MacBook Pro M1 Max Terrible/Weird Battery Life!

[Shoitah]

Hi. I've been reading posts here for a while, but I just created an account because I wanted to hear other people's take on whether or not my situation is normal.
I have a macbook pro m1 max that's getting overall just terrible battery life. From 100% I have at most 6 hours of web browsing/video playback on chrome before it dies. I'm not running anything intensive in the background, maybe microsoft onenote or word. For a macbook that advertised up to 18 hours of battery life, this is just bad. I wasn't even expecting to ever get that full amount; I assumed that number was only for ideal conditions, on safari, on the M1 Pro. I bought my laptop expecting to get ~10 hours, but I barely get half of that. According to system preferences, the battery is at 99% health, and activity monitor doesn't instantly reveal any smoking gun; CPU seems to be about 10% utilized on average, and the laptop doesn't usually get particularly warm on basic web browsing either. The only hint I could find is that the 'Energy Impact' tab in activity monitor seems to always hover towards top half of the graph.
Is this all normal? Is 6 hours of web browsing to be expected for my machine? Should I consider getting my battery replaced?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you!

P.S. As for the 'weird' part of the title, I've also noticed that immediately after I take the computer off of the charger I temporarily get really good battery life. Like impossibly good. It can take up to 20 minutes to drain the first 1%, which works out to over 30 hours of battery life. After that first percent is gone, though, it resumes its normal rapid battery drain. I don't know if that's related or not, but it's worth noting!

 

[MBAir2010]

I read that chrome eats battery life with macbooks m1 in 2020,
and there were statements here were that was true then.
Fast forward to 2023 were it is taboo to tarnish chrome or google, but that maybe the cause.
so i will get severe backlash for typing this
but that is a reality, the cure is not to use chrome.
which sounds absurd but many delete the program and had better life.
oh there will be some defending chrome soon, so i guess wait and see.

my M1 air last 20 hours but I only use apple programs.

i hoped this helped.

 

[Shoitah]

I read that chrome eats battery life with macbooks m1 in 2020,
and there were statements here were that was true then.
Fast forward to 2023 were it is taboo to tarnish chrome or google, but that maybe the cause.
so i will get severe backlash for typing this
but that is a reality, the cure is not to use chrome.
which sounds absurd but many delete the program and had better life.
oh there will be some defending chrome soon, so i guess wait and see.

my M1 air last 20 hours but I only use apple programs.

i hoped this helped.

I've actually been hearing it both ways; some say chrome gets terrible battery life on m1, some say it's great. You'll hardly find an app that doesn't have some amount of people claiming it destroys the battery! Personally, I'm coming from using Firefox. I switched to chrome because I was hoping it would get me better battery life than Firefox, but that didn't seem to make a difference.
They say that safari is the best in terms of battery efficiency, but I can't use it because I rely on a browser extension only available in Firefox and chrome. Anyways, I barely get better battery life when I'm not even on the web and just using a text editor- maybe 7.5 hours.

 

[F23]

I have an M1 Max as well with poor battery life. I use it while plugged in most of the time so it's not an issue for me. M1 Max does use more power even at idle vs M1 Pro. I had both and noticed the M1 Max runs hotter at the same tasks as well. Also check your Activity Monitor energy tab and make note of which tasks are using heavy energy.

 

[brerlappin]

Setting the display to mid-brightness might help if you haven’t tried that yet

 

[Shoitah]

I have an M1 Max as well with poor battery life. I use it while plugged in most of the time so it's not an issue for me. M1 Max does use more power even at idle vs M1 Pro. I had both and noticed the M1 Max runs hotter at the same tasks as well. Also check your Activity Monitor energy tab and make note of which tasks are using heavy energy.

I always knew that the Max would get worse battery life than the Pro, but 1/3 the battery life doesn't strike me as reasonable. What kind of battery life did you get on your Max (when it wasn't plugged in) vs. the Pro?

