MacBook Pro 2019 i9 lasts less than an hour?!

[SirThanksalot]

Hi guys,

After upgrading to Ventura, I was working one evening on my couch when I saw this on my touch bar:

30% left with 16 Minutes remaining... So a short calculation 16min / 30% = 0,53min/% = 53min of battery life??
I know that the battery is not that great and I saw threads with people complaining about short battery life, but usually they were talking about 5-6hours, not 50 minutes...

Of course I checked the usual suspects:

The batteries are supposed to last for 1000 cycles. This one has 185 and is already dying... As I am writing this, the battery went from 20% to 16% in about 5 minutes.

Does anybody else have the same problem or is it just me?

Cheers

 

[chrfr]

30% left with 16 Minutes remaining... So a short calculation 16min / 30% = 0,53min/% = 53min of battery life??
I know that the battery is not that great and I saw threads with people complaining about short battery life, but usually they were talking about 5-6hours, not 50 minutes...

The computer's reporting that your display brightness is affecting battery life. Where do you have the screen brightness set?

 

[SirThanksalot]

Yeah, I saw that, but I would still assume it runs more than an hour. I have it at 80% or so.
Btw. I just checked after connecting the MacBook to the charger:

So apparently it also takes more than 10 hours to charge....

 

[sam_dean]

Makes me wish I never bought any 14nm Intel laptop that were sold from 2014-2020.

Intel disclosed that Apple was moving away from them within months of the late 2019 MBP 16" was released. I thought that the improvements would be evolutionary from 14nm to 10nm rather than from 14nm to 5nm plus other latency improvements that relocated chips that was typically outside of the of Intel chips into the chip itself to make a System on a Chip (SoC).

 

[SirThanksalot]

Makes me wish I never bought any 14nm Intel laptop that were sold from 2014-2020.

Intel disclosed that Apple was moving away from them within months of the late 2019 MBP 16" was released. I thought that the improvements would be evolutionary from 14nm to 10nm rather than from 14nm to 5nm plus other latency improvements that relocated chips that was typically outside of the of Intel chips into the chip itself to make a System on a Chip (SoC).

Exactly that. Bought mine late 2019, then came the announcement and a year later the M1... I thought I could at least ride it out until M4 or so, but there are more and more problems with the new OS versions. I assume they don't really care about Intel anymore. Just a matter of time until a new version doesn't support Intel anymore...

 

[diego.caraballo]

Yeah, I saw that, but I would still assume it runs more than an hour. I have it at 80% or so.
Btw. I just checked after connecting the MacBook to the charger:
View attachment 2148821
So apparently it also takes more than 10 hours to charge....

If you can, downgrade to Big Sur. Still gets security updates so you will be fine in that sense.
I have seen and personally experienced issues with the 15" machines from 2019 and 2018 (but I believe
that the problem is worse in the 2019 model) after the Monterrey 12.3 update.

Those machines get really hot with almost no load with the metal area near the top almost too hot to touch.
If you are experiencing that together with the battery drain, then your solution is downgrade.

I'm afraid to tell that even after going to Big Sur, the higher battery usage remains and the machine runs hotter,
but there is a big improvement in both areas. Probably due to firmware (that wouldn't be downgraded)

 

[sam_dean]

If you can, downgrade to Big Sur. Still gets security updates so you will be fine in that sense.
I have seen and personally experienced issues with the 15" machines from 2019 and 2018 (but I believe
that the problem is worse in the 2019 model) after the Monterrey 12.3 update.

Those machines get really hot with almost no load with the metal area near the top almost too hot to touch.
If you are experiencing that together with the battery drain, then your solution is downgrade.

I'm afraid to tell that even after going to Big Sur, the higher battery usage remains and the machine runs hotter,
but there are a big improvement in both areas. Probably due to firmware (that would be downgraded)

View attachment 2148829

With this week's update is the battery drain of macOS Ventura still a thing?

 

[diego.caraballo]

With this week's update is the battery drain of macOS Ventura still a thing?

