On October 24, 2006, Apple introduced the MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" models and those with 15" displays -- the MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.16 15-Inch and MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.33 15-Inch -- were estimated to have a maximum of five hours of battery life, up a half hour from the "Core Duo" models, but still less than the PowerBook G4.
Apple's official estimate of the battery life of all "non-Pro" MacBook models, using a 55-watt hour battery is an impressive six hours. However, the company estimates 3.5 hours while using wi-fi and 2.5 hours of DVD playback. Using Apple's numbers, this still is an hour and a half longer than the estimated runtime of the MacBook Pro 15" models, which use a 60-watt-hour battery.
In "real-world" tests in a fantastic ArsTechnica review that should be read in its entirety, the author reported that while using the "best performance" setting, he managed three hours and thirteen minutes while playing a DVD with brightness set to half. He got four hours and five minutes while playing an iTunes stream, wi-fi and bluetooth enabled, and brightness set to half. Finally, with no applications running, wi-fi and bluetooth disabled and the screen set to very dim, he was able to squeeze out five hours and forty minutes.
Regarding these results, he concluded that:
I'm quite pleased with these battery testing results. While it's painfully obvious where Apple gets its six hours of battery life claim, a running time of approximately 3 hours while watching a DVD is a good one, especially for jetsetting Mac users. Four hours of usage under what I consider to be "normal" conditions is also acceptable to me.