Setting the display to mid-brightness might help if you haven’t tried that yet

I generally keep the display at mid-brightness. But in my (admittedly short) personal experience, having the screen set to bright or not had very little affect on battery life.

 

[TinyMito]

You have 14" or the 16"?
If you have M1 Max on 14" = rip battery. (Running a Lambo engine in a Honda Civic gas tank)
If you have Chrome as primary browser = rip battery.

 

[Shoitah]

You have 14" or the 16"?
If you have M1 Max on 14" = rip battery. (Running a Lambo engine in a Honda Civic gas tank)
If you have Chrome as primary browser = rip battery.

I have the 14" and I use chrome, lol.
Supposedly the M1 Max shouldn't be that much worse than the Pro when running normal tasks, as long as they aren't over utilizing the GPU.
I haven't tried Safari, so I can't compare it to chrome, but there was no noticeable difference after I switched from Firefox. There are many people who claim that chrome doesn't have battery drain issues on apple silicon.

 

[TinyMito]

M1 Max in a 14" known small battery won't be able to keep up the hours.

What you saw online about long life battery is rated on Base M1 Pro (not 10 cores) + Safari running video benchmark + 50% brightness. The marketing always list the best case scenario.

Everything else is YMMV.

Same issue with iPhone 12/13 mini.

 

[Shoitah]

M1 Max in a 14" known small battery won't be able to keep up the hours.

What you saw online about long life battery is rated on Base M1 Pro (not 10 cores) + Safari running video benchmark + 50% brightness. The marketing always list the best case scenario.

Everything else is YMMV.

Same issue with iPhone 12/13 mini.

I don't know. It's true I have the 10 core and I'm not using Safari (I am ~50% brightness though), 6 hours vs. 18 hours seems to be a little more than can be attributed to the differences in my setup. I certainly hope it's not! That's why I posted my question; I want to know if my situation is normal. But if it is, the M1 Max user base is unfortunately very small compared to the Pro, so apple can screw us over more easily.

 

[TinyMito]

I don't know. It's true I have the 10 core and I'm not using Safari (I am ~50% brightness though), 6 hours vs. 18 hours seems to be a little more than can be attributed to the differences in my setup. I certainly hope it's not! That's why I posted my question; I want to know if my situation is normal. But if it is, the M1 Max user base is unfortunately very small compared to the Pro, so apple can screw us over more easily.

1. You said Apple is screwing you over, I am about to stop discussion with you.
2. 18 hours video playback without touching keyboard or clicking or opening apps that causes CPU GPU spike usage.
3. Have a look today, 2023 model spec. https://support.apple.com/kb/SP889?locale=en_CA
4. A lot of YouTube online you can research before you start saying something stupid.

5. MBP 14 with M1 Max chip around 6 hours sounds reasonable on a small laptop battery compare to 16". Safari browser.

6. My 14" M1 Pro, I'm happy if I can hit over 8 hours light usage, most top at 6-7 hours. What you are comparing to is the best case scenario test.

 

[MBAir2010]

I don't know. It's true I have the 10 core and I'm not using Safari (I am ~50% brightness though), 6 hours vs. 18 hours seems to be a little more than can be attributed to the differences in my setup. I certainly hope it's not! That's why I posted my question; I want to know if my situation is normal. But if it is, the M1 Max user base is unfortunately very small compared to the Pro, so apple can screw us over more easily.

In a way  is reading their customers big time.
 developed this system (chip) to use with  programs like safari and pages, numbers etc. for better battery life.
when Big Sur and the M1 processor was introduces, Fracutti (the skinny developer dude) claimed that  programs run better with better battery life. The  ecosystem is designed for better battery life on  programs.

Seems to me that Google, sWindows and the other computer developers are not going to design their programs to make  laptops run better or they would lose the surface™ and other PC laptops market share.

hope this explains some aspects of  point of view in this tech battle.