Safari+Video Streaming Energy Impact

[Clausewitz]

I generally don't seem to have battery problems. However, when I stream videos on Safari (the only browser on my M1 MBP), be it on proper streaming websites like Netflix and YouTube or social media websites like Twitter and Facebook I generally observe higher energy impact where my MBP sheds "time remaining" by an hour or more. "Energy Impact" against Safari appears to be usually in single digit when watching videos but expanding it shows Netflix, Youtube, etc have double digit impact. The Energy Impact graph at the bottom also starts to show hills & mountains.

This might be a logical or normal behaviour but I just wanted know what the general or across-the-board energy impact is like for other M1 MBP or even MBA users? I have not yet used my MBP to watch movies at full length or completely. So I don't know what the proper Energy Impact & battery drain is like.

 

[jdb8167]

It depends on if the video is using the hardware decoding or not. It is easy enough to tell, just run Activity Monitor and watch the CPU load. If it is using hardware decoding you won't see much activity. If it is using software decode, the CPU will spike. Obviously if it is using more CPU, the battery will drain faster. In general though, any M1 Mac should be using hardware decoding.

Edit: For what it's worth, Apple measures video battery time using AppleTV which definitely uses hardware decoding.

 

[bsmr]

With M1 MBA and Safari I have incredibly good numbers concerning CPU consumption. Better than any other browser.

 

[OldCorpse]

Well, that’s interesting. Because I find streaming video on Safari to be incredibly battery draining. To the point where I wonder if there’s something wrong.

In general the battery life is excellent, but not when streaming.

Using Safari, and only one tab, and running nothing else in the background and having installed no other apps, I find it drains the battery at a staggering rate. This is independent of what I am streaming - Apple TV+ (which btw. for me has a horrible memory leak that shuts down the streaming about an hour in and has to be restarted), HBO Max, Netflix etc.

Literally going from fully charged overnight 100%, to 50% within 3 hours of streaming. Now I have not streamed for longer, so I don’t know if it would go to 0% within 6 hours. I have however started out at about 50% and gotten down to 3% within 3 hours - although oddly, I got a message that the Mac will shut down due to low battery and that message remained there for some 40 minutes before I finally (it showed 3% battery at that moment) shut down and recharged it.

So at this point, I’d estimate my MBP can stream for 6 hours - does that sound right? Full volume and about 75% brightness.

Today, at 100% I’m going to start streaming Netflix and see how fast it drains with exact timing - I’ll be watching the series Fauda, so I have several seasons to go through, and I’ll be able to tell how fast it’s draining.

 

[jdb8167]

Well, that’s interesting. Because I find streaming video on Safari to be incredibly battery draining. To the point where I wonder if there’s something wrong.

In general the battery life is excellent, but not when streaming.

Using Safari, and only one tab, and running nothing else in the background and having installed no other apps, I find it drains the battery at a staggering rate. This is independent of what I am streaming - Apple TV+ (which btw. for me has a horrible memory leak that shuts down the streaming about an hour in and has to be restarted), HBO Max, Netflix etc.

Literally going fromfully charged overnight 100%, to 50% within 3 hours of streaming. Now I have not streamed for longer, so I don’t know if it would go to 0% within 6 hours. I have however started out at about 50% and gotten down to 3% within 3 hours - although oddly, I got a message that the Mac will shut down due to low battery and that message remained there for some 40 minutes before I finally (it showed 3% battery at that moment) shut down and recharged it.

So at this point, I’d estimate my MBP can stream for 6 hours - does that sound right? Full volume and about 75% brightness.

Today, at 100% I’m going to start streaming Netflix and see how fast it drains with exact timing - I’ll be watching the series Fauda, so I have several seasons to go through, and I’ll be able to tell how fast it’s draining.

That's odd. I just checked HBOMax and it is only using the high efficiency cores when streaming which almost certainly means that it is decoding via hardware. Have you checked Activity Monitor to see if anything is running and triggering the high performance cores?

The video doesn't capture during a screen capture but it was running. You can see only the first 4 cores are lit up and just barely. That is pretty low power usage. (Edit: The first 4 cores shown are the efficiency cores)

 

[OldCorpse]

Hmm. I’m starting to wonder if my battery indicator is miscalibrated. Because it went from 100% to 50% streaming for 3 hours, but then, the following day, I streamed again, and the last 10% didn’t change for 1.5 hours... as if it drains fast to begin with and then trickles for hours with little change. I’m going to drain it to zero, and charge again to 100% and see if that fixes it.