Mac OS X Lion battery life

Hi everyone,

I have a 2010 13" MBP that came with Snow Leopard installed. After a clean SL install, I upgraded to Lion. However, since the upgrade I've noticed that the battery monitor reports less battery life than it used to (5 hours in Lion versus 7-8 hours in Snow Leopard). Now, I know that the battery time is just an estimate that is subject to some degree of inaccuracy, but I also don't have the time to run the test myself.Is anyone experiencing this problem? If anyone else has this problem, have they quantified it?

Just a few things to note:
- Spotlight finished indexing when the OS was installed a week ago
- Top shows no rogue processes consuming too much CPU time

For the time being, I suppose I will go ahead and try the following:
- calibrate the battery
- reset the SMC

Thoughts?

 

I have a 2011 13" MBP and haven't noticed any changes like that when upgrading to Lion. I actually went through the upgrade process though, I did not perform a clean install of Lion as I didn't feel like going through the hassle (mainly just unauthorizing my computer in the App Store and iTunes Store, exporting my iTunes library file, etc.). My battery meter in SL would always hover around 6.5 hours even after my MBP was just unplugged from the charger. It would then take about 2 hours for it to drop to the 5 hour mark and then, after that, the time left would be pretty accurate for me.

I would normally get around 6.5 hours of solid use (wi-fi internet surfing, using Word, Excel, Keynote, and backlight set to ~50%) on a single charge and that hasn't changed with Lion. I was actually able to squeeze out 15 more minutes of use (making it 6.75 hours) in Lion the last time I ran a battery test.

As you already figured out, the best thing you can do is run a test for yourself to see if there really is a difference. I know some users are reporting 15-30 minutes of less run time under Lion.

 

recalibrate and reset SMC, also a PRAM reset doesn't hurt either.
I lost about an hour after installing Lion, but hopefully a few software updates in the future will fix it.

 

Hi kornchild, unfortunately I just don't have the time to wait for Lion to run down the battery. Furthermore, I don't have a Snow Leopard install to compare it to. For the most part my suspicions are limited to personal experience of what is normal, but I do recall significant differences in reported battery time between SL and Lion.

EDIT: @GPSE: Yeah, I'm hoping that the first Lion updates will address this issue. A quick look at various forums shows that other people are also experiencing lower battery life under Lion.

 

I want to know how you get 5 hours? Do you not watch movies or ever watch videos on the Internet?

 

Light internet use, typically reading news articles. Maybe a short Youtube clip. I have Adobe Flash installed for Lion, but I also use Adblocker and Flashblocker to minimize wasted CPU resources.

 

Well, to tell you the truth, I was using Windows 7 64 bit under Boot Camp for Microsoft Office Suite and a single charge last me for 7 hours 30 minutes flat with 50% brightness + wifi.

 

Backlight set to 50%, wi-fi turned on and connected to a 2.4GHz 802.11n network, bluetooth turned off, about 3 hours of surfing, maybe 2-3 sites with Flash in them, running Word, Keynote, QuickTime Player, VLC, and a few other things. I can actually turn wi-fi off and only watch 720p to 1080p videos and go above the 7 hour claim. Introducing Flash is mainly what kills things. Using the backlight at its full setting will also drain the battery faster and so will bluetooth.

Its quite easy for me to push past the 5 hour mark on my 2011 13" MBP when I am under OS X. I normally get about 4.5, maybe 5 hours if I am running Windows 7.

 

Even with 5 hours of battery life I still favour the MBP over other consumer laptops.

Anyway, I reset the SMC after calibrating the battery and it does appear to be reporting higher estimates (7 or 8 hours, with 11 hours reported while idling).

I'll post again if anything else comes up. Thanks to everyone for contributing!

Bog

 

Hmm I have a 17 and only getting 5 hours, maybe it's time to recalibrate and smc...

 

Should I wait 5 hours after running down the battery before I charge it again? I have read about it in some places to do that after smc reset.

 

Yes you do because your mac only goes to sleep when a low batt situation arises - there is still reserve power left in the battery that keeps the microcontroller alive. If you wait 5 hours or so the battery would be fully drained.

 

More info on battery calibration here:
Apple Portables: Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance

 

I get 8 hours with my 2010 macbook pro at 50% brightness. if it drops that much just from switching to lion i wont bother.

 

Apparently YMMV when it comes to upgrading. On a side note, I clean installed OS X Lion today after cleaning my Mac partition with my Lion boot DVD. Now, whenever I immediately unplug the AC adapter (and the battery is full), Lion is reporting that my battery will drain in 7.5 hours instead of 6.5 or 7. I didn't have time today to actually try draining my MBP's battery but I plan on doing a test tomorrow. I just find it interesting that clean installing would do something like that (if it is in fact using the battery more efficiently than upgrading SL to Lion).