What about battery life?

[gpat]

On my MBP 13" (Early 2011) I used to have 6-7 hour battery life with Snow Leopard, then I switched to Lion and it was reduced to 4-5 hours, how about Mountain Lion? Does it provide better battery life than Lion?

 

[Molson1020]

My battery life on my early 2011 17" MBP is around 6:00-6:30.

When I switched over to Lion, it was reduced to about 3-4 hours, but then I installed gfxstatus and always had my machine set to "Indiscrete Graphics" which bumped everything back up to normal battery hours.

 

[CheesePuff]

My battery life on my early 2011 17" MBP is around 6:00-6:30.

When I switched over to Lion, it was reduced to about 3-4 hours, but then I installed gfxstatus and always had my machine set to "Indiscrete Graphics" which bumped everything back up to normal battery hours.

so you're getting 6-6:30 hours on mountain lion?

 

[GermanyChris]

Mine seems better almost Snow Leopard but I'll find for sure tomorrow.

 

[Molson1020]

so you're getting 6-6:30 hours on mountain lion?

Yes, earlier today I got a solid 6 hours out of it by using it for basic web surfing/chatting/emailing.

 

[gpat]

Thanks to everybody for the answers.

 

[cmathis]

Is 3-4 hours normal for my 13" 2009 MBP? I used to get ~7 hours with Leopard, it dropped slightly with Snow Leopard, now this.

 

[ssn637]

Is 3-4 hours normal for my 13" 2009 MBP? I used to get ~7 hours with Leopard, it dropped slightly with Snow Leopard, now this.

Most users have reported a loss of 15 - 20% in battery life compared with Snow Leopard when upgrading to Lion. Mountain Lion's power management, at least on my 2010 13" MacBook Pro, is somewhat improved over 10.7.3. But I'd say on average that I've lost around 10% compared to 10.6.7 in idle use. Under heavier load CoolBook really made a difference, but we're going to have to make a choice eventually between the two. So far I've accepted the loss in battery life for the gain in new features Snow Leopard will never provide, especially now that iCloud support and a 10.6.9 update seem to have been rumors.