MacBook Pro 16 inch battery life

I observe that running following apps drain battery and fan runs fast (also system heats up to 70C):

1. Final Cut Pro X,
2. OBS
3. Prism Live Studio
4. After effects
5. Apple Motion
6. Camtasia
7. Cinama 4D

So sad, but atleast MCB should work fine with OBS/Prism Live Studio and Apple motion :(

I've been following this thread for a while now, and I think it's safe to say we know the following things:

1. The battery life will not last 11 hours unless you are doing very specific light tasks. (I've had the the time remaining peak at 15 hours, but if I use graphic (dGPU) intensive programs like After Effects, I'll only get a 2-3 hours of battery.) Typically, I get 4-5 hours working in Adobe CC apps and running Safari and Mail and other basic apps. Sometimes 6 or 7. I'm fine with that. If I need hardcore performance, I just plug in.
2. The screen and dGPU drain the battery the fastest (Turn down your brightness and the battery life increases dramatically. It's too dark to see anything, but it tells you what's draining the battery.)
3. My experience is that the battery is the worst in the first few weeks of use, but then it levels out. Still not 11 hours, but an average 5-7 hours, which I'll live with.

Now, the other issues I'm having are:

1. Kernel panic on wake from sleep causing the computer to restart, and;
2. Apps that use the dGPU crashing with considerable frequency (daily, if not more). For me it's usually something from the Adobe CC collection: InDesign, AfterEffects, Illustrator or Photoshop.

I'm wondering if anyone else is having these issues (I know some mentioned Kernal Panics from wake). Is this a widespread issue?

What are the apple specs?

I only see this on the website

• Up to 11 hours wireless web
• Up to 11 hours Apple TV app movie playback
• Up to 30 days of standby time

But on one is getting this values and not even specs for dGPU use?

how do we let apple reply on this problem?

Guys here is my UPDATE -

Specs:

• 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
• 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4
• AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB / Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
• 2 TB SSD (165g FREE)

Purchased July 10th.

I have done literally EVERYTHING shy of rewriting the HD and installing everything manually. At this point I have done the following:

• Ran Diagnostics (came back fine)
• Run Activity Monitor (no seen/known issues)
• Completed 6 Power Cycles discharging to 0% and charging back up to 100%
• Tested Safari vs. Chrome (surprisingly Chrome drew less RAM and gave me 2% longer battery life)
• Reinstalled Catalina 10.15.6 (19G73) from Recovery Mode
• Checked Battery w/Apple Senior Advisors

Issues I have seen/experienced:

• Significant battery depletion (100% to 0% in 2.5 hours running 4 tabs on Safari and Mail in background) 55g FREE RAM
• Experienced the fan speeding up to high RPM within 30 minutes of start up after being off all night
• Intermittent browser issues *Safari that did not happen with Chrome

I have spent hours + on the phone with Apple Senior Advisors and Level 3 techs. Nobody has any idea even though this is a known problem! Senior advisor claims it was the first she had heard of it although there are a ton of documented cases. Nothing I have done at this point has improved the issue and it seems it is NOT an isolated incident. This machine was around $4700 and is used as my primary machine for a digital agency. *Sending this machine back (one week) and waiting 2 weeks for a new machine, which may or may not have the same issue is simply not a practical solution. I'm losing time and money daily. My MacBook Pro 2012 with a new battery lasted longer than this. APPLE please have your engineers sort the issue out. I suggest issuing a RECALL on these items as many professionals are losing precious work time. An almost $5k machine that in under 2 weeks isn't working as specified is a huge issue and our agency will not hesitate to vocalize the issue to gain attention and have it fixed on behalf of professionals everywhere. This is NOT ETHICAL. You have to know the issue exists as its documented countless times since November or 2019. *PLEASE ADDRESS this and get it fixed STAT!

Hi all,

same probem on my Mac 16 inch. I did 12 cycles and my battery life is already at 97%.

