MacBook Pro Unibody Battery Life

The new MacBook Pro (Unibody, late 2008) has been out for a month now. For those of you who regularly use the MBP on battery:

How long does your MacBook Pro (Late 2008) last on battery?

Please post your configuration in the comments too: 2.4 or 2.53, SSD or HD, 7200 or 5400 HD.

 

I voted 3-4 hours. Wifi on, bluetooth on, brightness about 2 thirds up.

2.53, 5400RPM HDD.

 

i second cdnalsi ...my battery lasts 3-4 hours but i keeps on changing...but beware, the battery decreases very quickly when gaming under windows xp...in fact i think i will put vista on it and replace the xp...i still have to read how to do this... hdd 250gb 5400

 

depends on what you're doing, obviously. here is my config:

2.4, 7200rpm hd

in class taking notes with no wifi and very low brightness i can get a solid 7 hours (4 x 80 minute classes with some power leftover at the end of the day). web browsing automatically cuts me down to 5 or less. add some brightness (to make it usable for anything other than word processing on a white background) makes it around 4 hours.

compares pretty favorably with the last gen macbook pro, which is what i replaced this with. this is all on the 9400m btw... the 9600 kills my battery.

and vista is pretty bad on battery life too, for the above poster. i use vista 64 ultimate, and the same battery that can last me 7+ hours in os x dies in 2-3. os x is just fantastic with power management.

 

ya 3-4 is normal, thats all I get on my macbook.

 

that's only 5 hours and 20 mins, i haven't heard anyone getting 7 hours on these, but if you can prove it i'd love to see.

 

beeepsssss, wrong math!
4x80=320 min = 5 hours 20 min (not 420 min=7 hours ) I guess you are not engineering/accouting major!

 

I get over 5 hours of battery life, with brightness set under 3/16, wifi on, bluetooth off, and 4-5 apps running.

 

1. He just said that he has "some power leftover at the end of the day". I'd assume he put that into the 7 hour estimate.
2. I have yet to see university classes that are back to back. Most of the time there is time in between classes to get to the next one.

 

Thx everyone who voted! Very interesting.

@vm7118 (despite the wrong math) it's pretty interesting to see what happens when trying to stretch the battery as far as it will go. So thanks for that!

 

I was going to point that out too but some power left over still doesn't sound like "a full 1 hour and 40 minutes left over", so I still think the math was a bit off there.

Despite that, vm7118 posted some very good data on web browsing vs. stretching the battery all the way. That's the kind of stuff I want to know!

 

Doesn't sound any better than what my second generation Macbook used to get, which was a bit over four hours. The new macbook doesn't sound like an improvement in most respects.

 

its kind of hard to improve battery life.
especially for a 15.4" laptop

and if im not mistaken, they shaved off one pound of this iteration.

 

Nope, the new MBPs are actually heavier than the "classic" MBPs.

I think what happened was that there was some reduction in power usage, but as compensation, they lowered the capacity of the batteries. The Unibody batteries definitely have a lower capacity than the older batteries.

 

I am actually quite shocked to see my battery life being 3 hours only... How could some people possibly get more than 4 hours. ( I have wifi and bluetooth off and 60% brightness)

 

Late 2008 MBP here. When I use as follow:

- Brightness 3/16 bars
- Keyboard backlit 3/16 bars
- WiFi ON
- BT ON
- 9400M GT ON
- 3-4 apps on

Battery life: not more than 3 hours. WTH?? I even tried using my friend's battery (same MBP spec), and same thing. He got the same battery life..

 

I get over 5 hours with wifi on. I keep my brightness at 1 or 2 bars though. The others are too bright for me.

 

Try switching to the integrated graphics of the 9400M, as the 9600M GT will suck the battery life very quickly because it is a dedicated graphics card and needs more juice.

 

I did, per my previous post. I am wondering if it has anythig to do with BACKGROUND APPS. I have the following running:

- Earthdesk
- LittleSnitch
- LiveMesh
- Sync

 

yeah. probably.

 

yes check your background apps....anything cpu intensive will make your battery drain faster

 

If you use the application HandBrake, you cpu will go through the roof in terms of usage. While using HandBrake on my 2.4GHz MB, my battery life dropped dramatically to 1:17 battery life left.

 

I have Activivty Monitor running and none of the background apps listed above perform significant CPU activity.

With the exception of LiveMesh, I think many people also runs the same background apps (LittleSnitch, Sync, etc.)

 

It could be that Mesh and any other sync service or application are constantly polling small amounts of data over the internet, thus reducing battery life. Just a thought...

 

I was reading the MBP review in MacFormat magazine and their battery test yielded about 2.5 hours.

Since I got 3 hours, with all the background apps and normal running apps (Firefox, Entourage, Word, etc.), I don't feel so bad...

 

Its hard to believe how inconsistent all of these battery life claims are. Does anyone know if the new MB last longer than the pros?

 

I've got 5 hours left with FireFox, Safari, and a notebook cooler, and a 500GB HDD hooked up to it.

 

@ chargerbaseball25 - 5 hours huh? Very nice. I haven't tested my battery on my MBP yet, but I'm hoping to get around 7 hours on lowest settings with only iTunes open. It would be even better if it got me through the 10 hour flight from US to Vienna.

