’t talking about it because it doesn’t capture headlines, but I’m hoping that that will change a little. The 14 inch pro was always the worst of all the Mac laptops in the battery department. It looks like that’s fixed now, I’m just curious what the real world difference is between the standard M3 and pro M3 for battery life.
 
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yatesd

yatesd

macrumors newbie
Jun 21, 2020
23
21
Same here...I picked up the 14 Macbook Pro M3 Pro 12 core 2-days ago, to replace a 14 M1 Pro (handed down to family member). I originally ordered a base Max based on all the positive reviews, but had a hard time justifying an additional $800 for my use case...too much I can do with the savings (including refreshing more often).

I've only been using it in the evenings, so too hard to tell. However, I am hoping to benefit from the performance boost, improved wifi, and better battery life. Haven't pushed it yet, but wifi and battery life are seeing nice improvements so far, but it will take a while to go through my first charge cycle. Almost no complete tests of this unit (12 core, 18GB RAM, 1TB drive).
 
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tekksan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
282
142
Chuckeee said:
Seems like 14” vs 16” would have some effect on battery life too (bigger battery but bigger display too).
Click to expand...
Yeah. I always feel that the 14" is best suited for the Pro level chip and the 16" for the Max chip. So far, the battery life in the M3 Pro has been excellent. I have also never heard the fans kick in at all.
 
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T

tekksan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
282
142
yatesd said:
Same here...I picked up the 14 Macbook Pro M3 Pro 12 core 2-days ago, to replace a 14 M1 Pro (handed down to family member). I originally ordered a base Max based on all the positive reviews, but had a hard time justifying an additional $800 for my use case...too much I can do with the savings (including refreshing more often).

I've only been using it in the evenings, so too hard to tell. However, I am hoping to benefit from the performance boost, improved wifi, and better battery life. Haven't pushed it yet, but wifi and battery life are seeing nice improvements so far, but it will take a while to go through my first charge cycle. Almost no complete tests of this unit (12 core, 18GB RAM, 1TB drive).
Click to expand...
This has been my thought too. People get all hung up on the M2 Pro vs M3 Pro CPU/GPU gains being small but unless you are doing very CPU/GPU intensive tasks, and timing them, you're not going to notice the difference really anyway.

I feel the M2 wasn't really a good upgrade from the M1 since they just basically souped up the M1 a bit - no real changes and nothing new. With the M3 series you get better power efficiency/battery life, Dynamic Caching, ray-tracing/mesh shading, new color, etc. At least there is something NEW other than yeah, it's a faster chip.

For me, the M3 Pro is a great upgrade from the M1 Pro which I feel is the target crowd (along with Intel based Macs) for the M3 upgrade cycle. I prefer the longer battery life in the 14" form factor than what the Max chip would likely offer and I'll take that extra $800 (or more if you go unbinned) and put it toward a future upgrade.

Oh, yeah and the Space Black is pretty cool. You don't get new colors on the MBP very often.
 
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kp98077

kp98077

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2010
4,312
2,764
Whistler, BC
tekksan said:
The battery life on the 14" M3 Pro is killer with what I use it for. I've been working in Citrix, multiple browser tabs, email, etc for about an hour on battery and it's still at 100% and shows 20:00 time remaining (which may be the highest this thing will show as I've never seen it go over 20:00). My M1 Pro would top out at around 12 or 13 hours under the same conditions.

The M3 Pro gets a lot of hate but people may be missing something. A lot of people are fine with slightly better performance over the M2 Pro but also getting much better battery life. From what I've seen, the M3 Pro is about as powerful as the M2 Max but gets WAY better battery life.

I don't think most people who are a good fit for the M3 Pro are going to notice the difference between 10% improvement vs 20% improvement in CPU in their day to day tasks BUT they will notice an extra 2-3 hours of battery life. If you are looking that closely at performance, the Max is probably a good fit. I don't think the vast majority of people need a Max though.

IMHO,

M3 - the best battery life, good performance
M3 Pro - great battery life and great performance
M3 Max - good battery life and the best performance

It all depends on what matter most to you. The M3 Pro is a great middle ground.
Click to expand...
16 gig?
 
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G

googdot

macrumors regular
Jul 12, 2005
111
3
Aotearoa...Land Of The Long White Cloud
yatesd said:
Same here...I picked up the 14 Macbook Pro M3 Pro 12 core 2-days ago, to replace a 14 M1 Pro (handed down to family member). I originally ordered a base Max based on all the positive reviews, but had a hard time justifying an additional $800 for my use case...too much I can do with the savings (including refreshing more often).

I've only been using it in the evenings, so too hard to tell. However, I am hoping to benefit from the performance boost, improved wifi, and better battery life. Haven't pushed it yet, but wifi and battery life are seeing nice improvements so far, but it will take a while to go through my first charge cycle. Almost no complete tests of this unit (12 core, 18GB RAM, 1TB drive).
Click to expand...
Luke Miami did some tests on the 12 Core 18GB unit with some interesting comparisons:
 
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kp98077

kp98077

macrumors 601
Oct 26, 2010
4,312
2,764
Whistler, BC
Stories like this saying the new tech is "slow" is lame... it's not always about the numbers - I have the new m3 Pro 18 gb and love it! I would NEVER buy a used computer like he suggest - that's simply irresponsible. Refurbished yes, used, heck no!
 
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meDANOcine

meDANOcine

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2014
100
116
I think Apple needs to update their 'time remaining' to accommodate more than 20 hours. Been web browsing for about two hours, battery still shows 100%. 16" MBP set to low power mode.
 