Not sure about intel machines, but my Air M2 got a significant degradation both in speed and battery life after Ventura.
Nothing changed after the 13.2 update.

 

[sam_dean]

Not sure about intel machines, but my Air M2 got a significant degradation both in speed and battery life after Ventura.
Nothing changed after the 13.2 update.

View attachment 2148833
View attachment 2148834

Considering that this is a 2019 MBP 16" Core i9 thread... ;-)

 

[MallardDuck]

If it's legit (see below), then make sure you haven't installed any third-party graphics override software (Gfxcard status), don't have an external monitor plugged in, and aren't running anything that might have activated a discrete graphics chip (if you have one). And of course, set the brightness to ~50%. You can also check activity monitor for heavy-usage items (they don't always show up in the power widget).

But most likely the issue is that the battery/time system is mis-calibrated, especially after a major OS update. Run the machine down to where you get the first power warning (5% or so), then shut it down (don't sleep). Plug it in to a real apple charger (same wattage as came with it - 96 for the 16 for example) and wait until fully charged, then turn back on. AlDente also has a calibration mode built in.

You can also reset the SMC and NVRam if that doesn't help.

 

[SirThanksalot]

But most likely the issue is that the battery/time system is mis-calibrated, especially after a major OS update. Run the machine down to where you get the first power warning (5% or so), then shut it down (don't sleep). Plug it in to a real apple charger (same wattage as came with it - 96 for the 16 for example) and wait until fully charged, then turn back on. AlDente also has a calibration mode built in.

You can also reset the SMC and NVRam if that doesn't help.

Yeah, I remember theses shenanigans from my old 2012 MacBook Pro... Used to do that once in a while. Was also the first thing I did with this one. Still the same. So I am up to 2h now with light browsing on <50% brightness. The thing is - and maybe I just didn't notice before - if you want to do anything (for example Xcode Coding + Browsing and maybe Spotify) the Mac just dies in about one hour, plain and simple. I know that the estimates on Apple's side are for a regular use case, but how can this beast of a machine last only 1 hour when doing actual work...? This just baffles me. I don't remember it being that bad on Mojave.

Conspiracy theorists may cry that it's a plot to force everyone to buy a new Mac. 😅

 

[MallardDuck]

XCode is a pig - I remember it killing my 2019 too.

FWIW the battery life on the M1's is insane - I get multiple hours even playing games....

 

[SirThanksalot]

XCode is a pig - I remember it killing my 2019 too.

FWIW the battery life on the M1's is insane - I get multiple hours even playing games....

Ah, I heard about this magical "long-lasting battery" on the new ARM Macs...

So I did manage to bring the battery life up to about 3-4 hours while doing relatively little aside from browsing and a light project in XCode. What I can say is, Chrome with a decent number of tabs will kill it, as well as running VSC with node.js.

At least now I can sit on the couch and work without connecting the Mac to power after 5 minutes. I would however really like to know how you can get the 11 hours of "browsing and video playback". Even on idle the activity manager shows me a battery life of about 6 hours...

 

[3401122]

Does anybody else have the same problem or is it just me?

Cheers

Just saw the topic now while surfing on the couch.
I'm going to give you my stats because my machine is similar, even if I don't know if you need them in this way.

2019 16" i7 - 13.2 Ventura
Last charged 90% at 22:29 PM
- 1 hour FaceTime Call, some iMessages answered.
- 5-10 Tabs Google Chrome - youtube videos, forums, news, podcast.
- Some inactive opened PDFs in Preview
- No background active processes or programs opened (only Chrome and the Facetime Call)

01:00 AM at 52%
38% in 2.5 hours for light web browsing and call

 

[MallardDuck]

Ah, I heard about this magical "long-lasting battery" on the new ARM Macs...

So I did manage to bring the battery life up to about 3-4 hours while doing relatively little aside from browsing and a light project in XCode. What I can say is, Chrome with a decent number of tabs will kill it, as well as running VSC with node.js.

At least now I can sit on the couch and work without connecting the Mac to power after 5 minutes. I would however really like to know how you can get the 11 hours of "browsing and video playback". Even on idle the activity manager shows me a battery life of about 6 hours...

