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Brand new Macbook Pro 2020 13" Battery Drain

Hi there. I have a brand new Macbook Pro 2020 13" 16GB RAM. It's about two weeks old, and I've used it every day. I am surprised at the very short battery life.


I'm testing it right now. I have one thing open on my computer - this webpage I am typing this into on Safari. There are some standard items in the menubar, and some Finder integrations (that I can see are still running). I am running Battery Health 2 as well.


I think the indexing should have finished by now, right?


Brightness is down at about 20%. Probably less.


With my battery sitting at 86% now, it's telling me that I have just over 3 hours left. If we're supposed to get 10 hours life out of a battery, then I should have 8.5 hours left.


Now, I know with normal use I won't get 10 hours. But I have it sitting here on pretty much as minimal as I can get it, and yet the battery is draining over twice as fast as the advertising suggests.


It's running at 15.9 watts, 1363mA, 12.03 V. Current Max is 5056mAh. Original was 5088mAh. 12 cycles, 2 months old. Temp is 31C 88F.


Running Latest version of Catalina.


Is it possible I have a problem? Or is this "normal" and Amazon's claims of 10+ hours battery life just a load of rubbish?


In the time it's taken me to write this post, battery has dropped from 86% to 83%



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Posted on Oct 17, 2020 12:10 AM

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10 replies

Oct 17, 2020 4:22 AM in response to BrettOnTheNet

I bought the same computer, 2.0ghz 4TB 16gb, two and a half months ago. I struggled hard with this battery shortage for the first month. I had telephone support two or three times. They recommend;

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204054

They told me to do a battery cycle from the activity monitor and watch the apps that use the most power, and it didn't work. The only thing that consumed power was the Safari application, it was the only thing I used. Finally, they stated that if I am not satisfied, I can return it. After my 2015 Macbook Air computer, the battery issue has been a complete fiasco for the new Macbook Pro. Pro devices consume more power and are not good at battery. This was the result of all my research in this month. I use it plugged in as much as possible now. But there are a few advice I can give because we bought this device to be portable and it was disappointing that the battery didn't last for 10 hours. I hope you can get up to 8 hours of usage time as needed with these recommendations.

  • Cancel Turbo Boost of CPU (2.0 GHz base clock speed is sufficient for daily tasks)
  • From Security&Privacy>Location Services>System Services(Details) turn off everything except Find My Mac
  • Use only Safari for internet browsing
  • Turn Bluetooth OFF
  • If you doing offline tasks, turn off wifi as well. This gain at least one hour more.

By doing this, I can increase my usage time to 8 hours. I hope it helps you too

Oct 17, 2020 5:14 PM in response to BrettOnTheNet

You should NOT be running a third-party Virus scanner on your already well-protected Macintosh computer. Contrary to the developer's advertising it compromises (not improves) your security, and waste resources, and as you will see again soon, runs out the battery for nothing.


Effective defenses against malware and ot… - Apple Community


Only slightly better are third-party file Sync apps. They also scan your files incessantly, rather than just consulting MacOS, because they are ported from other platforms.


DropBox, backBlaze, google drive, iDrive etc.

Oct 17, 2020 3:32 PM in response to X_YAVUZ_X

Thank you for your suggestions. I will turn Turbo Boost off and look at the Location Services. I have already switched mostly to Safari, even though I hate it. Turning off Bluetooth and Wifi are not really an option for me.


This is so frustrating. One of the reasons I bought a new mac was because my older one was also terrible with battery. I hoped that a new one would fix the issues.


Actually - that's a point - I set up this computer via a Time Machine backup. Maybe there is some process that is hogging resources that was on the old computer too. Hmmm.


I cannot see anything in Activity Monitor though.

Oct 17, 2020 3:35 PM in response to neuroanatomist

Thank you for this. I have been looking in there to see if I can see anything. I uninstalled one potential culprit (Clean My Mac), but that hasn't really changed things all that much.


I do have Avast (paid version)- maybe that's got something to do with it.


I wish there was a battery monitor that I could find that collected the stats from Activity Monitor over time - so that you get more than the 12-hour view that Apple gives you.

Oct 17, 2020 4:35 PM in response to BrettOnTheNet

Hmmm I uninstalled Avast and CleanMyMac, rebooted, and suddenly my remaining battery went from 2.5 hours to 11 hours!


I've since reinstalled Avast, and the remaining battery still looks solid.


So ... not sure if it was something with Avast or CleanMyMac. I will run without CleanMyMac for a few days, and then reinstall it too and see what happens.


Oct 17, 2020 4:55 PM in response to BrettOnTheNet

Thank you for helpful information.Antivirus programs constantly use power. I’m using macos ecosystem for a long time and I think antivirus programs a little unnecessary. I suggest you to trust these machines use the macos apps and only focus on your tasks. Macos already taking care of the rest. Also I hate web browsers out of Safari. (:D)When I start to use it, struggled a bit but I’m loving it. I only use Chrome for 4K youtube contents.

Brand new Macbook Pro 2020 13" Battery Drain

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