 

Hah, 10 hours is pushing it a bit, but you might be able to pull it off. Just make sure you have you GFX on you 9400M, lowest settings, and ONLY Itunes, and you will have a better chance for 7 hours. Good Luck!

 

i think he was being sarcastic...

i wish i got 5 hours with my mbp. i got four hours after i first cycled the battery, but for some reason i havent gone above 3.5 hrs since.

 

Yeah, I was being sarcastic, but the smileys weren't working when I did that post. Past 5 hours would be fantastic with the new MBP, let alone 7-10.

 

Are you all serious? I can't seem to eek more than 2 hours out of my unibody MacBook Pro 15". I have tried EVERY thing. I have set the brightness to the lowest I can read it by, I have restored defaults to 'Better Battery Life', quit out of any and every application I am not using, turned off wireless, turned off bluetooth and am lucky if I make it near to 2 hours. I know the time is accurate, as I commute 2.5 hours and rarely make it even 2/3 of the way before losing power. Maybe I need to take my machine in for a once over.

MacBook Pro 15"
2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1067 Mhz DDR3

 

I get around 3 if I am lucky with bluetooth turned off and wifi on just surfing the web. I think my older Macbook Black had better battery life and it used a 5400 RPM HDD instead of the SSD I now have in my Macbook Pro.

The Macbook Pro is a great Macbook with the only 2 complaints being it is big/heavy and battery life is not the greatest. I think a new Macbook with a SSD in it would be better for battery life than a Macbook Pro.

 

Take it to apple store and ask for replacement

 

yes, sounds either like a bad battery or you are running it in performance mode(with the 9600m gt)

 

even in performance mode I get more then 3.5 hours...

 

I also think the lower battery life might be attributed to using a 35w processor in the higher end MBP, vs the P8600 25w proc in the lower end MBP and High end MB.

I'm interested to see what someone with a P Series processor and a SSD would get for battery life. Although you'd have to be pretty dedicated to spend 7 hours 'word processing' without BT or wifi hehe.

 

Chyeah, if you let it sit there

It's weird - more Apple users than any other manufacturer's owners I have to say have this odd habit of playing up their runtime, just like everything else - the sound is better, the display is better, etc etc.

UMB2.4 = ~4 hours maximum for me on ekeing (power save, display 1 segment) in a useful configuration (i.e. Wifi or BT on) running normal apps.
UMBP152.6 = ~15 minutes less(IGP, same as above).
UMBP172.9 = ~6 hours max(IGP, ditto).

Perfectly OK runtimes, but not outstanding - and actually limiting in the case of the 17 given the hype. A real 8 would have worked for me, but as it stands it's not quite there. With the 15MBP (the sole reason I have them now - I prefer working on the 17 when I actually need a GPU under OS X) I can extend runtime for true all-day working.

 

Oh you are such a child...cant sleep w/o comments like that?

 

Just an observation.

 

lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

after reading all the threads in this post, I am just wondering then why did apple say that the macbook pro's 15 inch battery can last for 5 hours? I am sure that its probably not 5 hours exactly and they say so in order to sell more but I would of expected it to be no less then at least 4 hours but as I am reading, most of you are getting 3 hours on average.

Did apple lie to us all?

 

^well,if you take time and do a little research,you will see that ALL companies are 15-30% more optimistic with their batteries...however,judging from my experience,apple is quite accurate and their claimed battery time is in +-10% range...take a look at their website-they exactly say in which conditions the battery was tested.

 

I'd play you out with Keyboard Cat for that display of empty 'wit', but all of these vacuous substitutions depress me.

@dmitrip: As the tired-meme-throwing-around-one says, Apple do quote ideal figures as do many other manufacturers. That is no different. They may be a tiny bit more overoptimistic than many makers, but not by a huge deal normally. However some premium makers on a par with (or one might argue better than) Apple do quote noticeably more conservatively - in the same mode of use as I get a ~70-75% actual vs claimed ratio with Apple, I can almost hit claimed times on e.g. many Sony gear.

 

Im pretty sure in an warm environment, with wifi, bluetooth and other apps turned off, screen brightness at one, hard drive idle staring at the screen and moving it before it goes to sleep you could get 5+ hours

 

If im playing a game or anything else thats intensive..I can get the battery dead in an hour....

If I'm being conservative and just taking notes and using a web browser (with wifi) I have gotten slightly over 5 hours...

thats why they say you can get up to 5 hours.. not that you will get 5 hours.

and this is on a late 2008 unibody 2.53ghz stock machine.... but when im doing hardly anything, and its running cool, I underclock the fan speed down to 1000rpm instead of the default 2000rpm, probably why I got over 5 hours instead of close to 5 hours.

 

i wonder if there are any other 15 inch laptops out there that can actually out perform the 15 inch macbook pro in terms of battery life(without having any larger batteries added to the laptop) anybody know? I always thought that the macbook pro pushes the battery technology to the limit and a maximum of 5 hours is probably the best any laptop can do with technology available today.

 

And how do you underclock the fan speed to 1000rpm?? Apple default is 2000 and therefore SMCFan Control minimum speed is also 2000rpm.

 

in SMCfancontrol you can go edit its plist and edit the min and max speeds of the fan for your settings... I havent wanted to try less than 1000