Apple have made some bold claims about the battery life of the latest Macbook Pros, with estimates of around 8-9 hours!
When I had one of my replacement MacBooks, I did a few tests - and gave the battery a bit of a hammering! The first was a simple web browsing test - I downloaded an automator file, which refreshed two alternate web pages every 20 seconds.
For this test the display was set to 50%, bluetooth was off, keyboard illumination off and obviously Airport was on. The battery had been fully charged, then I restarted the system then unplugged the power cord. I used the free program ‘Caffeine’ to prevent the system from going to sleep and activating a screensaver.
Hour % Battery Left Indicated Time Left*
1 89 6.58
2 76 6.17
3 63 4.58
4 49 5.01
5 36 2.46
6 22 1.48
6.5 16 1.09
I have to say the battery lasted longer than I anticipated, and as this was running at work, I had to go home after it had been on for 6.5 hours! I put the MacBook to sleep then drove 30 minutes home, when I got home I carried on the test as before, only this time the keyboard illumination was on 50%. The MacBook carried on with the cycle for another 58 minutes until it finally died (or went into hibernation I should say). So that would have been an easy 7.5 hours.
* this was just the indicated time left according to the MacBook. This was a little tricky to read as it will go up and down depending on the current demand on the computer. I think it’s fair to say that overall it was pretty accurate, but if you’re doing many different things at once, this will be much harder for the computer to calculate.
The next test was video playback. I opened a 1.47GB .avi file in VLC player (full screen) and timed how long the video would play for. The system settings were the same as before, except the screen brightness was set to around 75% and the keyboard light was on full (I forgot to turn it off!).
The MacBook lasted just under 4.5 hours before going into hibernation. So that’s comfortably watching two movies - and as a frequent flyer this is reassuring for me. You could get more life out of the battery if you turn the screen brightness down more - although anything less than 50% does detract from the viewing experience.
I also did a gaming test. As I had already downloaded Half Life 2 I found out how long I could play that for on battery. With the screen brightness at 75% and game graphic settings on high, I managed just under 80 minutes. Again pretty impressive considering how draining that is on the battery.
