New MacBook only getting 5 hours of battery life

command + option + P + R is a reset of SMC. My brand new macbook came with a battery showing 4 cycles and less than 5000 mh; they normally are between 5200 and 5100 mh. After 29 cycles I am at 4800 mh (92% battery life). I did follow what Andreas suggested which is a SMC reset with no improvement. I get between 5 to 5:30 from full charge to stop, running safari and mail 75 to 85% screen dimmed. I get 2:00 hours to 2:30 max if I edit pictures with lightroom. It is definetely not a whole day laptop; it is a half day laptop. I will eventually bring it to a genius bar if the battery life keeps on going down; for the time being I have been able to be near an outlet wherever I am and my commute is less than two hours, so I can live with it.

So I have been running my Macbook for about three hours with Bittorrent, Word, and Safari. Screensaver has been activated most of the time. I'm down from 88% to 46%. My conclusion is that the NVRAM/SMC reset helped somewhat, but definitely didn't do miracles. If you want to know the difference between the SMC vs NVRAM please read this article on the Macworld website:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2881177/how-to-reset-your-macs-nvram-pram-and-sm c.html

I also have the battery issue with my mac. It drains about 10%/24h while sleeping and powernap turned off. In light use you can get 5-6 hours battery life which is not enough. I really like this machine but also need better battery life to deal with my work. I would be happy if there is a solution different than buying some other notebook.

I have an early 2015 Retina Macbook Pro and I get up to 13:00 of battery life even with photoshop and premiere pro, programs I use on the daily. I'm aware that this isn't the same computer... However, Apples Macbook's are world renowned for their exceptional battery life. It is one of the reasons people buy a Mac. If you're only getting 5 hours of battery life then you absolutely should take it back. I would even go so far as to recommend that you get the Retina Macbook Pro. Their battery life numbers are about the same, but you get way more for your money with the Retina Macbook Pro.

-Sid Saber

go to system preferences - open - energy saver settings In battery & power adapter must be : computer sleep 5 min , display sleep 2 min

how to extend battery life : turn off bluetooth , remove wi fi icon from top menu bar - go to system preferences - network - uncheck the box wi fi status in menu bar ,

quit runway applications - open activity monitor on spotlight - select CPU tab - select all processes - sort by cpu % - look the app that is consuming more than 70 % - select the app - press quit process icon.

if an app is hanging on - force quit the app ( command + option + esc or go to apple logo - force quit

turn off backlit keyboard : hit the F 5 key repeatedly until the on screen icon shows no bars lit or open system preferences - select keyboard - uncheck the box automatically illuminate keyboard in key light

turn off when computer is not used for - move the slider to 5 sec

turn off time m/c - go to system preferences - select time m/c options - uncheck - back up while on battery power

turn off spot light indexing - click system preferences - spotlight - privacy - press the plus + button & add your hard drive . NOTE - indexing must not happen in system . if it is normal mean to say don't use it . spot light indexing is one of the reason

enable power browsing : it will increase the battery life as the browser is no longer accessing the hard drive to cache pages & images . of course safari won't remember your search history or auto fill forms so you have to balance the convenience with the potential battery savings

avoid the face time / sight camera - face time , Skype , google hangouts , photo booth are a ton of fun but the front facing i sight / face time camera is a majority battery hog . avoid using them .

enable click to plugin in web browsers - flash & HTML5 movies can use a lot of cpu cycles thereby causing substantial battery drain

very imp : update EFI /SMC firmware - support.apple.com/en-in/ht202040

an apple article : OS X yosemite : energy saver preferences: support.apple.com/kb/ph18582 , maximising battery life & lifespan : www.apple.com/batteries/maximising-performance/

sorry it is private browsing

That was really helpful to me, a new Mac user. Thanks for the tips...I appreciate it!

My battery drain problem was caused by Norton Internet Security. I uninstalled Norton and things were back to normal. Here is more details on what I did.

https://knowshare123.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/norton-internet-security-causes-ra pid-battery-drain-after-osx-update/

The top command in a terminal window might measure performance with less battery use - no fancy screen redraw of a graph or GUI app.

My m5 model is new but so far I'm impressed by 5-9 hours of use that includes a Windows virtual machine and some time with an external display.

Even tho they all say chrome is a battery killer on a mac, i somehow find it a bit more economical for my usage.. Based on my istat temperature reading while browsing in safari it is always between 50-60 degrees celsius and while on chrome i am on 40-50..

I am having difficulties with my new MB12 as well.. Coming off from MBA 11" and MBA 13" where you basically forgot when you charged it i have to get all tactical and **** with macbook.

