New MBP 13" Battery Life

Just barely got my new MBP 13". Love it, but one major issue.

I bought this puppy for a few reasons, but chief among them was the advertised and independently reported 10 hour battery life.

So...

Why am I only getting 5-6?

Thanks!

Connaught said:

Why am I only getting 5-6?

Click to expand...

What are you doing on the computer when you only get 5-6 hours?

Doing different things...and different preference settings will effect battery runtime.

- Nick

And if you really read what it says .... "Up to 10 Hour battery life"

As Nick posted What are you doing with it ??? I bought my 13" 2 dys ago and i got 9.3 Hrs of battery life doing nothing apart from having the lid open and airport searching for a wireless network for the whole time Im happy with my Battery life.

Have you done a Calibration~  Support??

Cheers

Calibrating per that link tomorrow... and thanks.

I will report back when I get new numbers.

(set sheepish grin = 1)

It all depends on what you are using. You will never get close to the 10 with the screen up to full, keyboard lit, etc.

I took mine into work Tuesday morning at 8, worked all day and closed the lid to suspend. Wednesday morning opened up the laptop and worked until 12:30 and I was at 9% battery. Below is how my machine was set to get the result.

Screen brightness @ 50%
Keyboard light off
Airport off (used ethernet)
screen sleep after 10 minutes
I use a SSD, so that should help too.
No CD-ROM use

You can get some great times, but you really have to minimize usage of features.

The Air lasted for nearly 4 hours of mixed use, including video playback, software installation, Web surfing, and productivity tasks. That's reasonably close to Apple's 5-hour claims.

i have never gotten 10. But I always have my screen really bright and the keyboard too. So I guess that's why. I have calibrated but I need to do it because it's been like a month. Right now I have just over 6 hours on a full battery with screen at halfway and keyboard too.

I have the 2009 model, and have good battery life. Just calibrating your battery will help the lifespan of your battery, so make sure you at least do this once a month. And if it's plugged in all the time, makes sure to drain your battery once or twice a month, and calibrate it as well.

The two things that got my battery life to report 7 hours (I have a late 2009 MBP) was battery calibration and following JohnCL's post. I actually had Wifi on, bluetooth off, and the video card set to the slower integrated card too - then the battery time was reported at 7 when fully charged. Otherwise it always reports 4-5 on a full charge. It seems the keyboard light was the key to getting the highest reported battery life available.

AFter calibration I am showing about 4 but getting closer to 5 or even 6.

WIFI on, Btooth off, keyboard light off, screen at 100% which is not an option for me. I bought the machine for a few reasons and the screen was one of them.

Not sure if the battery is working right or not. Next time I am close to an Apple store I will have them test it for me.

All in all... I LOVE the new machine. Love it.

The screen brightness will make a huge difference in your battery time. I have not seen any posts that point at battery issues on the 2010 MBP's. There are times, depending on environment that I use mine with the brightness at 1 or 2 and that makes a big difference.

Turning the screen down to 50% after a full charge changed estimated battery time from 4 hours to 5.5 hours.

Gotta say... I should be getting more than that with bluetooth off, wifi only, about 6 apps open and none of them processor intensive whatsoever.

Connaught said:

Turning the screen down to 50% after a full charge changed estimated battery time from 4 hours to 5.5 hours.

Gotta say... I should be getting more than that with bluetooth off, wifi only, about 6 apps open and none of them processor intensive whatsoever.

Click to expand...

Setting my machines hardware exactly like yours and opening a few apps from a 100% battery shows my time at 8:14. I do have an SSD installed, and I would love to see what the difference there is.

Try keeping just one app open at a time. You may not think they are processor intensive, but they are still active and thus drawing at least some resources.

I am from the oldest era of popular computer usage and RAM was always at a premium, so I got in the habit of by-and-large keeping only one app open at a time. Sometimes of course you need more than that but overall I tend to only open apps when I need them and close them when I don't.

This allows my 2007 Blackbook with an uncalibrated and rarely-used battery to still give me 4-4.5 hours of use (50% screen btw, I find 100% too bright) three years after purchase.