2016 macbook pro 15" with touch bar poor battery life

I ran a battery test on Windows in Boot Camp. With similar condition(no syncing, no other background app running etc.), ironically, Windows 10 gives me 8 hours of battery life, whereas macOS 10.12.2 only has 5 hours of running time.

This will be my last post on this thread because as far as I'm concerned the problem has gone away.

Since installing 10.12.2 I've had much more sensible estimates of battery life and no surprising battery related figures or issues at all.

It's been several days now since the install. Today I've just run my MacBook down from 100% to 7% before bailing to power. The device is a fully spec'ed up 15" with all the extras.

I've been running browsing, using mail and general desktop productivity apps like office on the Mac plus I've also been running VMWare with one and at times two VMs both running Windows. The guest loads have been CPU hungry development tools. The machine has been very busy consistently for the last 6.5 hours.

That's a much higher workload than the standard Apple test and the machine managed nearly 7 hours on battery and at 7% claimed a further 40 minutes remaining, which I don't doubt, given the rate at which the % remaining charge has been falling.

That's an excellent result. My previous machine would have managed maybe 3.5 hours at best with the same workload. Not a fair comparison, since my previous machine was of course older, but if my 2016 MBP can deliver over 6 hours of solid use running plenty of host apps plus lots of CPU hungry development tools in two Windows VMs, then I'm happy with that.

I've previously run a similar discharge test with just light app usage similar to the Apple test and exceeded 11 hours of true discharge time before I dipped below 10%.

For the rest that are still having issues, it's due to "watching rice boil" syndrome.

The battery issue will eventually work itself out. You just have to be patient and give it some time.

While you are steadily watching the remaining battery estimates, remember, it is an estimate at best, and continually updates itself due to the usage of the machine itself.

There are some that have reinstalled, there are some that have formatted then reinstalled, not giving the system enough time to do what it needs to do on the first install. Indexing takes time, and also cloud sync's take time. All these processes take a few days depending on what you actually have. There are multiple processes that kick off when you first start using OS X. To those individuals, all I can say is be patient. If you cannot be patient enough for those things to go away, then return it... Simple.

Good luck to all, and congrats on the rest that got their Christmas Gifts early this year 🙂

max 3 hours battery life out of a 4000,- euro 2016 15" maxbook "pro"

( i'm from Holland).

This new macbook is a disapointment!

Not fast, with 16 gig onder the hood!

I've got More complains:

Some Red screens ?!

Beach balling ?!

Slow in sevreal design app's like indesign

freesed up several times!?

Verry verry Slow start up after sleepmode!?

I know apple products...

I started wordking in a prefoma 630 so thats 100 years ago...

Had sevreal mac's my life ( say 8 )

I was never dissapointed!!

Last mac...

Worked ( day in day out) with my mid 2009 15" maxbook pro with a ssd!

untill last month

Worked like a charm!!! every day! Never missed a day!

But this thing... no words... sorry apple you lost me! This is not a pro users product!!

Please help !other wise i have to work on a windows...

But then why did I never had these problems installing or clean installing my other Mac notebooks? This summer I did a clean install of my MBA, installed exactly the same things as now on my MBP and it just worked. No problems with battery time, no heating up, no apps using excessive CPU-time or energy. Dropbox and Sync syncing like crazy, the indexing going fast and without any trouble. I'm not convinced. I'm starting to think that Apple designed this MBP to be powered by a much faster and more energy efficient processor, maybe their own processor, but the it wasn't ready in time.

The inherent battery life problems are partly addressed in 10.12.2. Users are reporting that as they use the new MacBook and drain and charge the battery, it seems to "calibrate" it to a certain extent.

This will NOT fix expectations that you can have a lot of stuff that "phones home" like iCloud, dropbox, and Internet backups running in the background and expect to actually get the 10 hours. You also cannot stream movies and edit Videos and expect to get the 10 hours.

But it appears that the initially-reported results are much worse than they appear after a few days use. Once Spotlight is done indexing and the battery starts to be "calibrated", users without a lot of stuff running in the background are seeing respectable numbers for battery life, when conditions are comparable to the Apple test conditions.

Sebsies please follow the instructions given here:

Re: 2016 macbook pro 15" with touch bar poor battery life

If you have already installed 10.12.2 then ignore that part, but still do the rebooting, reset the SMC, and full charge, discharge, charge again. After a few charge cycles you should find that your computer starts giving you longer on battery as it recalculates its power-drain curve.

Well, a lot of people suddenly seem to know what to do and are sure there is no problem at all. Maybe one of them could answer my question. When I clean installed my MBP last week, I did the same with my 2010 MBA. I'd like to know why a late 2016 MacBook Pro with the speediest 3.3 Ghz processor available right now and 16 Gb of RAM needs weeks to perform (or get over) some relatively simple background tasks, which my MBA with a seven year old processor, only 4 Gb of RAM and a pretty worn out battery without any effort at all finished in just a few hours. Today Bloomberg reports Apple's marketing department forced this computer to launch with a battery that isn't suited for a machine like this. As I said before, in my opinion also the processor isn't suited for all the (wonderful) extra's this machine offers. My advice: get your money back if you still can, and wait for the next update.

Its different Tech Schmrtzzz..

I wouldn't trust anything coming from Bloomberg. Its like click bait for the Financial world. Its meant to drive the market and start panicked trends of upward or downward trading...

If you got your money back then great. But no need to spread gloom and doom for other people who have gotten over the hump and have well calibrated batteries and usage times well past 10 hours... I clocked it myself with actual usage. It still amazes me that a device this thin can last as long as it does yet still be as powerful as it is. I am not trying to talk it up, but I am happy with my investment. That's just my opinion.

Okay I'll stop spreading gloom and doom. But I still would want an answer to my question. It's different tech, yes. And maybe I'm stupid but I would think that pro-tech 2016 is way better then mediocre tech 2010.

I've had this problem too on 15" MBPTB

My Battery problems were gone after the last system update. But today they came back. Only about 4 hours left. But then I realized that there were other user accounts logged in but not in use (locked). After opening them and logging out (just a single activated user left) my battery increase after a few minutes to about 8:20 hours left (at 68%).

Could this be the reason?

In your case maybe. No indication that it is in every case though.

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this but generally if my machine has started to drain quickly (it doesn't always do it) a reboot puts it back to normal drain for minimal usage.

I noticed using a battery meter app that it was using 28 watts continuously. I could not for the life of me figure out which app was causing it as there was no indication of anything using excessive energy in activity monitor. I rebooted, same apps, and after the initial spike on logging in, 6 watts.

The theory on this was that some application had caused a switch to the high-power graphics card, but that a bug prevented the computer from realising that that demand had finished and it could switch back to the low-power graphics card. I was never able to confirm that such a bug existed using my own computer.

You can check which graphics card is in use using "Apple --> About This Mac --> Displays". It might list only the low-power card but if the computer is using the high-power card then it'll list them both. Please note that this display does not update in real time. If you need an update you have to close the window and open it again.