When fully charged, my battery has about 7 hours of life for normal internet browsing with Chrome, 8 with Safari, but I'm still far away of two hours from the expected battery time proclamated by apple.

Below my info:

I think it's easier to check the current GPU by going to activity manager > energy tab > bottom panel

I'm averaging 4-6 hours now that I stopped using the app Station (getstation.com) and started using "Mail for Gmail" instead.

You're right. The issue is almost exclusively the dGPU. That's what I discovered when I found this app was causing it to be on all the time.

Apple states on their website discretely about graphics performance hits on battery life. Someone stated earlier that Apple should mention how much battery life gets hit when using the dGPU. That's not possible because certain apps like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Creative Suite and other power apps are more CPU intensive and there's no way to give a proper guide on battery life because of this.

Guys this is not an "Apple issue" nor is this an issue dedicated to the 16" MBP. This happens on all Windows laptops with discrete GPU's. I see the same arguments about the Lenovo X1 Extreme and the Dell XPS machines with dGPU's. I've been buying Macs for over 25 years and when Apple switched to Intel CPU's and introduced automatic graphics switching in System Preferences they were able to achieve lower battery consumption and advertise longer battery life in the 15" models, but it is application dependent.

Someone else here said there should be an option to switch only the Intel Integrated Graphics. That wouldn't work because the 15" and 16" models use the lower grade Intel Integrated Graphics and you won't get fluid performance from the apps that need the dGPU.

I honestly don't have a clue why Spotify needs the dGPU. iTunes and Apple Music don't activate it. Obviously the Spotify developer has their reasons for doing so. Please view the attachment I posted from Apple's website on how battery life is affected from the dGPU.

Same config.

2019 16" MacBook Pro

2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

32 GB RAM

2 TB

Is it normal for battery to be <97% of design capacity after only 15 cycles?

Previous machines I have had have been at 100%+ during early use.

<<Now, the other issues I'm having are: >>

There appears to be a flaw in the latest software that brings out the WORST in the graphics chips -- crashes on wake from sleep.

The work-around is to disable Power Nap. Then if no joy, disable the top item in the red box:

.

I read somewhere something about the non-charging problem but I'm pretty sure that it can be solved. Just I don't remember how because I'm not involved and I didn't managed to. Maybe I can suggest you to open a different topic for this because it's not related to the power consumption. Regarding the 98% health battery, it's the same for me. Right out of the box it was 98% already, now I'm at 95% (read "SALUTE", it's health) after 8/9 months

Anyway, regarding the fan or not fan, I think that taking an hard position it's pointless. I'm a fan too, I love apple products, indeed I'm here to post and I own the entire echosystem. My wife too and my parents too. I'm only saying that on this particular machine (the mbp16) I'm suffering this problem of the battery, which I've never experienced with other macbooks. I hope that Apple silicon will solve this.

just another update

I post my battery history here for past month. This is brand new MacBook Pro 16 base model that I received at the end of Aug 2020. I have done SMC /PRAM reset a number of times, my battery never went back to 100% again.

I hope Apple could admit there is an issue and fix it as early as possible.

Thank you!

I was having this issue with 16" MBP, and resetting SMC absolutely solved it for me.

Over the course of multiple days (with restarts in between), I was only getting about 2 hours of battery life (with general web browsing). I could hardly believe it on a new machine and knew something was definitely wrong.

After resetting SMC, I'm now in the 8+ hour range of battery life while performing the same tasks.

Trying to figure the same thing out for the USB-C cables, I've got 4 of various ages, including one from an iPad Pro, none of them have writing on them including the new 16" macbook and I have no good way to tell which is which. Weird that a support article would state something so directly that doesnt seem to actually be true?

My case: I've talked with my reseller and asked to return the Macbook. Probably I'll buy the next one on Amazon, so the return/refund will be lot easier. If the next one will suffer the same problem, then I will purchase another product (Razer, for example).

Apple must declare if this is an actual issue (HW or SW does't matter) of certain units or it's the normal behaviour of any 16''.