2016 macbook pro 15" with touch bar poor battery life

I just received my new 15" MacBook Pro with touch bar. The battery life is horrible!!! I have Safari open with 6 tabs and with 95% battery, I am told that I have under 3 hours of battery life left! I thought these things were supposed to get 10 hours? I ran the battery down in 3 hours last night only browsing the web. I wasn't watching videos, just browsing. Is there something wrong with my laptop?

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MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.1), 15" with touch bar

Posted on Nov 20, 2016 10:07 AM

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540 replies

Dec 8, 2016 1:37 PM in response to cab5g

I purchased a MacBook Pro 13 with touch bar. The battery at the beginning was bad. that was before I read anything on the internet. Once I started reading all the sites and forums, I thought I defiantly have the same issue. I was showing 3-4 hours battery on full charge. This carried on for 3 charges. I did reset the SMC the other day, and was not convinced it worked at first. It might not be that that has done it but now my battery life seems much on par.


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I am convinced that If you keep using your Mac it will stabilise over time unless you do have a Voltage problem. I can't comment on the 15 inch with the discreet graphics card. Just stick with it and see what happens before you go returning you Mac.

Dec 8, 2016 4:26 PM in response to DannyC79

Yes, I called AppleCare regarding battery yesterday when my new touchbar 13'' was maybe just 20hr old and was told to wait a couple of days, continue using the laptop to see if battery life will improve. Just curious how many days you've used your laptop actively before the battery stabilised--and whether your battery meter is accurate (e.g., does it go from 3hr at 50%, then going to 5hr at 30%)?

Dec 8, 2016 4:44 PM in response to DannyC79

Fully agree with you. Just keep using it. I had 5-6 hours maximum with just web browsing. To compare with same use, now i have 8:45 hours just browsing with 1-2 tabs.

P.S. yes, its a Russian, and its working from battery.

15" 2.6, 256, 450


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At 100% with opened Safari with 3-4 tabs + xCode + Spark + iMessages + one Pages doc, its showing 11:43 estimated life. Ofc within hour of using its showing 2-3 hours less. Im 100% sured its a software thing. Waiting for the update

Dec 8, 2016 7:45 PM in response to DannyC79

I have a 2016/MBP/15/16G/1TB and had very poor battery life to begin with. The thing which seemed to make a big difference for me was resetting the SMC (although others have tried with no success).


Since then, I've seem pretty reasonable battery life, although not super. But a lot of my time testing has been running active SW development within a W7 parallels VM--which is pretty much my work environment every day (Eclipse, cross-compilers, debugging). Activity Monitor shows parallels as the big drain (at around 50% average energy impact), but I'm still seeing what I would consider reasonable duration given the VM/active-work mode.


Today, I was on battery for about 4 hours before I shut down the VM (finished my work for the day). It's been about 45 minutes since then and I'm still on track to wind up with almost 7 hours (a bit less if you consider that one would probably bail back to power at the 10% warning).


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As many have noted, Safari can be a big drain too--in fact, after closing my VM the largest energy user--hands down--is Safari.


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It also pays to monitor the graphics use and to favor apps which use the integrated graphics when you are trying to go a longer time without charging (e.g., avoid Adobe reader in favor of Preview). I've also adjusted some of my background apps (e.g., manometers) to use less frequent update frequency.


I hope to do some more tests over the weekend when I don't have to run the VM--to see how much better longevity I might get staying completely in the Apple ecosystem.

Dec 8, 2016 10:14 PM in response to cab5g

2 of my coworkers and I upgraded to the basic 15", and we're all having the same issue.

You have to keep the screen brightness at < 50%, and use chrome with 8 or more tabs open then your battery is 3-4 hours. If you use safari, and cmd+q everything you don't use, you might get 4-5 hours. (No video or audio)


My 2012 13" pro with a battery that had 460 cycles did 6 hours.


Do you think apple will do anything, short of us all returning our laptops?

Dec 9, 2016 12:13 AM in response to maxsab

Тоже траблы с батареей? Какой девайс? С яркостью особо не шали, я на 75% сижу, хоть и до этого мог только на 100% на предыдущих маках, а тут еще дисплей настолько шикарный, что сложно устоять, но приходится, он реально жрет очень много заряда. Сам уже все ногти перегрыз, обновление жди на следующей неделе, ну или приблизительно в ближайшие дни)

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23 minutes on battery and still 12:16 est.,

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2016 macbook pro 15" with touch bar poor battery life

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