Boy that sounds either like the screen brightness is high, there are external devices plugged in, there some kind of zombie it background process running, or the discrete gpu is turned on.

if you boot in safe mode what does it show? That should stop any background processes.

 

[chrfr]

What I can say is, Chrome with a decent number of tabs will kill it, as well as running VSC with node.js.

Neither of these are efficient apps so it's not surprising that they have a significant effect on power consumption. You might have a look at this to see if it helps with Chrome: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/reduce-chrome-memory-cpu-usage/

 

[VladVanHells]

I haven't such kind of issues (like a discharge in a few hours) on my MBP 16' (2019), but definatelly after 13.2 battery melting like icecream in the desert. Even when MacBook is asleep!!!

Fortunatelly, it seems the sleeping issue is reproduced to M1/M2 macs too, therefore there should't be any conspiracy theories related to Apple. Just a bug like in Monterey 12.3

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Download the free utility called "Coconut Battery".
Post a screenshot here.

If Coconut Battery shows the battery at less than 80% of original capacity, you may qualify for the "$199 battery replacement" (USA) option.

For that, you get:
- a new, Apple-labeled battery (NOT 3rd-party)
- installation
- a short warranty.

Not a bad deal at all, in my opinion.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Makes me wish I never bought any 14nm Intel laptop that were sold from 2014-2020.

So, you'd take a 4-port 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro? Because, at this point, I'd take a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro over that.

Honestly, they're not bad for what they are/were. Just because Apple Silicon has seriously stellar battery life doesn't mean these machines suck.

The OP probably has a bad battery.

Intel disclosed that Apple was moving away from them within months of the late 2019 MBP 16" was released. I thought that the improvements would be evolutionary from 14nm to 10nm rather than from 14nm to 5nm plus other latency improvements that relocated chips that was typically outside of the of Intel chips into the chip itself to make a System on a Chip (SoC).

It's not about chip fabrication process or the SoC model anywhere near as much as it is about ARM vs. x86.

Exactly that. Bought mine late 2019, then came the announcement and a year later the M1... I thought I could at least ride it out until M4 or so, but there are more and more problems with the new OS versions.

macOS issues:

(a) are going to be a constant while Apple is insisting on pumping out whole new releases every year

(b) not exclusive to Intel or Apple Silicon Macs

Monterey had some stupid issues with Intel Macs and completely different stupid issues with Intel Macs. Poor quality control over operating systems is a systemic problem at Apple that transcends the hardware.

I assume they don't really care about Intel anymore. Just a matter of time until a new version doesn't support Intel anymore...

They're committed to supporting it for a good while even if they're not producing whole new features that Intel Macs take advantage of. They're still supporting 2017 Intel Macs that don't have a T2. It will be a good while before they drop software support altogether.

 

[Overfiend101]

I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else struggling with battery life on the MacBook Pro 16 inch from 2019. There are countless posts on this issue all over the internet so I know I'm not the only one who was still frustrated about this.

For years I've hated this laptop because of its awful battery life. Even brand new right out of the box I was only getting 5.5 hours at best. I ran a YouTube test and it only lasted 4 hours. These number are obviously far lower than the 10-11 hour advertised. I've struggled with trying to squeeze out extra battery life from this thing for years, reading forum after forum, but to no avail until recently.

I checked Activity Monitor and nothing appeared to be using much power but Coconut battery was showing the battery discharging at 14w when idle. However, when I checked CPU in Activity Monitor I could see that MDS, MDS Stores, and MDS Sync had been running for 30 hours. A quick google search showed that these are related to Apple's Spotlight app and that users had complained about sluggish performance from their Macs when these functions were ramping up.

Basically these processes are when Spotlight is indexing your computer and searching for anything new or for any changes to the system (apps, documents etc). For some users it will just keep indexing and never stop, causing additional work for the CPU in the background. A consequence of this is additional power usage (even if it doesn't show up in Activity Monitor under the Energy tab.

