Done for 2009: The Holiday MacBook Pro Roundup
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 10, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Incredible Battery Life Under OS X
Over the summer I stumbled onto something interesting: the new 15-inch MacBook Pro delivered an ungodly amount of battery life. By shrinking the battery, Apple was able to cram a 73Whr battery where they used to only have a 50Whr pack:
The rest of the lineup got a similarly sizeable upgrade in 2009:
| New Lithium Polymer Battery (Integrated) |
|
Increase in Capacity | |
| MacBook Pro 13-inch | 58WHr | 45WHr | 29% |
| MacBook Pro 15-inch | 73WHr | 50WHr | 46% |
| MacBook Pro 17-inch | 95WHr | 68WHr | 40% |
I only tested the 15-inch over the summer, but recently I had the opportunity to try the entire lineup. I brewed up some new battery life test and put Apple's "up to 7 hours" claims to the test.
Light Web Browsing
Our first test is the one that yields the longest battery life: the light web browsing test. Here we're simply listening to MP3s in iTunes on repeat while browsing through a series of webpages with no flash on them. Each page forwards on to the next in the series after 20 seconds.
The display is kept at 50% brightness, all screen savers are disabled, but the hard drive is allowed to go to sleep if there's no disk activity. The wireless connection is enabled and connected to a local access point less than 20 feet away. This test represents the longest battery life you can achieve on the platform while doing minimal work. The results here are comparable to what you'd see typing a document in TextEdit or reading documents.
All of the new unibody MacBook Pros here get over 7 hours of battery life. This isn't idle folks, this is actual, real world battery life with real world settings. The worst was actually the 15-inch MacBook Pro at only 7.4 hours, while the 13-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro got closer to 8 hours.
If you own a previous generation MacBook Pro (non-unibody) then the battery life is nearly double (a 76% increase). My personal 15-inch MacBook Pro is the first laptop I've owned where I was happy with both the performance and the battery life. It's what a notebook should be.
Flash Web Browsing
Our next test more closely simulates a very heavy web browsing scenario. The test here has three Safari windows open, each browsing a set of web pages with between 1 - 4 animated flash ads per page, at the same time. Each page forwards onto the next after about 20 seconds.
As always, the display is set to 50% brightness, audio at two bars, screensaver disabled and the hard drive is allowed to go to sleep if idle. The wireless connection is enabled and connected to a local access point less than 20 feet away.
Battery life drops significantly. Our 7.4+ hours now drop down to 3.7 hours on the 13-inch MacBook Pro, 4.6 hours on the 15-inch and 4.4 hours on the 17-inch. That's still not bad but between these two numbers you get a reasonable idea of how long one of these systems will last while browsing the web. The smaller capacity battery on the 13-inch appears to be really holding it back here as the 15-inch manages nearly another hour of battery life.
Here we're actually doubling the battery life of the older 15-inch MacBook Pro from early 2008. It's interesting to note that Apple's lightest notebook, the MacBook Air, offers similar battery life to the MacBook Pro from almost two years ago.
XviD Video Playback
Watching movies on your laptop is very realistic usage model, but I wanted to spice it up a bit. The DVD playback test is so done, I wanted something a little more forward looking. I ripped The Dark Knight to XviD and played it back continuously in QuickTime X with Perian installed.
For this test the display was set to full brightess and audio was set at two bars below maximum. Once more the hard drive was allowed to go to sleep if it was idle. The AirPort (wireless LAN) was enabled and connected to a local access point less than 20 feet away.
The 13-inch MacBook Pro comes in with the shortest battery life of 3.45 hours. The 15-inch is the winner at 3.83 hours, with the 17-inch close at 3.76 hours. All of the notebooks promise good enough battery life to get you through one long movie, but not quite enough for two back to back at full brightness. A couple of short ~100 minute movies is definitely doable though.
The older notebooks could only do a single long movie, the MacBook Air could barely finish one. Apple was very smart with its roadmap - when Intel could not provide significantly better performance, it delivered much better battery life to give users a reason to upgrade.
Multitasking Battery Life
Our final battery life test is the worst case scenario. In this test we have three open Safari windows, each browsing a set of web pages with between 1 - 4 flash ads per page, at the same time. We're also playing an XviD video in a window all while downloading files from a server at approximately 500KB/s.
This test proved to bring our notebooks to their knees. The 13-inch MacBook Pro managed under 2.5 hours, while the 15-inch came close to 3 and the 17-inch actual broke it with 3.1 hours.
Between these four tests you can get a general idea of how long these notebooks will last. The 13-inch will last you between 2.5 and 7.4 hours, the 15-inch is more like 3 - 7.8, and the 17-inch is fairly similar at 3 - 7.9 hours. On average expecting four to five hours of battery life while doing real work isn't unrealistic.
Which, I should mention, is freaking awesome on these notebooks. It's also worth noting that these aren't just benchmarks, these are scenarios I've created and also vetted with my own experience with the 15-inch MacBook Pro. For a writer, any of these MacBook Pros are perfect, especially when traveling. The lack of a removable battery just isn't an issue.
