2016 macbook pro 15" with touch bar poor battery life

I ran another similar test today while working--which requires use of a W7 virtual machine under Parallels. Total time before battery shutdown--from 100% charge--was 3.5 hours.

I've been running a test this evening for a while with light use (no virtual machine, a bit of Safari web browsing and email, a little bit of text editing). At present, I'm at 55% charge (down from 100%) in 2:12 and it predicts I have 2:14 remaining. If the prediction is correct--that would give me something like 4.5 hours of battery life--on a machine which is "estimated" to get 10 hours. Not even close.

The only application fingered as having significant energy draw is Safari, which has a 3X higher average energy draw than the next app down (Postbox). Quite a bit of the time, I've had Safari closed (quit) when I haven't been actively using it. I have been typing a lot though, so it does make me wonder about how much the touch bar is contributing to the low battery life. It is an OLED display which is supposed to be relatively low-power, but if you are typing or using the trackpad, then it is constantly on (never times out).

The battery life is a better than my early 2011 MBP with aging battery, but I was expecting it to be a LOT better for casual use--maybe at least 8 hours if they advertised 10. So something does seem way off.

Also forgot to mention: display is set at 50% brightness and keyboard back light is at one bar (minimum above off).

I have been having exactly the same issue - its been a frustrating week to say the least. I was delivered a new MacBook pro 15" with touchbar 512gb version and noticed immediately that the batter was giving me maximum 4 hours of light use. A huge step down from my MacBook pro late 2015 retina (8 hours roughly). This was all quite confusing seeing as i was on the same OS version 10.12.2 beta 4 on both.

I contacted apple support, we ran tests, reset the CMS etc etc but it did not help. I reinstalled the OS back to 10.2.1 did not help. I had bought the laptop from a reseller and apple told me to contact them, they sent me a new MBP which arrived this morning. Exactly the same issue is happening. I have to agree with all the above it seems like a software issue but specifically with the new MacBook pro. They have clearly not aligned Sierra with the hardware properly. Interesting as well that the beta 4 has suddenly removed the time remaining function on the battery icon. I'm using Battery Monitor from the app store however and it is showing exactly the same issue - max 4.5 hours after charging to 100% and it lasts that long also.

Disaster by apple. they need to sort this out asap because as we continuously charge our laptops when clearly there's juice in them even though reading 0% we are damaging the long term health of our batteries. Let's see how quickly they respond.

Hello solope:

When you said you "reset the CMS" I'm assuming you meant that you reset the SMC?

Anyway, I wanted to report my experiences today which may shed more light on the issue. I reset my SMC for the first time late last night and then ran another "work day" battery life test during the day today. My work day involves running a Parallels VM with W7 and maybe 10 windows going in it--some compiling, use of Eclipse, typical developer environment.

Shock of all shocks, whereas the day before I only managed 3.5 hours with the VM going, today the machine gave me much more. I recharged when I reached 8% level, after 06:40 running and with 00:37 estimated remaining. So it went from 3.5 the day before to over 7 hours today. Now, if someone had told me I'd be looking at "only" 7 hours with a full day of Parallels VM with active development, I'd say that's pretty good--maybe even better than I would have expected given the heavy energy use that a VM typically is. Besides resetting the SMC, I did make a couple of other changes: I put the display brightness down to about the minimum I could handle (from 50% the day before to 25%) and also turned the keyboard backlight from 1 bar (minimum) to completely off. Like the day before, I was plugged into a powered USB HUB because of various hardware things I'm working with for development (and Time Machine was running hourly). This raises the possibility, I guess, that the HUB could be providing some power to offset the machine battery drain. But I certainly didn't see things going that way yesterday with the exact same connections. So I'm guessing not on that count. (Don't have a clue if a self-powered USB 3 HUB could provide any power into a USB-C connector from the MBP.)

