Major Battery disappointment on MacBook Pro M1

[Le0M]

Hi guys.
I bought a low-tier MacBook Pro M1. After a couple of days of indexing etc, I was expecting the battery to last way longer.
Here's my setup and daily use:
- It is connected to an external HD monitor through a usb-c -to-HDMI adaptor, as well as an external mouse via USB.
- Laptop's display brightness roughly at half power, sometimes i even turn it completely dark.
- Apps running: Safari (just a few tabs, very little video watching, lot of forum and blog reading), and Activity monitor. That's it. No other "visible" apps opened.
- I also installed Adobe apps and Steam without really using them, and Anphetamine to be able to use an external display in clamshell mode without charging, and nothing more that could potentially run in the background.

Apparently, even though some Creative Cloud processes are running, they are not using much energy (at least according to Activity Monitor).
Anyway, here are a couple of screenshot for your understanding:

 

[acidfast7_redux]

Run the activity monitor for longer and get a solid full to empty run and see what's using the energy.

On my MBA with light duty, I'm at 14h and with the most intensive stuff I do, I'm a light user, I'm at 8h of Zoom on a single battery charge (over WiFi).

Good luck.

One common theme is browser plugins being energy sucks. I'd remove them all first and see if that helps on a full to empty run.

Have a nice Sunday!

 

[Le0M]

One common theme is browser plugins being energy sucks.

Haven't got any.

Run the activity monitor for longer and get a solid full to empty run and see what's using the energy.

That's simply the "Applications in the last 12h" view. But sure, I suppose I could run it again tomorrow and leave it on for several hours before taking a screenshot.

 

[Le0M]

I'm going to test if by - somehow - turning the Creative Cloud background processes off the battery improves.
Will post on this later on.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Try the same setup without the external monitor plugged in.

 

[justinf77]

Try the same setup without the external monitor plugged in.

Yes, this. Using your laptop on battery power to drive an external monitor is going to drain the battery much more quickly than it would otherwise. My M1 MBP battery life is insane.

 

[htnt7919]

I am curious how long of battery you are expecting ?

 

[Le0M]

Try the same setup without the external monitor plugged in.

Yes, this. Using your laptop on battery power to drive an external monitor is going to drain the battery much more quickly than it would otherwise. My M1 MBP battery life is insane.

How is this even possible in clamshell mode, considering that the Mac's display is almost 4K, and the external monitor is 1080p? The external monitor has electrical power by itself, it just needs the pixel data to be sent to.
Or am I missing something?

 

[Le0M]

I am curious how long of battery you are expecting ?

Definitely more than 8 hours of web surfing, since some people can surf for like 15 hours with several tabs and videos going on.
The first guy up here mentioned that he ran Zoom for 8 hours straight. And that drains the battery way more than surfing forums and blogs.
My Mac just went from 100% to 9% in 6,5 hours of incredibly light use. Only safari. I don't even have Mail app configured cuz I prefer the web version.

 

[torncanvas]

You should file a bug to Apple. It seems like they don’t report external displays as requiring more energy, when they should. So IMO this comes down to a lack of feedback in energy usage stats.

 

[Le0M]

You should file a bug to Apple. It seems like they don’t report external displays as requiring more energy, when they should. So IMO this comes down to a lack of feedback in energy usage stats.

Logic tells me that if the mac is in clamshell mode, i should consume less energy since i'm not using the mac's display; moreover, the external display is only 1080p, which requires less computing power to manage, compared to the almost 4k of the MBP.
Thanks for your input anyway.

 

[justinf77]

How is this even possible in clamshell mode, considering that the Mac's display is almost 4K, and the external monitor is 1080p? The external monitor has electrical power by itself, it just needs the pixel data to be sent to.
Or am I missing something?

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that when an external monitor is connected the Mac switches to a different power profile the strains the GPU more. It may be useful to install a monitoring utility such as iStatistica to monitor GPU usage when the external display is connected, and how it differs from when you're just running it on its own display.

