battery life on brand new 13" retina MBP disappointing

I've actually noticed this problem. Sometimes I'll have 10-12 hours and then suddenly it'll drop to five. I'll turn off wi-fi, bluetooth, set the brightness to two or three and close all programs, and barely see any change.

Last night I did some investigating and found that the kernal_task was eating up CPU cycles, running at 100-110% non-stop. I restarted the machine and the kernal_task went back to normal and stayed there for a while, and my battery life showed HUGE improvements. I think it might actually be related to the keyboard/trackpad issue others have seen because I've noticed (anecdotally) that the decrease in battery life usually follows the unresponsive spell.

I'm planning to test and document this weekend so that I can report it to Apple. I'd suggest that you look at the Activity Monitor for the kernal_task when you're getting poor battery life and see what percentage it's running at. I suspect you'll see it's high. When it's running normally, I get crazy good battery life. If you find it is, take screen shots and report it to Apple. Runaway kernal_task is not a new probelm with a new OS. It's been reported in most of the other major releases.

Same here. I was thrilled with the arrival of my new 13" MBPr this week, and shocked to get 4:40 out of a full recharge.

When it recharges, I am going to check the energy monitor for usage. Kernal_task issues make sense. It's something to watch, as battery life should be optimal on a new laptop.

However, It had been shut down overnight for recharging, and I didn't experience any keyboard/trackpad freezes while using it today, so I'm skeptical that there's a direct connection between the two. Based on complaints from owners of previous MBPr after the OSX upgrade, it may be a Mavericks issue.

KD

I am having the same exact issue and it is very disappointing. Let me know if you hear a response from Apple about this. Thanks!

I'm having similar issue but I'm looking at 5-5.5 hours. screen half brightness, no bluetooth USB devices and Web only. I've not had keyboard or trackpad issues. The only thing I've had an issue with is Chrome locking up but this happens on my Mini as well (causes GPU artifacts on the Mini... 4000 graphics). No other issues at all.

I installed xscan and paid a bit more attention today, and Hutch51 is right: a keyboard/trackpad freeze is a primary cause of battery drain.

When I had a freeze today, I did the recommended fix (close lid, wait 30 sec or so) and then checked the menu bar battery monitor: it was showing Safari as using "significant energy." Xscan confirmed kernel processes had kicked in.

Another culprit is Chrome. Even Mail was drawing a lot of energy. Not sure why.

The good news (besides knowing how to solve the keyboard/trackpad freeze) is that the new update gives us some energy features so we can see some of what's happening. Bad news is a new OSX always breaking things for a while 😟

I just posted about this here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5521001

I have the same issue yet kernel_task is only using ~1.5% CPU. It has 90 threads and 150-350 idle wake ups. I've reset the PRAM and SMC controller, and we'll see if I keep getting such poor battery life. I can try not using Chrome I guess...

I'll be monitoring this and my thread in case there's any other news.

An update...

I need to confirm this but it seems DeafMac is right in saying Chrome is a culprit. While I don't see kernel_task eating up resources, using Safari in place of chrome seems to increase the battery life estimate so it's in-line with something more reasonable (4-5 hours at 50%).

It's an odd coincidence that Chrome drains the **** out of the battery but Safari doesn't =P

Unfortunately, I don't think Chrome is the culprit. It may be that Chrome does unduly drain the battery, but if so, it's a separate issue. I've been experiencing the battery drain and don't run Chrome at all. It's not even installed on my computer at the time.

I don't think it's Chrome specifically but maybe a shared resource...I don't run Chrome at all. I actually worked on my laptop all weekend and had no freeze ups. Nor did I experience any battery issues. My battery ran a consistent 9-12 hours depending on what I was doing. I'm trying not to install any new programs on my computer or to modify any setting so that I can track down the culprit, but I believe, as you say, that this is just a software issue that Apple will soon resolve. I remember when I got my MBAir and it had wonky battery life until they updated the software. There are a lot of new technologies in both Mavericks AND the laptop. With the new Iris integrated graphics, App Nap, and the way Mavericks handles memory, I'm not surprised there are some issues. Luckily, I don't think they're fatal or permanent, and I suspect Apple will get them sorted out.

I agree with you now -- since trying both Firefox AND Safari I'm still getting miserable battery life. I hope Apple announces this as a known issue and writes a software update for it ASAP...

Yes, agree also. Ive been using Firefox and Safari as well and battery life hasn't changed. As for my GPU Artifact comment with my Mini, well, that happened with Firefox as well.

Looks like they released an update to address the trackpad issue. Anyone with luck on the battery life?

for me at least the estimated battery time left is still pretty low even after the update, at 100% with brightness set to 3 and bluetooth turned off I'm still only getting 5 hours