Got the MacBook Pro M3 pro (16 inch) and the battery seems to be around 9-9.5 hrs? Is that consistent with y’all? I am reading very high numbers (14-15 hrs) from people on reddit, and I don’t know if that real or not. Lol
My usage
It seems a bit low but not worryingly. I have an M3 Max and typically get 10 hours of active use on a charge. My screen is dimmer but I probably have more running.
MacBook Pro M1 Pro
Get through a work day without loading up, that is like 8 hours with an external monitor and Excel and Google Sheets use mostly besides browser and mail (Safari and Apple Mail).
The machine is about 2 years old.
I’m very happy with the battery performance.
M1 Air purchased December 2020, currently sitting at 57% with 5:34 (estimated) remaining on this charge.
My primary usage is evenings and weekends (non-work time), so I tend to go 2-3 weekdays between plugging in.
The battery life in my M1 Pro 32GB 16" is overall a disappointment. Most significantly, it uses battery when it’s sleeping, and I can’t stop it. Sometimes when I open it after 12 hours in its bag, the battery has hardly changed. Other times, it steadily goes down. I can’t understand why it needs to use battery at all. Why is there no control for this? I have to think about it, i.e., am I damaging my battery if I go out of town without shutting it down? Will there be enough battery when I open it up? I put it in the bag with a full battery, so why is this an issue? Really disappointing.
And if I use Zoom, the battery goes down at least 20% per hour of video conferencing.
Your mac is 14 or 16?
Browser you use?
I have put it on Low Power Mode - “Always” and will see if anything changes.
16". I use Arc (also based on Chromium) with no special power saving settings.
huh. So, Arc is chromium and so is brave.
Thinking if I got a bad battery and return/replace it right now.
Also have the M3Max, 14". I have way way way too much running. I get 6-8hrs. Brightness is close to the Max. Tabs 50-60 - like any civilized human.
Haha, nice. It’s more like that for me when I’ve got certain game engines or IDEs open, but when I’m out without a cord, I try to do all of that work in one effort and then close them.
@andy4222 it’s probably not defective, just you using it a bit differently in a way that’s hard to measure. But since you have both the battery worry and had that key issue, and the return window is so easy to use, I’d replace it for the peace of mind.
I splashed out on a 16" MBP M3 Max 36GB back in November. It replaced a basic M1 Air and I was immediately amazed at the battery life. It will go a full workday no problem and very noticeably longer than my Air ever did. But I’ve never achieved advertised battery life on any of my Mac laptops. With the MBP I get >8 hours consistently including days with a few hours of lecture driving a projector, Zoom etc. As others have suggested there are many variables. Another variable would be the WiFi strength / quality. On campus, our WiFi was installed by the lowest bidder - the signal strength and connection time are crap. My battery life in the office is less than at home where I have mesh WiFi when doing similar tasks. For other potential variables, I use Safari whenever possible except for work web apps requiring Chrome, have both energy modes set to automatic, Lock Screen 2 minutes on battery, 10 minutes on adapter, Screen Saver after 20 so basically never. Mine discharges very little during extended sleeping. So I think your MBP battery seems well within normal specs.
M1 Max, 64gb RAM, the big GPU, etc.
At any given time, I have about 25 Figma projects open, some massive, some small, a few large Photoshop files, Asana, Illustrator, a few VS Code projects, Docker running 3 or 4 servers, Slack, a couple Safari windows with a few dozen tabs, and at least 4 Chrome windows each with dozens of tabs. RAM usage is always at 78% - 89%.
I couldn’t tell you what my average battery life is because I have yet to ever need to worry about it. I just plug it in overnight when I’m not at my desk and that does the trick. I work from my desk most of the time, so my starting point for the battery life is almost always 80% rather than 100%.
If I had to guess, I’d wager I get 8 full hours from that.
BTW, do you notice lesser battery on Arc compared to other chromium browsers?
I haven’t tested it, honestly, but I’ve read that Arc and Brave are roughly at parity. Arc’s battery life was significantly worse until fixes last year.