2011 Macbook Pro Battery Life Thread

This thread is about the battery life of the latest Macbook Pros. We know that Apple has attempted to redo how they do their battery life testing, but how accurate it is exactly we don't know yet. So . . . please post your model + battery times + what you were doing. I'll try to update this thread with other results from time to time.

UPDATED:

Okay, so if you don't disable auto switching to the dedicated graphics card, you are looking at about 5.5 hours total of web browsing with bluetooth off and wifi on with brigtness around half. If you disable auto switching with gfxCardStatus, and just use integrated graphics, then you are looking at around 7-7.5 hours of web browsing.

While taking notes in class in full-screen mode (half of the screen is black) in Word 2011, I get about 11.5 hours of battery life (wifi off) if this is the only thing you do.

I have the $2200 MBP 15" 2011 with the 6750m.

BATTERY LIFE TEST FROM KORNCHILD2002:

"I took my 13" Core i7 MacBook Pro to work today and used it until the computer shut down. The brightness was around 50% with it being controlled (along with the keyboard backlight) by the sensor, wi-fi was on and connected to an 802.11g network, bluetooth was off, and I ran Pages and Numbers along with playing music (mainly 192kbps VBR AAC files) in iTunes and receiving e-mail through Safari. It was able to go for 5 hours and 51 minutes before shutting down. That isn't bad at all considering all the crap I was doing while being connected to the internet."

-Laptop Mag Review got 5:25 hours browsing the web with $2200 15" MBP with 6750m. http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/apple-macbook-pro 15-inch-2011.aspx?page=3
-CNET video playback test yielded 7 hours 5 minutes! I don't know how a video playback test got more time than a web surfing test. Last years model only got 5 hours 56 minutes. So the new macbook pros lasted longer. But I saw a 2nd test that got 6 hour 40 something minutes for a video playback test. http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/apple-macbook-pro-winter/4505-3121_7-34512751-2.html?tag=rvwBody
-The new MBP 13 has longer battery life than the old one. According to LaptopMag 7:48 for the 2010 model, and 8:33 for the 2011 model.

 

So much for their realistic testing. Note to self: do not give Apple the benefit of the doubt.

 

Updated the thread with more info.

7 hours 5 minutes on video playback test on CNET. I'm not sure how I could possibly get such short time if they got such great time. It must not be switching the graphics cards properly or something.

 

Im thinking that using the wireless network card must use more battery then just watching a DVD? Unless the video was online..... Lol

 

spinning a DVD around and all the movement it entails will take much more power than a wireless network card.

 

I'm sure running Starcraft 2 On battery was the biggest drain there. Is there a way to check if it switches to integrated when done gaming?

 

I'm not sure if there is. Anyone else? There has to be.

The battery did seem to drain consistently quickly before and after video gaming. I closely monitored the percentage drain away. Also, should be noted that there was about 18% left after 3.5 hours. So we're probably looking at closer to 4ish hours total.

 

I rebooted and loaded nothing. I then proceeded to monitor the battery estimator. I was at 90% left, and it estimated about 7-7.5 hours left. I think that running steam/chrome got the processor up. I don't know yet. Anyway, I want to do more tests, and I will be sure to reboot the MBP because I think it starts in integrated graphics. Running other programs such as Steam switches the card over even if you are just downloading the games and not running them. At least that's my guess. This was evident by the fact that the computer was blistering hot, even on battery life. And I'm pretty sure it should be pretty lukewarm if you are going for energy savings.

 

if there was 18% left, thats over an hour according to their battery life claim. so that would put you at 4.5 hours after pretty brutally using the battery...

which isn't very scientific at all doesn't doesn't tell us much about how the battery compares to the previous models. the 30 minutes of gaming killed it.

 

I thought this smelled fishy until I realized that the MacBook Pro 15 has a 45W CPU and a 30W GPU. Running StarCraft II you could easily hit 80W, so 30 minutes of gaming takes 40Wh of battery.

The MacBook Pro 15 has a 77.5Wh battery. You used 82% or about 63Wh. If we assume that your 30 minutes of gaming used 40Wh, that means that the rest of your time (3 hours) took 23Wh. That's around 7.3W which is actually quite good.

I should also point out that Apple's choice to ship the new generation with 85W power adapters is unfortunate. The machine can easily draw over 85W under load (45W CPU + 30W GPU + 10W Thunderbolt + 5W USB + Disk + FireWire + Display + etc.) and it's plausible that the machine could hit 100W or more. Apple probably solves this by throttling the CPU or using the battery to handle the difference, neither of which are good options if you intend on using the machine as a desktop replacement.