Once I basically disabled Spotlight and then reset the SMC my "time remaining" shown in Activity Monitor went from 4.5 hours to 10.5 hours immediately. I'd literally never seen it above 5.5 hours since I bought it so this just blew my mind. I can't believe that I've been struggling with this for years and now it's finally solved and it was all because of some buggy Apple software. Hopefully this helps others who come across this post looking for answers.

Notes.

• I've "disabled spotlight" by going to settings> Siri & Spotlight > Spotlight Privacy. Hit the "+" button and select your hard drive and any other hard drives that are connected to your Mac. Then press Done. Shutdown. Clear the SMC (do a google search n how to do this) then download Coconut Battery (its a free app) and check the "discharging with" row. It should be about 4-5 watts at idle, 7-9 watts at light loads. Before this my laptop was discharging at 14w even at idle and then would spike to 25-30 watts whenever I watch a YouTube video.

• I use gSwitch 1.9.7 created by Cody Schrank to just switch off the GPU and just use integrated graphics whenever I'm not doing work.
• I use low power mode whenever I'm on batter.
• I use Turbo Boost Switch Pro to disable turbo boost. It's a paid for app but it's well worth it.

As I'm typing this my battery is at 70% and time remaining reads 8 hours. That's probably too optimistic but at 70% I'd previously have been half looking for a plug socket with about 2.5 hours left so getting anywhere near 6 hours with 70% battery left feels incredible now.

Hoping this helps someone because it's driven me mad for years.

 

[SirThanksalot]

Wow,

I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else struggling with battery life on the MacBook Pro 16 inch from 2019. There are countless posts on this issue all over the internet so I know I'm not the only one who was still frustrated about this.

[...]

Hoping this helps someone because it's driven me mad for years.

Wow, thanks for the extensive reply. Definitely going to try that.
I actually did this step a few weeks ago because of a different problem I had. I am using Alfred instead of spotlight and I noticed that it has stopped finding files, so I checked Spotlight and it had the same problem. Somebody suggested putting all the HDDs into Spotlight for a while and then removing it, which would basically reset the indexing. It worked, but, as you probably have guessed, I re-enabled it again after that. Haven't tested the impact on the battery. That being said, how are you using spotlight, if at all? I am all down for getting more battery out of the Mac, but if it means losing Spotlight... phew...

Cheers

 

[Overfiend101]

Wow,

Wow, thanks for the extensive reply. Definitely going to try that.
I actually did this step a few weeks ago because of a different problem I had. I am using Alfred instead of spotlight and I noticed that it has stopped finding files, so I checked Spotlight and it had the same problem. Somebody suggested putting all the HDDs into Spotlight for a while and then removing it, which would basically reset the indexing. It worked, but, as you probably have guessed, I re-enabled it again after that. Haven't tested the impact on the battery. That being said, how are you using spotlight, if at all? I am all down for getting more battery out of the Mac, but if it means losing Spotlight... phew...

Cheers

I'm just not using Spotlight lol. To be fair, I never used it much anyway except to find specific folders in library when I'm trying to mess with specific apps so I can live without it if it means getting close to the advertised battery life. What I find crazy is that this issue has been going on for years and I haven't seen anyone specifically point out disabling Spotlight (or limiting it) in order to get advertised battery life. Crazier still is that Apple have don't nothing about this even after multiple OS updates

 

[SirThanksalot]

I actually did notice this. Specifically, when you see "Indexing..." from Spotlight in the top right corner. What I find strange is, that you can not, say, switch it to manual indexing. It's fine, if it does this once a week, but I see this popping up all the time. I don't use my Mac on battery much, precisely because of this. Would be nice to find a proper solution for this...

 

[Fishrrman]

If you want to really "disable" Spotlight, try this command in terminal:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

and

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Those are the commands I have in my archives that are intended to actually shut down Spotlight from any indexing at all.

They may be outdated now - if anyone has more recent versions, please post them.

 

[iMacDragon]

Do you get unexpected shutdowns/reboots? Spotlight really shouldn't be doing many heavy indexing passes normally, but I think crashes and hard shutdowns tend to force a state examination.