But resetting the SMC seems to be the main element that would explain the improvement. Take now, for instance, I'm unplugged in complete stand-alone operation back with 50% brightness and 1 bar (minimum) display backlight and the battery indication, after half an hour has steadily RISEN from startup at 100% charge--where it showed something alarming like about 4 hours, to now indicating about 8 hours estimated remaining. And it looks like it will continue to rise further still. (This is probably because the energy use at initial startup is artificially high and skews the digital filter which smooths out the prediction.)

We'll see what happens this evening as I continue to use it without the VM, but initial indications are that I'll see way better than the 4.5 I saw in this same situation yesterday. (Yesterday, I NEVER saw the estimate rise. It started out pretty lame and stuck there or degraded a bit.) So something significant has changed.

I have no knowledge of the specifies of the SMC, but I did migrate my settings from a previous 2011 MBP time machine backup right after getting on this new 2016 MBP. Some suggest that the migration brings over information from the previous machine which could confuse the estimation by the new machine. That seems strange that they would allow hardware-specific energy data to come across during a migration, but I have no idea. Nor would it explain what you seem to be seeing having gone back to clean installs.

About all one can conclude for sure is that it is worrisome and more than confusing. ;-P

(Yeah, in the time it has taken me to type the previous two paragraphs, my battery prediction is now estimating almost 9 hours--I've gained an entire hour based on my present energy usage, apparently, in about 10 minutes or less. Overall, this is a potentially positive outcome though!)

Yes sorry I did mean SMC.

That's interesting I'll try what you've done tomorrow. When I reset the SMC after a charge up to 100% it did read 7hrs 30 left till discharge. I however kept screen brightness at 50% and keyboard lights at 50% and very quickly the discharge estimate started falling. More rapidly than the time expended. Last time I looked it said 2 hours 50 at about 78%.

Whatever the situation this is just not acceptable. My MBP 2015 had a battery whcih lasted triple this one.

My only fear is that large batches of these new MBP 's are faulty. Seems too strange that apart from this forum no-one else is taking much about it online

Solope,

it is widespread, example : http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/battery-life-for-13-and-15-macbook-pro.20150 74/

Yes, it is quite strange.

I mentioned it to the business account manager at the Alderwood Mall Apple Store (near Seattle--I'm about an hour north of Seattle) and he said it was the first he had heard about it from anyone they've sold new MBPs to.

It is particularly disturbing/concerning given the cost one puts out for the machine. In every other way, I'm totally blown away with the unit. I actually prefer this keyboard over my 2011 MBP (I can type faster with greater accuracy and with less overall effort). The quality of the build is pretty simple to describe: the best of any machine I've ever used. Period.

So hopefully this will get sorted out.

BTW, I've now been actively typing and browsing for an hour and my battery is at 98% with predicted additional 11:03 remaining. That's definitely more like it--should it turn out to be accurate. (I've been actively using the keyboard and trackpad and, as a result, the touch bar has been on pretty much constantly too.)

Having the same issue. Got my MacBook Pro 15" off battery and it is down to 65% with an estimate of 2 hours remaining. I guess that equates to 5 hours in total. Not what I would expect from a Mac. This is my first Mac coming over from a Dell Windows laptop and this came as a shock to me. Seeing that this is quite a widespread problem I will give it a week or two before I contact Apple.

Very weird.

Mine says I got 20 hours!

I know this probably isn't true but its say 20 hours left on 100% battery

2nd laptop. Tried the SMC reset someone posted earlier and hit still doesn't seem to help...

I have the 13" Macbook Pro with touch bar 512GB. I originally couldn't get more than ~5 hours of battery life. I allowed the battery to fully discharge then charged to full several times. Nothing seemed to help. I contacted Apple and was told that this was a "known issue" and that I should return/swap the device at the place of purchase (Best Buy). The rep did say something to the effect of "this device has been flagged" or something similar... Wish I remembered verbatim. I swapped for a second laptop today and still seem to have the same issue with the second machine... (Roughly 4-5 hours of battery life.) With both laptops, I restored from a Time Machine backup... always keep screen/keyboard brightness around 50%. Tried with two different versions of MacOS (10.12.1 and 10.12.2 beta)... Also found it interesting that they removed the remaining battery estimate from the battery icon in the dock in the beta version.

