Real Life Battery Consumption - M1 MacBooks

[Le0M]

Hello everyone,

I decided to open this thread because I'm having battery issues myself with my new M1 MacBook Pro, and since I still cannot understand If the battery has some issues or it's just paranoia, I came to this conclusion:
It would be good if people shared their battery life while using the mac for a couple of hours doing this or that, with related display brightness and see how much the battery drains for that amount of time.
Having lots of these real life tests would make it easier to understand if some people are affected by real battery issues.
To make it easier and "universal", let's use the following parameters:

- Display brightness counted in "clicks", where 1 equals to minimum, and 16 being the max brightness. No use of percentage.
- Check the time using a watch, and not by using apps like activity monitor, iStat Menu etc. The more precise (hours and minutes), the better.
- Apps opened by the user, as in Safari, QuickTime, Music etc. and how long these were used. Again, the more precise the better.


I really hope this can be a sort of case studio, useful to the many.

 

[Le0M]

I'll start.

Using a MacBook Pro M1:
Safari for 30 min watching youtube
Safari for Netflix, 2h 15m
No other apps opened
Tot of 2h 45m
Brightness at 16 clicks (max)
Volume at 16 clicks

Battery went from 97% to 65%

 

[ascender]

How long have you had the laptop - I take it you've let all indexing finish?

From looking at your post above though, max brightness is always going to kill the battery quickly - do you always have it that bright?

I think your battery usage above is to be expected given the screen brightness setting.

 

[Le0M]

How long have you had the laptop - I take it you've let all indexing finish?

From looking at your post above though, max brightness is always going to kill the battery quickly - do you always have it that bright?

I think your battery usage above is to be expected given the screen brightness setting.

Had it for a few weeks, so no more indexing. About the brightness, according to some people it shouldn’t matter that much, since it uses 4W top.

 

[Quackers]

Had it for a few weeks, so no more indexing. About the brightness, according to some people it shouldn’t matter that much, since it uses 4W top.

Hmm, I'm on a M1 MBP and have just this Safari page open and I'm on 75% brightness and the power being drawn from the battery is 5.71 watts.
In fact it's just gone to 6.08 watts.

 

[rui no onna]

Browsing MacRumors with display brightness at 25%.

 

[Quackers]

Browsing MacRumors with display brightness at 25%.

View attachment 1702770

25% I can't see much at all at that brightness

 

[rui no onna]

Had it for a few weeks, so no more indexing. About the brightness, according to some people it shouldn’t matter that much, since it uses 4W top.

Brightness matters. As noted, I was getting 2W while browsing forums at low brightness (that's my comfort level). I posted on another thread before and with the same workload, power consumption was at ~2.3W with brightness at 25-30% (I use Siri to set display brightness so it's exact) and 7.3W with brightness at max.

Also, the M1 MBA has a 49.9Wh battery. Seemingly small differences in power consumption have a profound effect on battery life.

3W: 16.63 hours
4W: 12.48 hours
5W: 9.98 hours
6W: 8.32 hours

 

[matrix07]

Brightness at 16 clicks (max)

Wow! How your eyes can cope with that.. 😳

I normally set my MBA at 5 of 16 brightness.

 

[Apple_Robert]

6 ticks brightness surfing MR and I am using less than 3 watts.

As has been told to you several times now, OP, your usage pattern is what is sucking up your battery. There is nothing wrong with your M1.

 

[sbuntin]

Full brightness will kill your battery. Period.

First couple of days I kept some rough notes. I mostly had brightness at or around half or slightly lower. My preference tends towards brighter, but I was in dimly lit spaces, mostly.

No specific app usage, mostly just web (reddit, Facebook, wiki, YouTube) and Netflix or Apple TV. I was using AirPods, so there are some notes re battery life on those. Bit of Mail.app usage. Notes were usage or observations,
20:00 100%. Web, Apple TV (PIP). AirPods @ 98% or so.
21:00 99%
21:20 98%
22:00 95%.
22:30 93% 5 min blanked screen, downloaded small app, setup +finger id
22:45 92% Facebook
23:00 91% TV
23:30 89%
24:20 85% AirPods @ 10%
01:00 81%. AirPods charged to 90%
02:00 76%. —sleep——

08:30 wake.
0830 73% Apple TV, web, Facebook
0900 67%
0930 62% (photos high energy usage in background)
10:00 59%
10:30 55%
11:00 52%
11:15 Plugged in.

 

[mj_]

I use automatic display brightness so I literally have absolutely no idea what my brightness is set to. Neither do I care. It's 2020, not 1980. That's what sensors are for.

Battery life has been absolutely phenomenol for me. I use my M1 Air practically every day for 2-3 hours to get work done that I don't need a large display for and that I can do on the couch or the backyard, and I have to charge it less than once a week. As we speak I'm down to 27% with my last full charge almost seven days ago on Dec 22 in the morning (as I am writing these line sit is Dec 28 in the evening), and I used the Air regularly during the holidays.

 

[dmccloud]

I've been using my Mac for the last two hours both browsing these forums via Firefox and doing some work in Excel with the screen set to 6 for brightness. This machine has only used 7% of the battery in that timeframe, even with a bluetooth keyboard (Logitech MX Keys for Mac) connected in addition to my Apple Magic Mouse 2.