I never had to adjust the brightness with my Airs to any less than full, but here it really makes ton of a difference.. I am getting 6-7h of web browsing with brightness to about half and BT turned off. When i crank up brightness a bit and connect my BT headphones and itunes it drops to 4-5h..

I dont remember when i had battery this bad with a mac, probably in 2011-2012?

I bought the 2015 MacBook and have had the issue, as well: about 5 hours of battery life. My MacBook was new when I bought it about two months ago. Over the last month, I have actually been having my MacBook battery replaced by Apple. I am currently on my third brand new battery. All three batteries have behaved exactly the same way, only getting 5 hours of battery life. I have had countless conversations with an AppleCare Senior Specialist, had Simply Mac and an Apple Store run hardware and software diagnostics, returning no issues. I have another phone call tomorrow with the same AppleCare SS who has been repeatedly dealing with me shipping my MacBook to Apple and having it returned with the same issue.

In other words, there seems to be a real problem with "projected" battery life. For the first time, Apple just seems to be being a little sketchy with the 2015 MacBook model's battery life projection.

I am frustrated, but I cannot justify spending hundreds of more dollars on the 2016 MacBook in order to actually get 9 hours of battery life.

How did you manage to get an replacement, whats your argument? I was trying to talk to apple (Germany) but they refused to do anything because the diagnostic tool doesn't detect any issues at all. Also, they told me that 5 hours is quite normal.

I bought this machine 9 month ago and did a clean install every 3 month to get at least 5 hours of runtime, just office tasks. Battery drain (capacity) level is down to 85%.

Apple forced me to by the Apple Care Protection Plan to get a replacement battery in the future!

Most overpriced piece of **** I have ever bought!

The first generation MacBook 12" should have been rated for 5 hours battery. Apple falsely advertised battery time. The battery life is also junk. I was at 90% after 10 charges. This laptop reminds me the first generation macbook air. I am only astonished that there is no class action suit yet for false promises and or recall for this issue of poor battery life. I also tested with no apps added, no improvement. I live with this issue and even though I do like macbooks in general, pro or not, I don't trust the claims from Apple. The best battery life is the MacBook Air 13"; all the rest of the line is between 4 to 5 hours for the macbook 12" and for the macbook pro 15" 5 to 6 hours and I am getting 6 to 7 hours with a macbook pro 13". On my MBP 15" I am getting 2,5 to 3 hours max if I use Adobe lightroom

My curiosity is noticing this happened with the last OS update and I did Flash update at same time.

I'm pretty good at general system use and have found simple or minimal use has faster battery drain. I've revisited location settings and other settings that can hurt battery life. I've purposely turned the NIC off and watched battery remaining disappear too fast.

Doing nothing but a reboot then running a VMware VM has worse battery life and some crashes I did not have earlier.

There's no frustration or anger at Apple the way I see people can be but I know something is not right or ideal. I believe my analysis and troubleshooting here is decent. I'm a senior sysadmin in an enterprise with around 600 users. I deal with technology all the time. I have my MacBook Retina and My MacBook Air to know this supposedly better gen 2 has taken a turn where it should not be. I have users of first tier HP business laptops with solid state drives and we have some Microsoft Surfaces. This little MacBook is just not being the battery life champ it started out as, or typical of my other Mac laptops - personal or in business.

It seems like time to make an appointment at Apple store for time I can barely afford and hope I don't get one of the smug "geniuses" or people who don't recognize my experience, years of tech certifications and steps to troubleshoot.

My hope has been an Apple software update that would reverse what happened earlier in the summer.

2 hours just burned 42% of my battery. Safari, email and iMessage are all that have been running. The Safari use has been the admin consoles for Cisco Meraki, Office 365 admin portal, and some forum use and searching. Lots of iMessage chat with a fellow engineer and bosses on project tasks. Email use has been more deleting and composing than sending. Same sort of use with my Air and Retina would burn much less battery.

I only wished that companies like Apple stop advertising unrealistic battery time and life and stick with the realistic way people use their laptop. it is the same story with claiming battery life on phones or even in another product category with gaz mileage. Have you ever been able to reproduce the gas mileage of the sticker of your car. It would also be helpful that the reviews from the publications who test these laptops are being honest and stop claiming the same false numbers; I understand that they make their money from advertising from Apple but there are obvious conflict of interest. So now, when you buy your next macbook and they claim 9 hours, count on 4 to 6. I am waiting for the next macbook with a claim for 12 to 14 hours 😁 I may may then be confident that I will have my 8 hours of use hopefully 😐