MacBook Pro 2016 - nTB vs TB after 10.12.2

[snickersthebest]

Hello everyone,
I've been deciding between the TB and nTB for days and I was quite sure I'll be buying the nTB until the latest update came out. As the performance was quite similar and battery life is very important for me as a student, the nTB seemed like an obvious choice.
Now as reports of the TB version getting 10 hours of battery life after the 10.12.2 update, if the thouchbar gets 90% of the battery life of the nTB, I'd settle for that. Does anyone own both so they can test the difference in battery life AFTER the update? How much has the batter life improved on the nTB?
Thanks!

 

[sbpax]

10.12.2 has been very very buggy on my TB 13 (16GB, 512ssd, 3.1Ghz i5), particularly with touch ID which would fail resulting in a black screen, making me turn off then turn on the laptop. Not excited about this.

Battery wise, I do software development, run VMs and the battery is still average. I cannot get above 5-6 hours maybe with brightness at around 50%, which is pretty crap. The only instance I'm gettting close to 8-9 hours is at night with brightness at 20-30% and basically doing nothing but having 1-2 web tabs open and nothing else.

 

[Marshall73]

10.12.2 has been very very buggy on my TB 13 (16GB, 512ssd, 3.1Ghz i5), particularly with touch ID which would fail resulting in a black screen, making me turn off then turn on the laptop. Not excited about this.

Battery wise, I do software development, run VMs and the battery is still average. I cannot get above 5-6 hours maybe with brightness at around 50%, which is pretty crap. The only instance I'm gettting close to 8-9 hours is at night with brightness at 20-30% and basically doing nothing but having 1-2 web tabs open and nothing else.

5-6hrs when running vm's is good. You are not going to get near 10 hours unless it's just basic web browsing. Apple quote up to 10 hours based on that kind of use. Running vm's uses far more resources and you obviously have unreasonable expectations.

 

[sbpax]

5-6hrs when running vm's is good.

No, it's crap compared to 8-9 hours on the 2015 model on the same workflow.

Apple really ****ed up here and I'm openly disappointed as a 15 years Mac user. They used to be ahead of everyone, but now they're not, they're lagging behind. These Macs are beyond underwhelming and the reason I have one is just I am a captive customer and I depend on the ecosystem at the moment. I am going to break out though over the next 2-3 years if they do not come up with something convincing, the touch bar is a gimmick and adds little value, sure it it nice for 30 minutes then it just fades into the background and you only use it because you have to, not because you enjoy it. Damn, now I'm sad

 

[ntnskrds]

No, it's crap compared to 8-9 hours on the 2015 model on the same workflow.

Apple really ****ed up here and I'm openly disappointed as a 15 years Mac user. They used to be ahead of everyone, but now they're not, they're lagging behind. These Macs are beyond underwhelming and the reason I have one is just I am a captive customer and I depend on the ecosystem at the moment. I am going to break out though over the next 2-3 years if they do not come up with something convincing, the touch bar is a gimmick and adds little value, sure it it nice for 30 minutes then it just fades into the background and you only use it because you have to, not because you enjoy it. Damn, now I'm sad

I absolutely love my 15'' . It is an amazing machine right now. It's also a forward-thinking one...
Keyboard is the best keyboard I've ever used (but this is so personal), build quality is exceptional, screen is amazing, great performance and battery life is still way above similarly spec-ed windows laptops.

However, this sentence of yours really resonated with me. I think it is spot on and I could not have stated this better. This is exactly how I feel about the touchbar . But what do I know ?? I am a pro that spends his whole day in two applications for which I have internalised and automatically (almost unconsciously) use every single one of their keyboard shortcuts. The touchbar is used only because I have no other way to accomplish some tasks (is there another way to adjust screen brightness ??). If there was a 15'' configuration without a touchbar (but with Touch ID) I would buy it in a minute..

 

[sbpax]

So I went to sleep at 1:30 and woke up at 6:30, that's 5 hours. Besides me being very tired now, my TB 13 went from 63% battery to 54% battery with the lid closed (supposedly sleeping). This is beyond awful, Macs used to lose next to nothing while sleeping.

Edit: looking at the logs it appears it doesn't go to sleep anymore. Well, time for a SMC and NVRAM reset, again.