New MacBook only getting 5 hours of battery life

i had the same issue then I found out how to recalibrate my battery by fully charging it and leaving the charger connected for 2 hours, then use it till its below 5% and goes to sleep and leave it like that for 5 hours. i now get 8.5 hours of battery life with streaming video web browsing and video editing.

I was recently having this issue on my early 2015 MacBook 12" Retina 1.3Ghz model. I was getting 4-4.5 hours of battery life simply looking at PDF files and light internet browsing. My battery was at a 180 count cycles and 90% charge capacity. Something didn't make sense. What solved the battery drain issue was a fresh install of Sierra. Now I get 11-13 hours of battery life from browsing the net and viewing pdfs, which I use a lot to study slides etc. So, if nothing else works for you, back up your laptop with TimeMachine and do a clean install. I keep brightness at 50% usually and keyboard backlight off during the day. Hope this helps.

This is a new model. We know nothing about what software you use, how you use, or how you use your computer. If you think you have a problem then take it back to the Apple Store where the can deal with it. It's in warranty.

I've spent over 5 hours on the phone with Apple Sr .tech reps in the past week. They have been very understanding, but can't offer any solutions. I'm on my second Macbook and the most battery life I've been able to get from either machine is about 5.5 hours. I'm trying to decide whether I should just live with this (I do like the machine) or go back to a 13" Macbook Pro.

the "MacBook" was just released early 2015. There is also the MacBook Air & MacBook Pro that have been around for many years. I have the brand new Apple product 2015 12" MacBook and just got out of an all day, 9+ hour conference and ran fully on battery and left with 4% left =)

What version of MacBook do you have? MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or the new MacBook?

I have the same issue with very poor battery life, even though nearly every thing is turned off or down, and even without wifi being on it makes no difference.

I only use the MacBook for word processing and reading documents, email and web browsing using Safari. I also check the Activity Monitor constantly to see how much battery time I have left.

John0001 - did you calibrate the battery at all to begin with? Or straight out of the box after a charge were you getting the 9hoir battery life? I ask as I just bought a new MacBook 1.2gh 512gb and after the first charge (charged overnight) I got only 3 hours and 20mins from the battery (only web surfing with Bluetooth off and brightness halfway). So just wondering if the battery life will improve or if maybe I've gotten a dud and need to get it replaced??

I did not calibrate or anything, just started using it like a user. Something is wrong because my 12" MacBook battery is performing very well and I bring it to work daily. I have Outlook and Lync running during all meetings, about 3-5 hours of meetings a day. Yesterday, had a 4-5 that went to 5:45 and we ending up using the mic and speaker on the MacBook through Lync since the overhead wouldn't work. Still walked out with plenty of battery to use in the evening. I charge it overnight and repeat.

Is your MacBook "always" hot? Mine only get "hot", so above warm, under a decent load, like having a VM instance of linux and Jboss running locally, or a video at 1080p too for some reason. And what's your brightness? I'm at 75% during work, 100% at home.

Here is some data that may help to understand run time:

power consumption

- idle, minimum brightness: 2.5W

- display at max. brightness: + 2.5W

- CPU at 100% load (no thermal throttling): +8.5W

Total: 2.5W - 14.5W, depending on brightness and activity.

The battery contains 39.7 Whrs of energy.

So, if you get 5 hrs of battery life, the average consumption was 8 Watts. At 70% brightness and 30% CPU load, this is what you would expect.

The extremes would be 3hrs under continuous max. load and max. brightness or 16 hrs at minimum brightness and no load.

Thanks for the replies 🙂

I actually saw on a thread that some people were having issues with battery life after using migration assistant, so as I was still only getting between 3.5 to 4 hours of battery using very little apps and brightness less than half, I decided to reset my macbook. I erased the hard drive then reinstalled yosemite and manually copied across my docs and downloaded my programs and what do you know - now getting between 7 to 9 hours of battery life!! Don't know what I had on my old system that would disrupt the battery life so much, but at least now I'm getting the battery life I should.

So for anyone else that uses migration assistant on their new macbook and runs into battery drain issues - that could be the reason 🙂

Well before starting over you could have always looked at activity monitor to see what processes may have been using too much CPU in the background and causing loss of battery life.

Did that and as I was running no programs there was nothing overly using the cpu.

Can't say this is your issue, but I have had my battery drain and unit get quite warm when the OS kicks off a process called DiscoveryD, my understanding is this is a networking process used by Yosemite. It has been widely reported to cause various problems, I noticed it was taking huge chunks of CPU time every once and a while. As soon as I force it to stop (using Activity Monitor), the MacBook would get cool to the touch and the battery life would be improved for that cycle. Just read today that Apple is removing this software in their next update.

good luck with your quest to get things sorted out. I almost returned mine until I found this bug.

for me, it was using ibooks author, blue tooth headsets and sometimes streaming iTunes radio and got about 5 hours on mine.

Hi John0001,

I just got my new Macbook this weekend and am using it for the first time today. I started the day at 8:45 EDT and it is now 11:45 and I have gone from 100% to 37%. Obviously that is not acceptable. I am not using anything besides Safari, Outlook, Mail, PowerPoint, Lync, Twitter, Notes, Calendar, etc but I did find that when I used Lync via the web that I actually had a fan noise and it seems to have really drained the battery. I also want/need to be able to use VMWare Fusion and run Microsoft Project and Visio on the other side via Windows and am concerned with the battery life.

Your work situation is exactly like mine and so I have hope in that you are getting fantastic battery out of the system. Did you use Migration Assistant like someone else mentioned or did you do a fresh install of everything? I am in my two weeks to try it to see if I can keep it or not and based on today, I can't but if it worked like yours I could.

Thanks for your help and feedback!

Cheryl