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ascender

ascender

macrumors 603
Dec 8, 2005
5,021
2,897
I agree, unless you need the blistering performance of the Max and all those GPU cores, I think the M3 Pro chip is the one to go for if you have a workflow which is more reliant on RAM and CPU. The switch in efficiency cores probably helps to.

So far I'm finding the same - I've been away from home for the last day or so and been working on mine a lot - I've not had to get the charger out yet. Its also, as I hoped, running nice and cool, the bottom doesn't warm up like my Max-based laptops I've previously used.
 
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T

TheRealAlex

macrumors 68030
Sep 2, 2015
2,982
2,248
tekksan said:
This has been my thought too. People get all hung up on the M2 Pro vs M3 Pro CPU/GPU gains being small but unless you are doing very CPU/GPU intensive tasks, and timing them, you're not going to notice the difference really anyway.

I feel the M2 wasn't really a good upgrade from the M1 since they just basically souped up the M1 a bit - no real changes and nothing new. With the M3 series you get better power efficiency/battery life, Dynamic Caching, ray-tracing/mesh shading, new color, etc. At least there is something NEW other than yeah, it's a faster chip.

For me, the M3 Pro is a great upgrade from the M1 Pro which I feel is the target crowd (along with Intel based Macs) for the M3 upgrade cycle. I prefer the longer battery life in the 14" form factor than what the Max chip would likely offer and I'll take that extra $800 (or more if you go unbinned) and put it toward a future upgrade.

Oh, yeah and the Space Black is pretty cool. You don't get new colors on the MBP very often.
Click to expand...
Yes the comparison should be not M2 Pro Vs M3 Pro because who gets a new Laptop each year ?

the M3 Pro is scary good in that it’s destroying the M1 Max and in some instances matching the M2 Max.
 
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Aka757

Aka757

macrumors 6502
Sep 22, 2016
302
443
Houston
Aka757 said:
Has anyone been able to do / find a battery life comparison between the 14" M3 Pro and the 16" M3 Pro?

In PCMag's testing the 14" M3 Pro actually lasted a bit longer than the base M3, despite the base M3 being rated for longer battery life by Apple. That makes me wonder if the 16" M3 Pro would fare similarly in that same test, or if it would last even longer.
Click to expand...
If anyone is curious, I did a comparison between the 14” M3 Pro (base model) and 16” M3 Pro (base model except for RAM upgrade).

I ran a 10-hour YouTube video (1080p) overnight on both machines. Both were at 50% brightness (7 clicks from the bottom), volume off, WiFi + Bluetooth on, and began the comparison with 90% battery.

10:30 PM
16” - 90%
14” - 90%

6:09 AM
16” - 54%, 10:22 time remaining per Coconut Battery
14” - 47%, 7:22 time remaining

10:00 AM (YouTube went to another video on both machines)
16” - 35%, 7:31 time remaining
14” - 24%, 4:27 time remaining

It seems that the battery life difference between the 16” and 14” M3 Pro that Apple claims is fairly accurate. Obviously this test isn’t really a real-world use case but I wanted as much of a direct comparison as possible. I bought the 14” last night, so it may have still been indexing but I’m not sure.

Hope this helps anyone else looking for this info!
 
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Micka88

macrumors 6502
Dec 25, 2019
345
133
Does Macbook M3 Pro 16 have considerably better/longwer battery life than M3 Max 16 ?
 
O

Oreon

macrumors 6502
Oct 30, 2011
300
465
Insane battery life on my 36GB 16inch 12 Core Pro. Plugging it in once a week, mixture of YouTube, browsing, RDP and Chrome (WFH 3 days a week), at one point time on battery (mixture of usage and standby) was over 100 hours lol
 
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Liam Knuj

macrumors newbie
Nov 10, 2020
2
1
The battery life on my 14" MacBook Pro M3 has been horrible. I am lucky to get 4 hours of usage. It seems to be the Mail app that drains the battery even when the laptop is closed. It's likely MacOS 14 related, so I have reported.
 
P

ptrtmnk

macrumors newbie
Dec 14, 2023
1
0
Liam Knuj said:
The battery life on my 14" MacBook Pro M3 has been horrible. I am lucky to get 4 hours of usage. It seems to be the Mail app that drains the battery even when the laptop is closed. It's likely MacOS 14 related, so I have reported.
Click to expand...
How has this been for you?

I seem to have similar issue after using the macbook just for 2 days
 
ascender

ascender

macrumors 603
Dec 8, 2005
5,021
2,897
That's definitely not right about the Mail app - did you do a fresh install/setup or restore from a backup?

I've only been using my M3 Pro later in the day into night this week for 3-5 hours at a time and I don't think I've had to charge it all week.
 
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T

tim1000

macrumors 6502
Sep 16, 2014
441
115
mailman199 said:
Battery life is the big feature for me this year. I know a lot of reviewers aren’t talking about it because it doesn’t capture headlines, but I’m hoping that that will change a little. The 14 inch pro was always the worst of all the Mac laptops in the battery department. It looks like that’s fixed now, I’m just curious what the real world difference is between the standard M3 and pro M3 for battery life.
Click to expand...
How do we know this? Last year max tech did battery tests across the line. I have not seen any reviews this year for m3 like that.
 
T

tim1000

macrumors 6502
Sep 16, 2014
441
115
Oreon said:
Insane battery life on my 36GB 16inch 12 Core Pro. Plugging it in once a week, mixture of YouTube, browsing, RDP and Chrome (WFH 3 days a week), at one point time on battery (mixture of usage and standby) was over 100 hours lol
Click to expand...
Are you monitoring battery health? Do you use Al dente? I used to operate like you but reading through here had me concerned about cycles.
 
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