Battery life of my MacBook Pro 2019

Can someone help me pls? I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro 2019 13 inch, but now I recognised that the battery life of this machine compared to my old MacBook early 2015 13 inch retina is horrible. I replaced the battery on my 2015 MBP and now this lasts twice as long as my new MBP 2019.

For comparisons I was streaming Videos i.ex. from Amazon prime. The 2019 MBP lasts around hours, but my 2015 MBP up to 8 hours.

Also i installed battery health on both computers. When I haven't opened any programs, deactivated bluetooth, enabled energy save mode, brightness set to 70%, my 2019 takes around 9 watts, while my 2015 only needs 5 watts. Battery on the 2015 is 103% of its original capacity (because of the replacement battery) and my 2019 has 96% of the original battery capacity left. Right now I have to charge my MBP 2019 twice a day with my workload, because the battery Is draining so fast.

Thanks for replies.

MacBook Pro (2020 and later)

Posted on May 17, 2022 5:11 PM

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Posted on May 18, 2022 6:56 AM

If an SMC Reset doesn't help (make sure you are doing the reset for a T2 Mac as the procedure has changed from that used by older Macs), then try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect many battery failures. In fact it can be very hard to identify the battery as the cause of the problem. Our organization has been having to replace a lot of our 2019 batteries recently much more than other 2018 models. I've noticed several of them had very slight signs of battery swelling.


Did you perform a clean install of macOS by first erasing the whole physical drive before installing macOS? If not, then you may have some nasty surprises left by the previous owner. If you purchased the laptop directly from Apple, then this probably is not necessary, but it never hurts just to be safe. Erasing the SSD destroys all data on the SSD.


Have you tested the laptop while booted into Safe Mode? This should disable your login items as well as any third party software which launches automatically at boot (perhaps even some of Apple's own drivers so no Touchbar will be available).


You need to eliminate any possible software issues causing the laptop to work harder which will also drain the battery faster. To look for possible software issues run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. If you give EtreCheck "Full Disk Access", then the report will include more information which may provide more clues. Anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, and third party security software are the usual culprits of making a computer work harder than necessary.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 18, 2022 6:56 AM in response to Moeee99

If an SMC Reset doesn't help (make sure you are doing the reset for a T2 Mac as the procedure has changed from that used by older Macs), then try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected. Unfortunately the diagnostics don't detect many battery failures. In fact it can be very hard to identify the battery as the cause of the problem. Our organization has been having to replace a lot of our 2019 batteries recently much more than other 2018 models. I've noticed several of them had very slight signs of battery swelling.


Did you perform a clean install of macOS by first erasing the whole physical drive before installing macOS? If not, then you may have some nasty surprises left by the previous owner. If you purchased the laptop directly from Apple, then this probably is not necessary, but it never hurts just to be safe. Erasing the SSD destroys all data on the SSD.


Have you tested the laptop while booted into Safe Mode? This should disable your login items as well as any third party software which launches automatically at boot (perhaps even some of Apple's own drivers so no Touchbar will be available).


You need to eliminate any possible software issues causing the laptop to work harder which will also drain the battery faster. To look for possible software issues run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. If you give EtreCheck "Full Disk Access", then the report will include more information which may provide more clues. Anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, and third party security software are the usual culprits of making a computer work harder than necessary.

May 18, 2022 7:57 AM in response to HWTech

Thanks for your reply HWTech,

i was already doing the Apple diagnose, but it said me everything is fine. The SMC reset I already did, it helped a little bit.

My biggest problem is/was the idle-display on energy consumption. The environmental report of apple says it should be at 2,8 watt. I know in real time its higher, but the last day it was around 8-9 watts, which seems not healthy to me. When I was doing then some work or browsing it went up to 12-13 watt and my battery was empty after 3-4 hours.

On the other side my old MBP 13 inch from 2015 had an idle-display on energy consumption of around 5 watt (environmental report says 8 watts, so it is actually lower).

I did the restart in safe mode as you said and I was running EtreCheckPro (I add the report) and now it seems better, my idle-display on is around 4-5 watt, and while I am writing i have around 7 hours battery life left with 88%.


May 17, 2022 5:45 PM in response to Moeee99

Moeee99 wrote:

Can someone help me pls? I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro 2019 13 inch, but now I recognised that the battery life of this machine compared to my old MacBook early 2015 13 inch retina is horrible. I replaced the battery on my 2015 MBP and now this lasts twice as long as my new MBP 2019.

my 2019 has 96% of the original battery capacity left. Right now I have to charge my MBP 2019 twice a day with my workload, because the battery Is draining so fast.


96% is good...


On your intel Mac you can try resetting the system management controller


resetting the SMC How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support


May 24, 2022 6:43 PM in response to Moeee99

I gave up trying to keep track of the Intel CPUs many years ago because Intel has such a confusing mess of CPUs even in a single architecture and generation. Keep in mind that Apple is most likely using the more powerful versions of the CPUs which means even if there are power savings the more powerful CPU may negate the advantage over the previous generation. I'm sure the extra cores play a role as well at least to some extent.


Also keep in mind the physical size and capacity of the batteries may be different between the older & newer laptops. The batteries in the older Magsafe laptops were likely physically larger since the laptops were thicker than the USB-C models. I believe the electrical Design Capacity of the older batteries were in the 6k mAh range while the USB-C laptop batteries have a Design Capacity of 4.8k mAh.


There is also a chance your battery is starting to wear out or it may even have a hardware fault which may sometimes only be noticed at a specific charge level. It is very hard to assess the health of the batteries since macOS and the Apple Diagnostics may not be able to detect some issues. I've actually taken to monitor the battery behavior (charge levels, capacity levels, charge/discharge rates) while charging & discharging with our organization's laptops which has helped me to notice very hard to detect battery issues which users have reported, but I'm unable to reproduce or notice during normal tests. I have noticed that some of the 2019 laptops (15" models IIRC) seem to have some more issues than I've seen with some older USB-C models. I don't believe I've seen too many 13" 2019 models.


Also the software may behave differently on the different generations. Sometimes this may mean the newer laptop is more efficient due to new CPU instructions, while software on older systems may forego some types of processing because it would impact the app's performance (or the OS). The newer laptop may actually be doing more work than the older laptop.


Keep in mind the GPUs are different which will make a difference with streaming videos. Also the display resolution on the newer laptops may be higher which will also put more of a drain on the battery.

May 23, 2022 6:15 PM in response to Moeee99

I'm sorry for the long delay before replying, but I've been extremely busy.


Uninstall CleanMyMac by following the developer's instructions. Anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, and third party security apps are not needed on a Mac. These types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve plus they impact system performance and interfere with the normal operation of macOS.


Unfortunately the only useful diagnostic is one which reports an issue.

May 24, 2022 2:10 PM in response to HWTech

Hey no worries, thanks for your reply.

I already uninstalled CLeanmymac.

But what I don't really understand is, why my MBP 2019 13 inch uses around 10-12 watts when web browsing and watching Youtube Videos, while my 2015 model is only using around 6-8 watts in Safari doing the same things. Do you know something about that? Is this because the 2019 model has a 4 core Cpu and the 2015 model only a 2 core Cpu which uses less energy? Normally the newer models should be more optimised in terms of energy consumption, so I don't understand why my battery of the 2019 lasts in Safari for 4-5 hours and the battery of my 2015 up to 8-10 hours....

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Battery life of my MacBook Pro 2019

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