Q: Lion - Horrible MacBook Pro Battery Life

RedRam. I repeat. I have been in IT for a large number of years and been benchmarking systems for decades. I know it's an approximation but you forget, we are COMPARING our old systems with new as well here. Without fail, if I do something different on the machine, that effects battery life, the battery life shown typically reflects when it runs out. I've tested that with movies and usage. If it drops to 2hrs left, it typically dies at around the 2hr mark if I keep doing the same thing. i.e. the indicated battery life, once it settles down and if you stay doing the same stuff is a true indicator! Some more observationsl

1. on my 3.5 year old MACBOOK PRO with 3.5 year old battery I get a working 2hrs 45 mins, almost regardless of what I do, give or take 25% (even for a movie, it'll drop down to 2hr's 10 mins - same brightness)

2. I ported the same applications and do the same work / usage on both machines

3. the new macbook battery indicator goes UP and DOWN like a YOYO. The old one is consistent and true.

4. Using the touchpad on the old MACBOOK does effect battery life but < 25% compared to new macbook which is over half!

5. Using VMWARE takes battery life to half or less on new machine (same VMWARE session running on old machine effects it by no more than 20%)

6. Running a movie, the best my new machine does is 3hrs. My old machine is probably about 2hrs 15 mins. Same brightness. Old machine is 17", new is 15"!

7. Doing certain things, cripple the battery life on the new machine, unseen on the old. Just searching spotliight, just scrolling using touchpad (OK if I use bluetooth mouse), running vmware or a movie... battery life YO'YO's and stays VERY low if I keep doing it...

So, I think it's fair to conclude, something is different between these two machine (both running LION by the way). The new machine is really struggling compared to the old machine doing the same stuff....

Franc_Iphone wrote:

 

but you forget, we are COMPARING our old systems with new as well here.

Last time I checked you've just been charging your old one to compare and most people in this thread were actually comparing OSs, so how can I forget when I didn't even know it in the first place? (I don't know the 3.5 year old MacBook Pro, does the trackpad do the same gestures as the new one?).  I can't say I have noticed a difference, but you could well be right and I will keep an eye on trackpad power consumption too now.

But the simple fact is that running all the same application on two different OSs already cut down battery life by half and (like in my case, solely using a Magic Mouse) the trackpad doesn't even have to join the game.

That's why I am more interested in real data then the time estimate, which as you so aptly say is jumping "up and down like a yoyo".  I never believed these indicators anyway and nothing beats a stopwatch in my opinion.

I have yet to "see" a MacBook Pro go up to 8 hrs. or more on Lion (which Snow Leopard happily provided), trackpad or not.

Sorry, but I couldn't reproduce the trackpad - battery life problem you have.  Still lasted 2.5 hrs. with using only the trackpad.  Same time I get with the magic mouse.

I'm using a 2011 MBP 13", 2.7 GHz i7, 8 GB DDR3, 500 GB HDD machine and after upgrading to Lion the battery life fell from 6 hours to 3 hours. Plus, the laptop was getting more hot that before.

I'm using Chrome as my default browser and I found out (via Activity Monitor) that for some weird reason Flash was constantly using 30% of CPU. I uninstalled Flash using Adobe Flash Player uninstaller and the problem was gone.

Since Chrome has flash built in, everything that is using flash still works great, just that the battery seems to be lasting okay and the laptop isn't getting as hot as it was.

I hope that my solution might help somone

I´m using Firefox and still getting 2-3 hours. It´s not a solution to uninstall flash, even if you get better battery life. I want to use flash, just as I did before upgrading to Lion.

I came up with similar conclusion ( I think I even posted) but I don't think that Flash is the cause of our problem. Let us know how's everything after day or two, I'd really like to hear from you.  

It is very bad and hurting to see the battery drain at this rate.

Mine is a brand new MacBook Pro i5 13" and ofcourse running LION which seems to be causing all these problems.

10% battery gone in 10-15 mins just by normal usage + 5 mins idle time in that. My Activity Monitor does not show any drastic usage of CPU. Looks normal.

Only Apple can solve this issue. Is there a way to notify them? Do they go through these forums?

We have to noitfy them about this somehow.

Thank you.

Don't worry Ragunandan, or anyone else out there.

Apple is aware of the situation and has contacted me, and I imagine several others, in regards to the battery/performance issue that we're having. I talked to one of Apple's engineers earlier and provided a ton of data to them for their investigation. They're watching the forums, and this thread in particuarly, about the issue.

As for my latest test, conducted last night, I watched several YouTube videos on battery alone in Chrome with Skype, Mail, Twitter, and a couple other light-weight apps running. Recieved a total battery life of 1 hour and 50 minutes. I notified my contact at Apple about this to include in their reports to engineering.

They're pretty serious about getting this resolved. Hopefully they'll find the cause and issue an update once they've narrowed down the issue(s).

I log the call, gave them pretty detailed and meaningfully description and now I'm waiting their next step. Call has been escalated!!!

My main question is going to be what happened to my battery health, since I lost about 5% of maximum capacity in 10 days!

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers

Hmm, I guess my earlier post about the "solution" was a bit too optimistic. Battery life has imporved from ca 3 hours to about 4-4,5 hours, but still below what I got when using SL (5-6 hours).

On the positive side, the issue of heat has dramatically improved - the underside of the laptop doesn't get half as hot as it used to

At least it's something

I also have a new Macbook pro with lion and get terrible battery life (< 3 hours). Apple had better sort this out quick as I too have concerns about the effect this high drain has on battery health.

Sat

I own a mid 2010 core2duo macbookpro and this is what helped me get back my battery life after the Lion upgrade    

* I have tried a lot of options mentioned in the forums , but they did not help

1) Create a recovery disk and re-install Lion

2) Uninstalled Better touch tool.

So I guess this is something to really do with gestures/trackpad ...just my 2 cents

Hey,

I faced the same problem with my MacBook Pro (Early 2011), but trying to find a solution for it, I find out something interesting. After installing gfsCardStatus I was able to see which apps are forcing the mac to use the dedicated graphics card. I was very shocked when under "Dependency" I saw uTorrent. When I force closed it, the graphics cards switched and battery life jumped to the sky. Now it's showing me 92% remaining - 7:45 hours.

I hope this is helpful to all of you.

Just wanted to add to my previous post:

Keep in mind that both Firefox and Chrome force your MacBook to use the dedicated graphics card. So, just a simple browsing is causing lost of battery drain.

Safari browser doesn't swiitch to the dedicated card.

So, in conclusion you have two options:

1. Install gfsCardStatus and use it to force you Mac to use either dedicated or integrated graphics card.

2. Just know which programs are making your machine to make the switch (as I already mentioned: Firefox, Chrome, uTorrernt and others) and when you need battery power, avoid using them.

This solved my problem with the leak of battery power.

I dont think the solution is to avoid doing something.... Of course it can help, but we need a solution that works. As I can see it, only Apple can provide that to us now!