To be fair, it's pretty rare that the machine would exceed 85W. But it's not implausible that you might use 80W pretty frequently (e.g. gaming) which effectively leaves no power left to charge the battery (at 5W the battery will take over 14 hours to fully charge).

Lenovo, HP, and others ship similar machines (quad-core + high-end GPU) with 120W power supplies. Apple should at least consider releasing a 120W MagSafe adapter as an option for people who are heavy users.

 

has anyone tried gfxCardStatus? I'm guessing it hasn't been updated to work yet... but has anyone tried it anyways?

 

Apple is definitely known for underclocking their GPUs tremendously, which is one of biggest draws of energy under certain loads. I agree that they should have a higher power adapter, but I think they also need a redesign since it can get really hot.

 

okay, so quickly:

1.) You played a game for 30 damn minutes. 30! How long do you think any other laptop would last after 30 minutes of gaming? If you don't know, I'll tell you: most computers would have used 50% to 75% of their battery life. HP Elitebooks and Asus G73's would have used almost all of it.

2.) If you have a web browser open, chances are about 95% that the discrete GPU was enabled. Also, if you have Hyperdock installed, it would have forced a switch to the discrete GPU. In fact, most apps force the discrete GPU in OSX. You'll need an app like gfxCardStatus to override that, but I don't know if that app is compatible yet.

3.) with 18% left, you would have still gotten another 45 minutes to an hour of computer usage. If you didn't game on the damn battery for 30 minutes, you probably would have had another 1.5-2.0 hours on top of that.

Who the hell thinks they're going to be able to game on a laptop's battery anyway and not expect a massive hit to battery life? is this your first laptop?

 

I guess I should correct it. I monitored my battery before and after gaming. I played one game of Starcraft II that lasted about 12 minutes + the loading time in and out. So total time was probably around 18 minutes. Anyway. It used about 12% of the battery, and didn't kill the overall test.

As far as 18% left, apple doesn't recommend using your battery down to the minimum as it's not good for this type of battery. I would only very rarely go below 10%, and that's where I would consider the typical cutoff is for most users.

So far, the battery seems to be getting around 5.5 hours with wifi on and surfing + facebook. I just don't see how they could possibly get 7 hours playing video if I can't get over 5.5 just surfing the interent.

I'll do some more tests and see if I can't get better life out of it yet. The true test will come when I take it to class and spend all day taking notes (I have 10 hours of class in one day, but I only take notes in some of the classes).

It would be helpful if others who have the new macbook pros could post their experiences.

Thanks!

 

Okay, so I'm going to be patient with you. I wasn't as clear as I should have been. But you don't have to go and be rude. This is about the 15th laptop I've owned in the last 5 years.

I wasn't claiming that the total runtime was 3.5 hours under typical usage. I was saying that under the conditions that I used the laptop, it ran for roughly 3.5 hours and had 18% left. This wasn't awful, but it sure seems like it would last a bit longer.

And the macbook pro seems like you should be able to game on it for about 2 hours before running out of juice. Or at least that's my estimate based off my experience for trading off 12% for 18 minutes of in-game time.

Also, just starting a browser shouldn't trigger a switch to the discrete GPU. The integrated GPU can handle anything a browser can throw at it just fine. If that is the case, I would definitely want to find a way to force the integrated GPu to stay on.

It seems that 7 hours was unattainable for me (even when just sitting with a browser open and idling) when it was attainable for others while watching video full screen. I would like to get to the bottom of why this is the case and how I can get better battery life. That is all.

 

Update: I downloaded gfxCardStatus and it seems to be working, though it has labeled the graphics cards incorrectly as the 9400M and 9600M GT.

Update: I have been monitoring when it switches. And yes, when the internet browsers are open, the dedicated graphics card turns on. I have been able to switch it back to the integrated graphics card as long as gfxCardStatus is reporting everything accurately.

 

I think it would be most helpful if the MBP version you own was posted as well as the summary of performance. Having a 13, 15, or 17 version, different CPU/GPU options, HD options, all of that has an effect.

 

I have the high end 15" with the 6750m in it.

Update: Since switching the graphics manually to the integrated card when browsing, the laptop seems to be able to go about 5.5 hours streaming video and taking notes in powerpoint.

I am taking it to class tomorrow for the first time, so I'll see how long it actually lasts. I'm thinking I can break the 7 hour mark now that I can keep it on integrated graphics.

