Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

"Also remember that promised battery life and real life battery life is two different things, even if apple is one of the most honest companies. Of course, you cant have your screen at 100% brightness and keybord lit and expect 7 hours battery."

That´s true, but we used to have 7 hours of battery life with 30-40 brightness, mail, browser and Flash running! After updating to Lion, we now have 2-3 hours. This is the problem.

Just adding another name to this. Has there been any official comment by Apple on this issue regarding possible fix/update or is the only fix going to be to downgrade to snow leopard. i wont get above 5 hours est time now whereas before on snow leopard i got 9 sometimes 10 hours.

I am getting a consistent 4.5 hours.  I have a brand new Macbook Pro 15" that came pre-installed with Lion.  I have done multiple calibrations and reset memory and SMC... no changes.  This is VERY disappointing Apple.

DON'T FORGET TO FEEDBACK

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

*I CAN REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM AT WILL* LISTEN UP APPLE.

I can make the "battery left" go from 2 1/2 hrs to 6 hours, backwards and forwards within less than 60 seconds based upon the following.Can anyone else try this... Screen brightness is about 50%

I have 3 or 4 apps running (doesn't really matter, Adium, Mail and Safari and Calendar).

Get mail or safari in focus and just scroll up and down on a page or email, every 2-3 seconds for 60 seconds. use the mouse rather than the keyboard but I think it doesn't make much difference. My battery life shows about 2 1/2 hrs with 98% battery left.

Then leave the machine alone. ~30 seconds later, battery goes to 5hrs and within 60 seconds, goes to 6hrs and 20 mins...

Then scroll again, same thing...

I found this actually the other day and tried to hint at hint. Bashing away at the keyboard dooing spotlight searches would have EXACTLY the same effect.

See if you can repeat the above. I know when you leave a machine alone, it's semi-sleeps but the vast difference in times is too quick and too big compared with my 17" Mac Book Pro.

Battery time left is an estimate based on current load, it tells little about the actual time left. If you go from a near idle state to doing a number of tasks the estimate will alter because it is based on current activities.

What matters is how long it actually lasts, so charge it, unplug it and use it as you normally would, when it goes flat note the time elapsed from unplug to no-go. That is your actual battery time.

Csound, thanks for that but I've been in IT for 31 years and I know how batteries and battery life works. The point is, we are all witnessing something unique. battery life jumping dramatically between HIGHS and LOWS and actually delivering on the LOWS in real life. Compared to our OLDer machines, my $4000 MBP is giving me 2.5 hours.....

Try this test on a Laptop or on other MBP (running SL), where it does not do this.

Just loaded up VMWARE XP session. Loaded UP Internet Explorer in XP and started a web page with some graphics (scrolling flash). Let it settle and it showed I'd get about 4 hrs. Not bad.... Left it for 1 minute and still 4 hours was shown.

Started simply scrolling slowly the web page up and down.. Battery dropped to 1hr 20 mins. Kept scrolling and it stayed at this number, deterioated battery no-end...

Wonder if it's the mouse or "screen"... something is going MAD when you are typing or scrolling...

Unfortunately I can't replicate the behaviour, I have 2 upgraded and one new Lion machine, the upgraded ones run for about 4.5-5.5 hours, which is no different from when they had SL, the new one gets a little (very little) more, I never display the time remaining, just the icon.

What strikes me here is the fact that there are so many people coming to this forum and act as Apple employees. See no evil, here no evil... It seems that the higher level on this forum they have less chances are that they can replicate this issue (no conclusion, could be just a coincidence).

I can call my self a PRO in terms of buggy OS after Windows (95, Millennium, XP prior to SP1, Vista) experiences. Redmond genius are the best to make your life misery for your own money and still to make you pay for the fix (Seven)!

To save all those newcomers to this forum of reading 42 pages, doing all sorts of exercises with no results and being miserable here is my summary.

1. The Elephant is still in the room

2. There is no FIX for battery issue (if you have one) with Lion - I'll repeat, NO FIX just temporary illusion.

3. The best workaround is to install Snow Leopard and enjoy your Mac until...

4. Keep contacting Apple (all of us) and they may spot the Elephant 

In mean time enjoy your life and don't waist your time doing someones else job, let them do what they are paid for (by us).

I just bought a macbook pro a few hours ago and i was shocked with the lion software.The battery life has been cut short by half and im pretty dissapointed with this issue!I hope apple will improve on this battery life issue but all the functionality in lion is pretty impressive.

My macbook also heats up.

I did clean install few weeks ago and Lion work fine with 6 hours battery life. But now, I am noticing that my mac battery life is back to 3 hours the best.

So, there is no solution yet for Lion battery life's issue. I will wait for the update. Hopefully Apple will fix it out soon seems there is really an elephant here.

Before Lion the battery health was 94% and now 88 after calibrating. That's not good!. I can't revive the battery degradation even reverts to Snow Leopard. That's really bad.

That's excatly what happened to my MBP 2011. My laptop and I, for a while, had this courtship.  It was like dating and trying to get to know each other.  Me- trying to see how the battery life would be and trying to woe her into giving more by giving up more.  She- by testing my patience how much time I would spend and what kind of sevices I would give up to spend more time with her. ;-) he he he... just making fun of all this.

After a while she had 4.5hours to give.... ;-)

My Macbook Pro is back to normal now after the LION fiasco.  I Re-Installed Snow Leopard and I have been on it for 6 hours straight ( from 7am-1pm ) and its just now down to 5% battery.  I have been surfing the web almost non-stop, listing on ebay, chatting on fb, downloading itunes, upgrading ipad, checking email......and I got a full 6 hours.  With LION, I was lucky to get 2.5 hours with only doing ONE of these things.