MacBook Pro 13 (2020) Battery Life

[chelski11]

Hello guys,

I've been switching to MBP for the past month from Windows and it feels great. However, I am a little bit anxious about the battery life here. Whenever I am doing some "active" browsing like reddit while listening to Spotify, I observed that the battery drains rather quick, approximately 1% every 4 minutes which means 15% every hour, or "only" 6 hours of continuous web browsing as opposed to the 10 hours ad and most of user's testimony about the battery.

am I getting a defective unit ? because battery health app suggests that my battery health is even 102% lol (11 charge cycle so far).
or am I understanding something wrong here ?

enlighten me please

 

[Jochheim]

This is in the range that I get from my MBP 2020 (around 6-7 h with light work). However you could extend the battery life with disabling the turbo boost (Programm: turbo boost Switcher). There are several threads here describing how this extends battery life. I also bought the pro version which automatically disables the turbo boost when disconnecting power. Of course your MacBook will be theoretically slower. But I don’t think you will notice this when doing light work as described.

 

[chelski11]

I've done what you recommended, and it worked like a charm ! Using the same metric as before, where I tried to observe how long can I surf before the battery percentage dropped, apparently I can squeeze 20-25 % more battery life as advertised on the developer's blog as now it drops after 5 minutes of browsing (compared to 4 previously). Thank you very much and I wish you the best sir !

 

[travelsheep]

So far I got 1,5 to 3 hours work time out of every MacBook Pro I ever owned (I had 5). Currently on MacBook Pro 13 inch 2018. Still waiting for a pocket sized 10,000 mAh battery pack that works flawlessly as an external battery. I thought USB-C will finally bring that day but nothing yet.

I usually use lots of tabs in Safari and Chrome, Mail, Apple Pages+Numbers+Keynote, photo editing, audio editing, and sometimes video editing.

 

[zhenya]

What Web browser are you using? Are you using the Spotify app or in-browser?

 

[chelski11]

I am using the safari browser sir. I've done my research before I bought my mbp and people would say safari is the best option compared to battery-hog like chrome

What Web browser are you using? Are you using the Spotify app or in-browser?

 

[chelski11]

So far I got 1,5 to 3 hours work time out of every MacBook Pro I ever owned (I had 5). Currently on MacBook Pro 13 inch 2018. Still waiting for a pocket sized 10,000 mAh battery pack that works flawlessly as an external battery. I thought USB-C will finally bring that day but nothing yet.

I usually use lots of tabs in Safari and Chrome, Mail, Apple Pages+Numbers+Keynote, photo editing, audio editing, and sometimes video editing.

I can easily imagine that, guess I have to reset my expectation about the battery life of this thing hahah

 

[zhenya]

I am using the safari browser sir. I've done my research before I bought my mbp and people would say safari is the best option compared to battery-hog like chrome

Ok, Safari is good. How are you listening to Spotify though? Through the browser or the app? The browser will consume significantly more power.

If you open Activity Monitor and sort by CPU usage and/or Energy Impact, you can see which processes are consuming most of the power, and take steps to reduce their usage.

Power consumption is one of the main reasons that Apple has been so stubborn with iPadOS. With a traditional computer OS like MacOS or Windows, there are very few limits that can be placed on what processes may run, for how long, at what power state - so battery life is completely down to what the user installs, and how they use the device. I have never gotten full advertised battery life from a laptop from any manufacturer - even when I keep the installs relatively light. You should follow the steps above to make sure there isn’t something amiss, but this is pretty much as expected.

 

[phl92]

This is in the range that I get from my MBP 2020 (around 6-7 h with light work). However you could extend the battery life with disabling the turbo boost (Programm: turbo boost Switcher). There are several threads here describing how this extends battery life. I also bought the pro version which automatically disables the turbo boost when disconnecting power. Of course your MacBook will be theoretically slower. But I don’t think you will notice this when doing light work as described.

Is this programme totally safe to use? And also do I lose any kind of guarantee / Apple care insurance if I have a problem and Apple detects that I use or used this programme?

 

[Jochheim]

@phl92
Of course there is no guarantee, that nothing will happen to 100%, but regarding the forum posts here and the reputation the developer gets, I - for myself - am not worried. But there could be software issues, as the Programm has to go deeper in to the system (I am no developer - so I have no deeper knowledge). Regarding the question if apple will not acknowledge your guarantee - I am not aware of any case, that this happens (without tinkering with the hardware itself). But of course there could be some risk left (maybe if you do not life in a county with strong consumer law). I don’t think my answer will really help you but maybe someone knows more about the guarantee.

 

[titans1127]

I noticed earlier today that Coconut Battery was reporting by 5 month old MBP battery at 90 percent health with 93 cycles. I've had the battery optimization setting enabled the entire time. Went ahead and turned the feature off, ran by battery down to 1% and let it shut off automatically. Charged the laptop back to 100% with the lid closed and now Coconut battery is reporting 86.6%. Really confused how any of this stuff works at this point. Might have to run it down 1 or 2 more times and recharge to 100 and see what happens.