 

The new MBP 13 has longer battery life than the old one. According to LaptopMag 7:48 for the 2010 model, and 8:33 for the 2011 model.

Source: LaptopMag
MyBlog

 

Thats good and expected as the graphics processor is built into the CPU with the 2011 model versus the Nvidia integrated chipset.

 

I used my MBP today to take notes in class with Microsoft Word 2011 in full screen view, brightness at 50%, and wifi/bt off. The class lasted for about 1 hour 10 minutes, and it used 10% of the battery. Correlate that out and you've got 11.5 hours of battery.

The battery calculator itself estimated over 10 hours of battery life remaining. This makes me very happy. Very happy indeed.

 

What software are you using to measure battery life? Do you have power consumption figures?

 

I'm just using the default battery estimator that comes with OSX and comparing it to the percentage of battery life drained over a certain amount of time and then multipying it out. Not the most scientific, but it is generally accurate.

gfxCardStatus has been updated for the MBP 2011 now. Also, I updated the thread to include more results after having the laptop for about a week now, I can say more clearly that the initial battery life was definitely being drained because OSX was activating the dedicated graphics when it wasn't really needed. This caused the laptop to heat up considerably, gave no performance boost, and cut about 2-3 hours off of the battery life time.

Moral of the story: gfxCardStatus is your friend.

 

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Well I would say that isn't a very accurate way to estimate battery life, because your usage may not be the same during the course of its battery life. Not everyone is going to be typilng up notes for 5+ hours straight. There has to be a few youtube/NBR checks .

Other than that the more powerful graphics card shouldn't turn on automatically when opening a browser window (although pages should render quicker due to hardware acceleration)

 

I took my 13" Core i7 MacBook Pro to work today and used it until the computer shut down. The brightness was around 50% with it being controlled (along with the keyboard backlight) by the sensor, wi-fi was on and connected to an 802.11g network, bluetooth was off, and I ran Pages and Numbers along with playing music (mainly 192kbps VBR AAC files) in iTunes and receiving e-mail through Safari. It was able to go for 5 hours and 51 minutes before shutting down. That isn't bad at all considering all the crap I was doing while being connected to the internet.

 

Okay, added it thanks.

Added info to first thread. Thanks!

 

1 hour of web surfing and writing = 90% battery life remaining.

haters gonna hate, but this thing is delivering in the battery life department.

 

it can be switched manually.

 

Can you test how long you can watch movies with it? My good old acer can hold out like 1.5-2 hours (enough for 2.5 castle episodes). Since i'm using the train a lot lately (and will probably do so a lot more in the future) I'm looking for a laptop that can entertain me the whole time.

[the only thing that I don't like is the lack of dedicated graphics in the mbp, which is a result of some sort of arguement, since this is off topic plz pm me if you got any info if this problem will be resolved in the future]

edit: nvm just saw the video playback tests which were posted on the first page

 

Just a quick tip, you can check your if your dGPU or iGPU is enabled by dropping to terminal and running glxgears. I don't know how yours will perform, but I get around 400fps more with the discrete. ~2500 igpu ~2900dgpu.

Testing in this way showed me what VectorX mentioned about manual switching and gfxStatus v2.0.1. Manual switching may not occur when running an application that enables it, then manually switching back.

 

glxgears runs through X11 ... on OSX, X11 links to OpenGL, so if your on dynamic GPU switching, it will switch to the GPU when X11 starts.

 

Ah thanks, I didn't know X11 switched it on dynamic. Guess I'm never on dynamic.

^^b

 

running GLXGears does not switch to d... so its not a good test. Starting glxgears starts up X11, X11 switches it to d, then glxgears runs in X11. If you just end glxgears, it will stay on d because X11 is still running. Close X11 and it should go back to i.

Apples dynamic switching is NOT based of GPU usage, its only based off what APIs and Frameworks a running program links to and may use.

 

Thats why the X11 build I make (WineskinX11) built into Wineskin closes itself out and doesn't keep running... thats one of many reasons I made my own X11 build in Wineskin and did not use X11.app... that along with being able to add in some nice custom features.

X11.app is a special case on OSX... its just for running software that was made for X11 and not native Quartz in OSX... so that mainly comes into play with apps made for Linux, and other *nix systems that all use X11 as their primary windowing server. (such as Wine)

Most all normal Mac OS X apps that use Quartz should have no issues locking the GPU on when you close them.

I do see this as a potential problem on Lion though... as by default that won't even show you an app thats running even if you think its closed and its not doing anything.