2011 Macbook Pro battery drainage

Question

Level 1

10 points

2011 Macbook Pro battery drainage

My new 2011 MacBook Pro 15 provides a battery life of just 3 hours which is way below the promised 7 hours. I talked to the technical support team [Case #: 209175232] to receive a response that it is reasonable as I am streaming online video. This is my first Mac and I am highly disappointed to see the difference in promised vs actual battery life. Have some one experienced such issues? I am wondering if I should return this for replacement.

Macbook Pro 15 inch 2011, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 20, 2011 7:38 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 20, 2011 4:46 PM in response to Reji

I have owned 13 macs, 7 of them laptops. Just bought the new MBP 15" based on the 7 hr battery time. You are right that you get nothing like the advertised time. I also have been talking with Apple but really no solution at hand. I bought a external battery from Hypremac for $300 with the cables etc for 20 hrs of computing but now I'm carrying another 2lbs of junk. I want to return this machine. My old MBP got 5 hours on battery. I hear most people using the 13" get 7-9 hours. We got cheated

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Answer 2

thstows

Level 1

8 points

Mar 25, 2011 2:37 AM in response to Michael Black

My week old Macbook 13" last 2.5 hours with screen on half, no keyboard lights, and airport off, basically having a spreadsheet recording how bad the battery was, was enough to kill it off in way under 3 hours.

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Answer 3

Reji Author

Level 1

10 points

Mar 21, 2011 10:17 AM in response to Michael Black

I read the fact that its UP TO 7 HOURS, but with my regular activity of web browsing and videos, I was expecting some where close to the 7 hour offering or at least 3/4 of the same. But 2.5 or 3 hrs in place of 7 seems totally unreasonable and the better battery life was my main reason to switch to Mac from my previous windows laptop. Does a widescreen resolution and anti-glare add up to the power consumption?

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Answer 4

Jun 22, 2011 5:50 PM in response to Son.dang

Hi,

There is a lot of reasons why our batteries run down.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1473

This one is about runaway applications.

This talks about optimal settings.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

And this one is all about batteries from a testing manufactures point of view.

http://batteryuniversity.com/

There is flash that eats battery juice, there is ms silverlight, games that can eat battery juice.

While I belive your point is made clear, you have to remember, what we do with it (mac) is how we ( use ) it too drain it.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 5

Mar 21, 2011 1:31 AM in response to Reji

I just got a MBP 15" from the store two days ago and the battery lasted 2 hours on a full charge... I was skyping... But that kinda seems like a significant drop from 7 hours to only two??

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Answer 6

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Mar 21, 2011 6:48 AM in response to Reji

No one promised any of you 7 hours of battery life. What was advertised was *UP TO* 7 hours. How you use the machine affects how long the battery lasts.

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Answer 7

Mar 21, 2011 6:59 AM in response to Reji

As eww mentions, it is listed as offering up to 7 hours of wireless web. If you are streaming video, you are using a lot more power then passively surfing web pages, and hence your battery will last far less between charges. It's pretty basic - the harder you make the machine work, the more power it uses, the less time the battery last.

i.e. the fine print on the specs page:
"Wireless web testing conducted by Apple in February 2011 using preproduction 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information."

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Answer 8

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Mar 21, 2011 10:31 AM in response to Reji

Does a widescreen resolution and anti-glare add up to the power consumption?

No, they have nothing at all to do with it. Watching videos online and using your MBP's discrete GPU (if you have a 15" or 17" model) are the culprits. Turn down your screen brightness, too.

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Answer 9

madazrex

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2011 1:37 PM in response to Reji

hello everyone i am new but i too have a mac book pro with battery issues BUT i was issued with an 19inch monitor using this through the thunder bolt as a dule monitor drians my battery down even thought my montier is powerd. i start off with about 4 hours from a brand new computer take out the adabtor for sconed montitoer it will jup up to 7 + hours

so i was under the ipresstion that appel would of diable the battery when it reache its full charges go you could keep it pluged in on mains power.

becouse we all try to keep off the mains to try to keep the bateries in good shape

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Answer 10

eww

Level 9

53,052 points

Mar 21, 2011 1:53 PM in response to madazrex

May I suggest that your posts would be easier to decode if you used the spell checker before hitting the Post button? Capitalization and punctuation are also useful aids to communication.

