M4 Max EATS battery

[johnalan]

I just ran Cinebench's 10min GPU test on a fresh M4 Max top spec and it went from 100% battery to 82% in one 10min run.

Either this machine is a lemon or this is like Intel level battery use.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Why are you surprised? Fully taxing the machine with non-normal use for 10 minutes on battery is going to give that kind of results.

 

[johnalan]

Is that expected @Apple_Robert ? - not sure how else to test the battery, any ideas?

 

[Apple_Robert]

Is that expected @Apple_Robert ? - not sure how else to test the battery, any ideas?

Others here might disagree but, to me, your results are to be expected. If you want to test the battery, test it under normal use conditions (how you use the computer every day). Keep in mind that Apple‘s stated battery usage number on their website is done under lab conditions and not indicative of normal use. As such, M4 Mac users on MR and elsewhere can have different daily battery usage results.

 

[dmccloud]

I just ran Cinebench's 10min GPU test on a fresh M4 Max top spec and it went from 100% battery to 82% in one 10min run.

Either this machine is a lemon or this is like Intel level battery use.

1. That GPU test causes wattages to spike on any device, even Windows desktops, so I'm not surprised to see that type of battery drain.

2. If this is a new M4 Max machine, then the system is likely still in the process of calibrating battery life and charging curves, especially if you kept optimized battery charging enabled.

 

[iMacDragon]

Sounds within possible bounds for very high cpu/gpu usage, especially if screen is also very bright.

The long battery life figures assume light mostly idle usage at medium brightness.

 

[smithdr]

Nothing scientific, but I have been doing some work with my arrived today M4Max 16MBP/64GB/16 CPU/40 Core GPU using Davinci Resolve Studio. My impression is that uses more battery than a M1Max 16MBP/64GB/16 CPU/32 Core GPU for not much being that much faster, it gets hot and the fans come on quickly. If you have an M1Max 16MBP is the M4Max really worth the price for editing video?

 

[mi7chy]

I just ran Cinebench's 10min GPU test on a fresh M4 Max top spec and it went from 100% battery to 82% in one 10min run.

Either this machine is a lemon or this is like Intel level battery use.

Is that 16" or 14"? That's why you can't rely only on sponsored influencers since they don't discuss key things like battery life and fan noise under load. If it's draining 18% every 10 mins then battery will be drained just under 1 hour under load plus return of pre-2024 Intel fan noise and tethered to wall outlet.

 

[throAU]

Is that expected @Apple_Robert ? - not sure how else to test the battery, any ideas?

Do some maths...

The CPU/GPU can (and will, if you give it max workload with a benchmark) draw say 100 watts. They will be running flat out during the run, burning all the power they can to get the work done.

Running it for 1 hour will therefore draw ~100 watt hours of power. 10 minutes should draw approximately 1/6th of that. Or say, 15 watt/hours.

The 14" has something like a 72 watt/hr battery.

So napkin math - 20% for a run is not unexpected. Doing hard core max effort processing like that isn't something you do on battery. You plug into the wall for that sort of thing. This isn't exclusive to apple, intel or anyone else. Its basic physics.

However, unlike intel - less severe workloads you can run on battery, etc.

The difference between this and intel isn't (so much) max power draw during max effort - its the fact that doing "normal" workloads the CPU/GPU is going to be much more idle. Or, it will get more processing done in less time (and still burn less battery than intel for given amount of work completed). And if you do need max power for sustained workload - as with any laptop, plug it in.

 

[throAU]

For comparison:

An intel notebook with mobile Nvidia 4080 or 4090 will be burning through 3x that power and this is why they throttle a HEAP on battery. Because the power just isn't there to drive those intel furnaces and high end Nvidia GPUs on battery effectively.


You can do the rough math with any laptop - get its battery capacity in watt/hours, work out the max CPU/GPU power draw and that's how many watts/hours per hour it will burn at max load (approximately).

The important thing is how much work they can get done without running at max load on battery - basically as cpu/gpu load (and therefore clock frequency) rises, power draw goes up exponentially.

Which is why intel is so hot/power hungry these days - they're pushing frequency as hard as they can to keep up (rather than make the processor design more efficient in terms of performance per clock cycle) and it doesn't scale very well with power consumption.

 

[johnalan]

yep I then tested with 4k HDR video at medium brightness and it ran for an hour using 5% battery, which is good.

 

[pugxiwawa]

Is that 16" or 14"? That's why you can't rely only on sponsored influencers since they don't discuss key things like battery life and fan noise under load. If it's draining 18% every 10 mins then battery will be drained just under 1 hour under load plus return of pre-2024 Intel fan noise and tethered to wall outlet.

holy cow this sounds terrible.