Anyway... Did the SMC Reset this morning and the machine went from 100% to 90% in exactly thirty minutes with just light safari usage. I'm figuring that i'll be right around 5 hours again if the same battery drain keeps up. (30*10=300/60=5). Hopefully this is some sort of software issue that Apple will get sorted out soon.

I spoke to apple support again today about the second laptop I've received with exactly the same issue. To be honest she didn't have a clue what I was talking about and also said that it was the first time she's hearing about this issue. I'm not sure what's going on here but for apple support not to know about such a widespread issue is worrying.

Some people have the issue and others don't. Some people with the issue have migrated their data, others haven't. Perhaps the issue is created by certain applications which have not been optimised for the MacBook Pro Touch bar. Only thing i can think of! Unless of course those who don't have the issue are lying or even apple representatives!

Apps I am running in the background:

Dropbox

Caffeine

Devolo Net Sync

Avast Antivirus

Other than apple apps integrated for Sierra these are the apps I'm running out of the ordinary. I'm going to try to disable them all and see if that makes a difference. However perhaps we can pinpoint something?

Screenshots of my CPU usage & Energy usage are below - I'm currently on 58% battery while typing this and its showing 1:45 left of battery life (green brightness about 70% and keyboard about 50%). Terrible.

Just a note that Apple's support staff do not get told about faults – even widespread faults – until Apple has announced knowledge of it to its authorised repair centres. This prevents a situation where they'd have to say "Yes, I understand exactly what you're describing but we have no idea how to fix it or how long it'll take.". Because that's how lawsuits start. This is just one reason why true Apple fanboys – the sort who read the Apple fansites – are never given front-line support positions: they'd have to deny something they knew about.

So don't snow your support representative under with numerous details of your investigation. If they've accepted your report, given you a case number, and stop asking for further details they've done what a front-line support-person should do. All you're doing is making their life hard. If Apple wants more details it'll get back to you.

On the other hand, if posting the details here makes you happy, go ahead. We all know about it. We're just waiting for Apple to announce a fix.

For those who are concerned about low battery life estimates after initial turn-on: keep in mind that the initial estimate can often be way off if it is based on an extrapolation of energy use after boot-up. In other words, the energy used when first booting up and launching the OS and various supporting tasks (plus reading the images of programs into memory from the SSD) will be a "spike" compared with the average once the environment gets established and stabilizes. This will be the case if you see the estimated time remaining increase significantly as time goes on (rather than dropping) because the longer-term energy draw drops from the start-up requirements.

So, you may not really get a meaningful battery life estimate soon after (re)starting--or anytime you make a significant change in the energy use profile.

Some have reported that their Sierra beta doesn't include the estimated time remaining info in the drop-down menu from the battery icon, but I wonder if that is an intelligent decision by Apple for some period of time after start-up in that the estimate isn't really very meaningful until after some minimum operating time on battery has gone by at which point perhaps the estimate will re-appear (in a much more accurate way)? Have no idea, just suggesting that it will be interesting to see if the estimated life remaining disappears in future releases, or is only suppressed until enough history has gone through the estimation filter that the prediction is more reliable and less likely to cause false alarm.

Ever since I reset my SMC, I continue to see drastically improved battery reporting (and actual operation) with a 15" with max processor, 16GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD. I've yet to see the alarming performance I had for the first week--prior to resetting the SMC. So I'm pretty convinced, at least in my case, that it was the key. I've seen reports by others, though, that suggest it didn't make much difference for them.

Same thing on a base 15", hope its a software problem

ACGarland,

Did you do this with any specific battery life?

Was your computer fully charged?

I have the same problem along with the same computer.

I want to try and reset I just want to know if it matters if the battery is at 10% or at 100%

Thanks!