When you connect your external monitor, your MBP is probably switching automatically to its discrete GPU, which uses far more power than the integrated GPU. It isn't the monitor itself that's consuming extra power; it's the advanced GPU inside the computer.

so i was under the ipresstion that appel would of diable the battery when it reache its full charges go you could keep it pluged in on mains power.

Charging stops when the battery is full, and starts again when the battery drains to below 94% if the AC adapter remains connected.

becouse we all try to keep off the mains to try to keep the bateries in good shape

If you disconnect from mains power at every opportunity, you are using your battery unnecessarily hard and shortening its useful lifespan. As long as you use the machine on battery power for an hour or two a couple or three times a week, it can be plugged into AC power all the rest of the time. It will last longer in that sort of usage than it will if you always try to run it on battery power whenever possible.

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Answer 11

madazrex

Level 1

0 points

Mar 22, 2011 6:45 AM in response to eww

hello Eww !

And thank's for the feed back,i am not very good at spelling but getting better as iam dislexic.

The main thing for me is that i have just recived this (MBP) through disxlexic staetementing to help me with my studies.

My consern is that the company that provied, it to me set it up with dule monitor.
I was conserned that the batery power is key, and i did not want to damge batteries, could you recomened wich way is the best way to use it as a mian computer and best for keeping my batery preformnce .

the company told me that the power drain was down to the out put of the thunderbolt to dvi, and i noticed that wen removed increase battery time.

my genral use it will be docked so do I run on batries till empty? then re-charge or do i keep it on cahrge till i need a prtable latop.

thank you for your time

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Answer 12

Mar 29, 2011 1:03 PM in response to eww

Eww:
I know it says "up to" but two hours doesn't sound very reasonable. On my 2009 13" mbp I got an average of 5 hours doing the EXACT same thing. These two machines have essentially the same thing on them as I set up this machine using a firewire cable from the 13"

I heard that other people returned their 2011 models for the exact same thing, and had no problem with the new one?? Gotta be somethin man..

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Answer 13

mibrooks

Level 1

7 points

Mar 29, 2011 1:32 PM in response to gosailing

I have one of the new 17" versions and I love it. One thing I have noticed is that the battery indicator isn't very accurate. Fully charge, my Mac will go to 50% battery left in about an hour or so. But!

from there to (say) 10%, it takes four or more hours. So, a fully charged battery really does last for 5 to 7 hours.
My computer workers really well with OS 10.6.7. I am a developer and created a 200 GB partition and installed Windows 7 and Visual Studio, SQL 2008R2, etc. That originally crashed and burned. It would lock up for no reason at all and drove me nuts. Somewhere along the line, over the last week, I downloaded some update from Apple and everything works like a charm. I'm a VERY happy camper! My only unhappiness is having not bought the 8 GB of RAM. Now, I have to buy after market stuff and I have no idea as to the quality (can anyone recommend a RAM vendor?).

And, what on earth are you guys doing buying a "super computer" and planning on using it as a laptop? Now, my 17" version is a lot lighter than the old 8080 Compaq I used back in the 80's and it's lighter than my old first generation MacBook Pro, too, but it still isn't what I would call "portable", except for a couple of hours use at a conference or work meetings. I'm an engineer and old enough to recall, sitting around with some guys, talking about maybe one day seeing a desktop computer that ran at 1 GHz with 1 GB of RAM. These new computers are phenomenal and the Mac's are the best of any of them.

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Answer 14

Apr 26, 2011 8:23 AM in response to Reji

I have had at least 3 MB Pro's and just got the 15" 2011 based on the 7 hour battery. The "new" battery lasts less time than my old 2009 MB Pro! I think we have been ripped off or there is some serious power managment issues.

I have noticed that when running some apps (nothing crazy... just a few web browsers, mail, terminal) the fan turns on and off often. Something must be wrong

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Answer 15

Jun 6, 2011 11:34 AM in response to Reji

I am also using new (may 2011) macbook pro 15", an i receive the same battery drainage even less like 1,5 hours, and i am using it on %60 screen brightness and streaming video on skype. it really unreasonable (sure there is a reason, but "up to 7 hours" is doing the trick here). and the machine become really hot!

i think this occours when it's switching the graphic card, if so i prefer to stay with intel graphic card. but it sounds like a problem for me actually. what do you think, it seem normal?

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