09-28-2009, 06:30 PM

I am thinking about giving apple another shot since I have an iPhone and I am stuck with iTunes. Apple claims the 13in MBP gets 7 hours but their estimates for iPods is usually overstated based on my experience so I assume this figure might be a bit high too. What are you guys seeing?

09-28-2009, 09:39 PM

Generally 5-7 hours.

Depends on the brightness and what programs are open.

If you have it at half brightness, expect around 6-7 hours of time web browsing.

If it is full brightness, I get around 4-5:30 roughly.

The battery is quite great, and my capacity went up from it's original capacity (according to coconut battery).

The battery holds 5450 mAH.

09-28-2009, 09:42 PM

Good to know. Does the keyboard backlight kill battery life for you?

09-28-2009, 10:08 PM

Um... from the wisdom of common sense... yes. Using anything that consumes energy will indeed kill battery life for you.

09-28-2009, 10:24 PM

I use about 1 bar of brightness and I am fine because I get 7 hrs of battery life. That is just surfing the net. And I don't like it bright either when I am in the dark so it doesn't hurt my eyes. But yea you can actually get 7 hrs of battery time, but what they don't say is if you change the brightness. Now if they said 7 hrs of battery with FULL BRIGHTNESS! that would probably pull a lot more customers because that would mean it would last 7+ with brightness minimized.

But still it is a great battery. I am not complaining!

09-29-2009, 01:58 AM

Originally Posted by mynameis

Good to know. Does the keyboard backlight kill battery life for you?

I am at 100% battery life right now.
I am at half brightness and on the forums.

With one brightness of backlight, I get 8:04

With full brightness of the backlight, I get 7:33

So, the keyboard being lit up fully will drain the battery around 20-30 minutes compared to it being off / very dim.

You really don't need full brightness on the keyboard, so this shouldn't be a problem.

When I put my brightness all the way down and disable bluetooth and airport, I get 10 hours of battery life. =D

09-29-2009, 03:27 AM

Originally Posted by alexsd123

I am at 100% battery life right now.
I am at half brightness and on the forums.

With one brightness of backlight, I get 8:04

With full brightness of the backlight, I get 7:33

So, the keyboard being lit up fully will drain the battery around 20-30 minutes compared to it being off / very dim.

You really don't need full brightness on the keyboard, so this shouldn't be a problem.

When I put my brightness all the way down and disable bluetooth and airport, I get 10 hours of battery life. =D

Those time readings you get on the menu bar aren't really all that accurate, so I'm hoping you're saying you get 7:33 because you actually timed it.

When I take my 13" MBP to school, I use firefox, ichat and either MS Word or MS Excel or both. I usually run anywhere from 2 to 4 applications at a time. My average battery life with the screen brightness at about 65% and the keyboard lighting at 100% is usually between 4.5 to 5.5 hours.

I have never gotten a battery life better than this, as I don't really just use it to browse the internet in 1 window for hours on end. Its usually multiple tabs open in Firefox. I'm generally satisfied with the battery life.

09-29-2009, 07:34 PM

The readings for me are pretty accurate.

Plus, I am running only Safari, have the brightness at 50%.

iChat, MS word, firefox, and MS Excel running at 65% brightness will decrease the battery life.

I personally do not have the patience to time my use with my laptop.

09-30-2009, 12:59 AM

The readings are based on what you are doing right at the moment. Therefore, a reading of 7:33 would only be completely accurate if you kept running the macbook at the same brightness using the same exact application (no more no less) and having that application run the same exact process for the next 7 hours and 33 minutes.

Any fluctuations in overall power usage, ram usage and cpu usage are going to cause fluctuations in your battery usage.

I don't really time my use either, but I know I have never gotten over 7 hours of straight usage with my mbp with normal use.

Either way, I think we can both agree that the battery life is great!

09-30-2009, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by poopieboy

Either way, I think we can both agree that the battery life is great!

Yup, they are great.

Much better than the laptops at my school running XP.

At 25% battery in my MBP, I get the same time as 100% with the Lenovo Thinkpads at my school.