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Level 1

10 points

15" MacBook Pro i7 battery life mediocre

I figured I'd post on the forums to let everyone know how I'm faring with the new MacBook pro i7. I love the machine, first off. It's fast!!!! However, the battery life is the most important aspect of a laptop to me and this particular battery leaves much to be desired as far as charge longevity is concerned. Just to give you some numbers....after about 3 hours of web browsing, I'm at fifty percent of battery charge capacity. That extrapolates to around 6 hours of total available charge. Brightness is set at 50 percent with wifi and Bluetooth on. Flash sites visited made up approximately 40 percent of the total quantity of sites visited. There was much browsing and skimming occurring and very little in depth reading. More of an aggressive approach to surfing the Internet. I just feel that the battery acts very uneven in it's discharge of energy with respect to the indicator that is given to the user in the form of the battery percentage / time remaining calculation. It seems to discharge very quickly during the first 10 - 15 percent (in a matter of 15 -25 minutes) and then evens off a bit. It seems to give a more instantaneous reading rather than a rolling average usage reading. It's definitely not 8-9 hours, that's for sure. Kind of disappointing given the advertisement.

Message was edited by: hypo luxa

MacBook pro 15" core i7, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Apr 19, 2010 10:17 PM

157 replies

May 19, 2010 8:40 PM in response to hypo luxa

Now from what i've read on other websites is that there is a problem with the automatic graphic switching. Apparently light applications that don't use a lot of graphics are somehow triggering the discrete graphics to kick in and cause a lower battery life. Also from what i've heard apple is working on a update that will fix this issue and bring users to the estimated 8-9 hours of battery life. As it stands now I thought the 8 hours was supposed to be achieved when you are using the better graphics card and 9 hours on the slightly lesser graphics card. I haven't really tested my battery life out since I have it plugged in most of the time, but the few times i have used it on battery I've noticed large fluctuations in the estimated amt of battery life left when doing simple things like JUST talking on ichat.

May 19, 2010 8:42 PM in response to bond85007

Just wanted to note that i have os 10.6.3 not the old one in my other post and i have the i7 macbook pro with 4gb ram and 500gb hard drive.

May 19, 2010 8:46 PM in response to bond85007

@bond85007 my MBP i5's battery life is in same state

most of times laptop runs in intel graphics card but still battery charge estimation varies from 3hrs to 10.5 hrs

realistically battery lasts 5hrs

May 19, 2010 10:24 PM in response to bond85007

Several of the applications causing the switch use Core graphics. Those nice little blue buttons and other aqua effects need this (does iChat have these?). That is why they switch. As is mentioned elsewhere, Cody Krieger's useful little utility that appears in the menubar will monitor any switch and report (this also uses Growl). In that way, I am able to monitor the use of the NVidia card and quit those applications I do not need. As an example, I used to use Aperture open all the time. Now I only activate it when needed.

One of the criteria used in obtaining such good battery life as is claimed would be not having wifi on (Bluetooth too). After a couple of weeks in which I have "exercised" the battery, taking it right down, and then charging it full (also calibrating it), battery life is OK at about 6 hours with wifi. The squirrels gnawed my long Ethernet cable so I have not yet tried with wifi off.

As an additional point, instead of battery life display, try the percentage display. That seems to give a more honest display.

Message was edited by: Graham K. Rogers

May 22, 2010 9:23 PM in response to Graham K. Rogers

Do you know how to view which graphics card is currently being used? I called apple and they said they have gotten several complaints on the battery life and that the automatic graphic switching isn't working as intended. You could use aperature or anything that uses the better graphics card, but the system was intended** to switch back to the better battery saver graphics card when you weren't using that program. You can still have it open but if its not being used (minimized or just sitting in background) then the hd graphics should kick in instead of the better graphics card.

May 23, 2010 7:46 AM in response to bond85007

One of the easiest ways, which is mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is Cody Krieger's gfxCardStatus.

As to the automatic switching not working, I am not sure who told you that, but once you install that little app, you will find that it is working OK. Unfortunately, a lot more applications than people realise access the Core Graphics and that switches the cards. Once you get the hang of which ones use it, you can minimise the time they are active.

DCGOO

Level 3

769 points

May 23, 2010 8:11 AM in response to hypo luxa

...MacBook pro i7. I love the machine, first off. It's fast!!!! However, the battery
life is the most important aspect of a laptop

Then you probably bought the wrong model. Should have bought one of the i5s. Your battery life sounds about right to me.