 

[mobilephone2OO3]

Somethings definitely not right, low end MBP user here too, I fell asleep with YouTube running on Safari and woke up to over 50% 8 hours later:

When I first got it I had similar battery drain, somewhat unrelated but I had OneDrive constantly uploading a file over and over, which didn't show on Activity Monitor power drain. If you have iStat Menus you could keep an eye on the Amperage/Watts consumed as you change things, which is how I narrowed it down:

 

[Le0M]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that when an external monitor is connected the Mac switches to a different power profile the strains the GPU more. It may be useful to install a monitoring utility such as iStatistica to monitor GPU usage when the external display is connected, and how it differs from when you're just running it on its own display.

Good idea. Will give it a go. Thanks.

 

[htnt7919]

You have Anphetamine on your mac, are you sure the macbook display is off when it is in clamshell mode ?

 

[Le0M]

You have Anphetamine on your mac, are you sure the macbook display is off when it is in clamshell mode ?

No, but every time I use it in clamshell mode I turn the brightness to zero anyway. Although technically, if the screen is "on" it consumes more energy even at 0% brightness, that's for sure.
For the sake of it, I'll just avoid using Amphetamine and the external display, to see if it makes a difference.

 

[Le0M]

If you have iStat Menus you could keep an eye on the Amperage/Watts consumed as you change things, which is how I narrowed it down

I will definitely try this one out!
Thanks.

 

[torncanvas]

Just open the lid to check- oh wait

 

[Chrisjmv]

I'm going to test if by - somehow - turning the Creative Cloud background processes off the battery improves.
Will post on this later on.

How did you turn off the cloud processes? And if they are off - do cloud and Adobe programs still work?

 

[Le0M]

How did you turn off the cloud processes? And if they are off - do cloud and Adobe programs still work?

Sadly, after I turned them off I didn't try opening the apps, cuz I just wanted to solve the battery drain. Unfortunately as I opened Illustrator, the cloud processes started again............ NO COMMENT.

 

[1BadManVan]

Somethings definitely not right, low end MBP user here too, I fell asleep with YouTube running on Safari and woke up to over 50% 8 hours later:

View attachment 1692618

When I first got it I had similar battery drain, somewhat unrelated but I had OneDrive constantly uploading a file over and over, which didn't show on Activity Monitor power drain. If you have iStat Menus you could keep an eye on the Amperage/Watts consumed as you change things, which is how I narrowed it down:

View attachment 1692621

You’ve already lost 2% battery health? Seems a bit premature for something so new

 

[Honza1]

You’ve already lost 2% battery health? Seems a bit premature for something so new

Battery health can go down and up within few %. Nothing to worry about - yet.

 

[1BadManVan]

Battery health can go down and up within few %. Nothing to worry about - yet.

Fair enough, I don’t know how it’s measured on the macs compared to the iphones, my iPhone battery health never fluctuates, once it’s down it’s down lol

 

[D.T.]

Wow, my wife's new machine, a base MBA (8+7/8/256) had been spectacular with battery life. I did a clean setup, manually moved her data over via an external drive, let it settle down after the initial setup/indexing/etc.

She's using it for "general computing", browser, email, lots of photo organizing, messages, it went like 2 days on a charge. I installed a few apps, some Intel only (to check out performance with Rosetta), ran a few more graphic intensive programs (for just a few minutes), it just keeps going, and without generating any kind of heat.

 

[Honza1]

Fair enough, I don’t know how it’s measured on the macs compared to the iphones, my iPhone battery health never fluctuates, once it’s down it’s down lol

We do not know how the M1 notebooks will do, but my Intel MBP varied even within few days between 95 and 100% few times. Seemed to depend on battery use. Especially for first 6 months or so. Now is pretty stable. This is not unusual, more like this is common. If you install coconutBattery and record your battery health every few days, you get interesting scatter plot ;-)