 

[ascender]

Had it for a few weeks, so no more indexing. About the brightness, according to some people it shouldn’t matter that much, since it uses 4W top.

Its the brightness.

Brightness is a big (relatively speaking) drain on battery. Don’t listen to “some people” 😃

 

[icymountain]

I have no M1 laptop, but can see that brightness has a huge impact on energy consumption on my intel based MBP. So, if we replace the chip with a more energy efficient one, the importance of the display can only grow. Thus, such observations are to be expected.

There is a lot of variation regarding to the brightness level and comfort too. In a bright room, or even worse, outside on a sunny day, maximum brightness sometimes seems barely enough. On the other hand, when I use my laptop in full darkness, even the minimum settings would be almost too much...

 

[CheesePuff]

Had it for a few weeks, so no more indexing. About the brightness, according to some people it shouldn’t matter that much, since it uses 4W top.

Whoever told you that is incorrect, the MBP since 2016 has a max output of 500 nits, which will eat right through battery. Try it at 3 notches from max.

 

[Le0M]

Wow! How your eyes can cope with that.. 😳

I normally set my MBA at 5 of 16 brightness.

If there is sunshine and the room ambient's brightness is high, I can't see much with 30% brightness.
Whereas at night, if lights are out, even 10% can be too much.
So I guess who uses 20/30% brightness either lives in incredibly low-light apartment (basically a cave), or only uses the computer at night!

 

[nobackup]

A bit of a **** actually. Your not using it as Apple measures and complaining that you don’t get what they say and also when people say that the screen is the killer and you even go so far as to state they live in a cave. Sorry if you feel offended but that’s what you just did to people trying to help you

 

[CheesePuff]

If there is sunshine and the room ambient's brightness is high, I can't see much with 30% brightness.
Whereas at night, if lights are out, even 10% can be too much.
So I guess who uses 20/30% brightness either lives in incredibly low-light apartment (basically a cave), or only uses the computer at night!

I use it at 3 notches below max in a bright room with many windows during the day, and its plenty bright. This is on the MBA 100 nit less panel too compared to the Pro.

 

[Quackington]

Full brightness? My word, my eyes just hurt thinking about that. I’m it’s probably because all of my devices and monitors are kept at the lower end...hurts my eyes if it’s too bright.

 

[Le0M]

A bit of a **** actually. Your not using it as Apple measures and complaining that you don’t get what they say and also when people say that the screen is the killer and you even go so far as to state they live in a cave. Sorry if you feel offended but that’s what you just did to people trying to help you

Damn, chill dude. First off, the fact that brightness would be a battery killer is a new thing to me.
Yet, it's amusing to me how many people are able to use 50% brightness or lower in daily use, since the sun shines bright, and on top of that we have artificial lights all around us.
So, if dozens of reviewers talk about amazing battery life, even when using the Mac outdoor, then I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe battery would actually last longer than 7 hours.
A funny comparison is the one with my previous mac: a MacBook Air late 2010. After thousands of recharge cycles, I'd still manage to use it at almost max brightness to watch 1 hour 30 minutes movie, before the battery would die.
A mere 5 times better battery than the 10 yo one, doesn't seem that great of an improvement as most people find it.

 

[Le0M]

Full brightness? My word, my eyes just hurt thinking about that. I’m it’s probably because all of my devices and monitors are kept at the lower end...hurts my eyes if it’s too bright.

My eyes hurt too, if the room is dark. But as I said, if it's sunny or there are artificial lights, than obviously me (and you, unless you got cat's eyes) need way more than 30% brightness. At night, for instance, I only use 10% brightness.

 

[Zazoh]

I use automatic display brightness so I literally have absolutely no idea what my brightness is set to. Neither do I care. It's 2020, not 1980. That's what sensors are for.

Love this line of thinking. So many problems in this forum can be traced back to folks trying to outsmart the technology.

I see the same with cars. Folks demand a Standard for extra pickup and gas savings. But transmissions and computers can do that better than ol clutch foot any day.

 

[mj_]

A funny comparison is the one with my previous mac: a MacBook Air late 2010. After thousands of recharge cycles, I'd still manage to use it at almost max brightness to watch 1 hour 30 minutes movie, before the battery would die.
A mere 5 times better battery than the 10 yo one, doesn't seem that great of an improvement as most people find it.

Maximum display brightness on the 2010 MacBook Air was 300 nits.
Maximum display brightness on the 2020 MacBook Pro M1 is 500 nits.

In addition, your 2010 Air's display's backlight most likely lost some of its illumanation capabilities in the past 10 years, and the display is at this point most likely down to no more than 250 nits.

If you want a fair comparison set the 2010 to maximum and the 2020 to 50%.

 

[CheesePuff]

Damn, chill dude. First off, the fact that brightness would be a battery killer is a new thing to me.
Yet, it's amusing to me how many people are able to use 50% brightness or lower in daily use, since the sun shines bright, and on top of that we have artificial lights all around us.
So, if dozens of reviewers talk about amazing battery life, even when using the Mac outdoor, then I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe battery would actually last longer than 7 hours.
A funny comparison is the one with my previous mac: a MacBook Air late 2010. After thousands of recharge cycles, I'd still manage to use it at almost max brightness to watch 1 hour 30 minutes movie, before the battery would die.
A mere 5 times better battery than the 10 yo one, doesn't seem that great of an improvement as most people find it.

a 5x improvement is not great??!