Things that demand CPU performance, such as Flash, Java, iTunes, will kill your battery. Flash in particular, is really hard on the battery (one of the good reasons to remove it if battery life is important to you). Also if some application requests the high performance graphics, that knocks at least 20% off the top. You will only see the 8-9 hours if you are doing almost nothing with the machine (actually I see somewhat better than that on my i7).

May 23, 2010 4:33 PM in response to DCGOO

Yeah i'm by no means complaining about my battery life i'm just saying that from what I heard from apple tech support was that their 8-9 hours of est battery life is not what people are getting because the nvdia graphics card is kicking in when it doesnt need to be. I love my i7 and wouldn't have gotten it if I didn't want something with this kind of power.

May 30, 2010 4:00 AM in response to hypo luxa

i have a similar problem on mi 15", relating to battery drain. I think its the hd that is not resting when it should. Please, test it, see if in isle mode the hd stops to spin. If this is the problem, report it in the thread i´ve created

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2445037&messageID=11590559#115 90559

thanks

May 31, 2010 9:49 AM in response to Rod Hagen

Rod my full charge capacity has been fluctuating from when I first got it at 7000mhz down to 6700. I only have 9 cycle counts and that number moves all over the board. Now its at 6866 where last night it was at 6895. I don't understand why it keeps jumping around and I also don't know what to do to get it back up to what a lot of other people are getting theirs at. For the first few weeks i've had this thing i've kept it plugged in remembering that it has adaptive charging, but the lady on the phone from apple said its good to keep charging it and using it off battery. So i'm confused (i've read the how to get the most out of your battery article) from apple, but how should I be using my macbook pro to get the most mhz and to hopefully increase that number up back into the 7000's again like everyone else seems to be getting?

Jun 3, 2010 11:35 AM in response to bond85007

I have the i7 15" MBP and I love it to bits. the HD screen is out of this world!

my battery seems to last a nice time. Coconut was showing 1 cycle and 97% when I first got it and I was shocked. I have just checked again and now I have 2 cycles and 100% capacity lol. also strangely current capacity is showing 6957mah original capacity 6900mah lol

just installed the cody gfx status to keep an eye on the switching and it's in intel mode so far.

not to say too much about the heat since this is a battery thread, but mine runs really cool.

Jun 7, 2010 3:01 PM in response to hypo luxa

I too bought the i7 maxed out, last month. I agree the battery has much to be desired. Yes I have calibrated the battery as I do on every device I have. Yes the contrast and energy settings are set to yield the maximum batter time. No I don't have a coffee pot plugged in or hair dryer plugged in. Apple batteries just are not good period. However my new ipad 3g battery is amazing! I repeat, "amazing!!!!".

Jun 8, 2010 1:48 PM in response to VoyagerII

LOL. Pages is an offender, which is one more reason to use Microsoft Word....

RockyRoad

Level 1

114 points

Jun 12, 2010 7:04 PM in response to hypo luxa

I ran my first calibration drain run yesterday on a 2 week old 15" i7 with HiRes screen and 7200rpm disc.

25% screen, WiFi, no Bluetooth, no Apps running except XBattery, XCharge and Coconut Battery (I went to bed).

5hours 10 minutes.

But after reading this thread and installing gfxCardStatus I notice that the wClock menu app holds the GPU to Nvidia (and I notice its PPC), so I've switched back to showing standard Apple Date and Time and I'll try again tonight.

RockyRoad

Level 1

114 points

Jun 13, 2010 5:46 PM in response to RockyRoad

RockyRoad wrote:
I ran my first calibration drain run yesterday on a 2 week old 15" i7 with HiRes screen and 7200rpm disc.

25% screen, WiFi, no Bluetooth, no Apps running except XBattery, XCharge and Coconut Battery (I went to bed).

5hours 10 minutes.

OK, Last night I ran the exact same settings except that I had the GPU on integrated instead of Nvidia, and I got an impressive *8 hours and 20 minutes* till forced sleep.

That's a 61% Increase in battery life.

I don't know if that increase came just from the GPU change, or also power management gains from the first full calibration drain the night before - possibly a bit of both - but it is a significatn increase.

Off course this is not really real-world usage as the computer was sitting idle while I slept, but at least it gives an idea of the maximum. A big change from the 2-3 hours I was getting on my previous non-unibody Macbook

15" MacBook Pro i7 battery life mediocre