Battery performance with screen resolution

[imfromwales]

Are there any numbers or stats out there, that show how badly affected battery life is, when the screen resolution is increased?

I have increased my rMBP to the full resolution of 1680 x 1050 (everything looks much better!) rather than the default 1280 x 800.

 

[pigoo3]

I personally have not seen anything on this. How about doing a test yourself…and reporting the results here? I'm sure that if there's any serious impact…it will show up in the first battery cycle you test.

Don't forget. To be a proper scientific test…you need to duplicate what you normally do when the resolution was set at the default 1280 x 800.

- Nick

 

[TattooedMac]

Do as Nick posted, but without having to write a lot of crap down, you can use Battery Logger and let it do the hard work for you.
Charge to full, then set the Screen Res to 1280 x 800 and when it gets down to lets say 10%, have a look at the Battery Logger and get the Stats.
Then, wash, rinse and repeat for the 1680 x 1050 and then come back here and post the results.
I only suggested the App to help, because it looks like it will record the Stats you are looking for and more, for more detailed testing.

HTH

 

[imfromwales]

I just did a very crude and fast experiment. I played the same 57min episode of dexter, with full brightness and full volume (out of Mac speakers), with no other programs running. With the highest resolution (1680x1050), the battery dropped to 78%, while on 2nd best setting (1400x900) the battery dropped to 70%!

Any ideas why there is such a big difference, and why it's the opposite to what I thought the outcome would be?

 

[pigoo3]

Any ideas why there is such a big difference, and why it's the opposite to what I thought the outcome would be?

How come you used the 1400 x 900 setting instead of the default setting of 1280 x 800 (as mentioned earlier)? Just wondering.

Also...was the beginning battery charge level 100% for both tests?

- Nick

 

[imfromwales]

Both were fully charged to 100%, and as the movie started playing, I unplugged the charger. No other apps were running, nor any background processes like Dropbox uploads...

I chose the 1400x900 setting as I was going to do a test on all three settings, but I didn't get a chance to do the third this evening, so I'll do it tomorrow, and see if it is much better than the 78%. If it's not considerably better, then I feel that a 22% battery drop is acceptable on full brightness, and 13/16 volume for a one hour movie, no?