Late 2013 13" Macbook Pro Retina Battery Issues

If you reboot, does kernel_task drop down to less CPU usage? You say "fair usage of the CPU". If it's using a lot of CPU, it will run down the batter faster.

The info in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5497235 indicates a problem after coming out of sleep, that may be related to having something plugged into the audio jack.

What shows up as using high amounts of power in Activity Monitor?

What does the Energy tab show?

Looks like Skype is not very energy friendly. Can you try testing without Skype running?

Hi. I have a same problem with my new MBP 13 RETINA (late2013)

Battery life is BAD! I'm using it without Skype for 2 days, but still, just a web browsing can't kill charge so fast.

Should I call to Apple support?

Is it a OS X software issue or a hardware troubles?

I'M NOT HAPPY AT ALL!

District_58 wrote:

Hi. I have a same problem with my new MBP 13 RETINA (late2013)

Battery life is BAD! I'm using it without Skype for 2 days, but still, just a web browsing can't kill charge so fast.

How bad is bad? How long is your battery lasting?

What does your Activity Monitor show under the Energy & CPU tabs? There does seem to be an intermittant issue in Mavericks where after coming out of sleep, the kernel_task process will start using ~100% of a CPU forever. This will drain the battery really quickly, and seems to require a reboot to fix. I run iStat menus, and it's pretty obvious in the CPU graph menu when this happens, as the graph shows a constant 25% overall CPU utilization.

When you say you are just web browsing, what are you doing? What browser, and what kind of websites?

A lot of folks on the MacRumors forums are reporting really bad battery life if they use Opera. Try Safari instead.

If you are watching Flash based videos or otherwise visiting Flash heavy websites, that will hurt battery as well. If you can import the videos you want to watch into iTunes they should use much less battery. If you are using Safari and the Flash stuff on the websites is ads or other stuff you don't need to see, install Click 2 Flash to stop it from automatically loading.

Finally, try to keep your screen brightness as low as is comfortable. Half brightness or lower can help.

I get a consistant 10+ hours of battery life using my Late 2013 system all day for browsing with Safari, editing photos with iPhoto & Preview, and creating documents with Pages. I have BlueTooth disabled, and brightness at 1/2 or less.

You can get the statistics on your battery to see if something seems wrong by installing and running the Coconut Battery utility. I'm willing to bet your issue is software and usage related though.

Alec Myrddyn , Thank You for answering. It good only for 3-3.5 hours.

I've tryed everything from your list for past 10 days.

I called to Apple tech support 15 min. ago, and lady sent me to authorised Apple service center, she said: "Its seems like You have a serious battery issue.."

Having the same problem. Was on the phone with Apple support and we did a SMC reset which got the battery up from 3-3,5 hours to about 8, but after having it plugged in and under heavy duty for a couple of days I'm back to getting 3-3,5 hours of the macbook pro retina 13" late 2013 on with an word document open. Comp IDLE with screen at 25 % for 3 hours before the battery runs out. No significant energy impact and no processes causing high cpu load. Another SMC reset and I'm back to 8 hours. What does that to the SMC?

Having the same issue with mine - running Safari and Mail I'm lucky if I get five hours out of a full charge... certainly nowhere near the nine hours I was getting when I bought it last month. I've done everything the website suggests, spent hours on the phone to Apple Support - now it's going back for testing...

I got the same problem too. I just got this on monday and it goes from 11 hrs remaining to like 4 hrs remaining in 1 hr. Pretty straight forward issue here: battery meter is completely deceiving

I'm willing to bet it's not the battery monitor. I've been able to reproduce the issue and reproduce the fix. If I'm listening to music—iTunes, Spotify, Pandora—with or without headphones, and the computer sleeps, the kernal_task process goes to about 100% and stays there. That drops my battery from 10-12 hours on a full charge to somewhere near 4-5 hours. You can check that by pulling up the Activity Monitor and going to the CPU tab. You should see the kernal_task process running around 100%. To fix it, I close the laptop, wait five seconds, unplug my headphones (if I'm using them) or plug my headphones in (if I'm not using them), wait five seconds again, and then open the laptop. 100% of the time, this fixes the problem and I can watch the kernal_task CPU usage drop from 100% to <2%.

Also, you can download Coconut Batter to make sure that your battery isn't malfucntioning. It should be >6300 mAh for a 13" rMBP. If it's significantly below that, you might have gotten a bum battery.

Good luck.

Hi all, I have a late 2013 13" Retina MacBook Pro and I am having the same problems described in this post. Ever since I purchased the machine at launch in late October I've never gotten more than roughly 3-5 hours of battery life, and my full charge has never claimed to have more than about 6 hours and usually it claims to have 3-4 hours of charge. The amount of charge claimed sometimes fluctuates semi-randomly, one moment it says it has 3 hours than the next moment says it has like 6 hours and then back. In any case, no matter how much it claims to have, as I said I never get more than roughly 3-4 hours. I have tried both PRAM reset and SMC reset multiple times neither has resolved the issue. I also went into my battery info in About This Mac and read it to the AppleCare support technician and he confirmed there's nothing apparently "wrong" with my battery. FYI my usage is quite light, usually Safari and Mail, I am certain this is not being caused by using power hungry apps as it is a totally consistent problem.

From my vantage point this issue seems to be some sort of weird systemic issue with the current model 13" Retina MacBook Pro and I hope Apple addresses it. I'm traveling abroad right now but when I'm back in the U.S. I plan to bring my machine in to an Apple Store/Genius bar. I'd hate to return the machine as I really like it overall and my inituition says this is some sort of weird software bug causing the machine to not properly take advantage of the battery but what do I know?

It's definitely a bummer to not be getting the "up to 9 hours" battery life advertised -- there is absolutely no way one could watch the entire Dark Knight film trilogy on a flight to Tokyo as Phil Schiller (I believe) claimed in the Apple Keynote in Oct. Other than this issue I love the machine a lot.

Apple, please address this!

Anyone else on this thread have any insights?

Thanks!!

I sent my machine to Apple's UK service centre, run by Group 8, and was informed by their engineer that despite me getting only 5 hours battery life using just Mail and Safari, that this sounded "about right". They had apparently carried out tests where they would expect to get 9 hours and only got 5, but they couldnt detect any problem and as such returned it to me.

During my conversation with the engineer he said that the only way I'd EVER get 9 hours is if I didn't use it at all. To me, it seems like a car manufacturer saying that a car will do up to 500mpg - but only if it's not driven.

What is interesting is that since it's been returned to me (with nothing on the job sheet at all), the battery life has gone back up to 8 hours on a full charge. I'm doing nothing different - so I'm at a loss to explain why it's changed. I'm willing to bet that there was more to my machine's visit to the service centre than they're letting on.