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marraco - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
Each mac is obsolete, offer lots less functionality, are MUCH slower, have the worst screens, sound, video, processor. have problems or plain incompatibility with most hardware, and 99% of useful software don't run on macs (no, once you run them on virtualized windows, you have all, and each problem of windows, -wich need too buy for extra money)-, and runs too much slower.also, macs are much harder to use, once you try to do something not basic, or find a problem (and macs are crammed with problems), the only way to solve it, is to open a text screen, and hand write LOTS of cryptycal commands.
you go to support, and they start forcing you to sign a contract agreeing to pay to apple U$S 100 or support, EVEN UNDER FIRST DAY GUARANTEE.
Then you find that those "genius bar dudes" are completely clueless...
robco - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I just upgraded to the midrange 2.66GHz 15" model. I agree that it is the sweet spot for portability and usability. I had gotten used to the 13" display on my MacBook, but the added screen real estate is nice and the weight increase is minor. The brightness provided by the LED backlight is great. The battery life is incredible, especially when using the 9400M. The build quality so far has been excellent. I can see why Apple hasn't "upgraded" the GPU yet, the 260M seems like little more than a rebranded 9600M. But it works for the few games I play on my computer these days. It does get awfully hot when using the 9600M under load.I considered switching back to a Windows machine, but couldn't find anything that was as thin and light as the MBP, or match the build quality. Those that came close tended to be higher end machines and the cost savings dropped considerably. Having brought my MacBook in to the Apple Store for service, I can say that the service is quite good.
I tried to wait for Arrandale, but couldn't hold out. I may not have the fastest notebook available, but it's fast enough for my needs.
SteveMinne - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
First release of Snow Leopard nicked battery life about 40% off Leopard. Instand huge downgrade. Rounds and rounds of Apple and third party updates now have that down below 20% heading toward 15%.Your 10% testing is solid. It's just still too optimistic for this social media driven world.
The apps I have on all the time are TweetDeck (Adobe Air), Entourage, and Firefox (and by extension Flash). I run 10-15 add'l apps on and off through each day. It's these main three that hit the cpu much harder at times than when on Leopard. I have no time to isolate testing as you have but have watched them in Activity Monitor.
Should also mention I switched to 32 bit Safari months ago. So I'm reporting increased power consumption based on third party apps sitting on Snow Leopard.
Finally, I am also finally coming around to liking Snow Leopard. I've advised dozens of folks to wait and most have. Your real world experience and mine have saved a lot of folks early adoption pain.
Keep up the good work.
GeorgeH - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - link
"I used IE8 and Windows Media Player 11 in Windows 7 while I used Safari/iTunes in OS X. The results I got were both expected and quite revealing."Absolutely expected, but thanks for redoing the test with IE and WMP anyway.
sigmatau - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Ya, very biased test. Run Windows 7 on a Mac to get benchmarks instead of running it on a PC. Good one!GeorgeH - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
My comment was in reference to an earlier article where Windows battery life was measured using Safari+iTunes, nothing more.For the record, there was absolutely nothing biased about this test - a Mac IS a PC, just one with a different BIOS.
sigmatau - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Um yes it was biased. Running anything Windows on a Mac and taking benchmarks for that and comparing it to native Apple software is biased. Windows runs slower on a Mac. Apple does everything within its power to make MS products look bad. Just look at their iTunes for Windows, complete crap compared to the version that runs on Macs.darwinosx - Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - link
Really good article but I'm surprised be a few of the comments. Mostly about Flash. It's well known that Flash for the Mac sucks. But thats an Adobe issue not an Apple issue. If Flash is acting up for you then uninstall it first using Adobes uninstaller. then reinstall. Don't install over the exiting version. Not all hardware is the same as your generic PC. The motherboard isn't. It is designed by Apple and IBM engineers. Same with the battery and its controller. For generic PC parts Apple has much higher and more stringent quality control standards than Dell or HP etc. So you are much less likely to get a bad part or own that does not perform to spec. If you do have an issue then Apples support is head and shoulders above everyone else. No one else is even close in customer satisfaction. Regarding SSD's it snot like some PC's don't have issues with various makes. I'm using a Crucial 256MB SSD in my 15-inch MBP, 2.8ghz, 512MB 9600GT. Runs very well. I've had just about everything at one time or another during my 20 years in IT and this laptop is way above the pack in every category. A lot of companies these days are offering the option of Macs and every IT Architect I know of has jumped at the chance. We value quality, performance, support and stability as well as the great multi-tasking and efficient use of proc and large amounts of ram that only OS X and Linux/Unix provide. Not like that warmed over version of Windows with all the same old issues. The trackpad is incredibly useful. PC companies are starting to put larger trackpads on their laptops but nothing like what Apple has. As far as prices go you don't have to pay retail. I have a work issued MBP and my own as well. I saved about $400 buying mine over the internet instead of in a store. I had to laugh seeing prices comparison with a Dell 1555. What a cheap hunk of plastic junk. I can't tell you how many work issued Dell's have died on me over the years. About 5 or 6 years ago I had three brand new Dell laptops, top of the line business models, die on me in a single year. 3 brand new laptops croaked in one year. No wonder I have seen so many companies dump Dell and buy HP business laptops. I do like the HP W series laptops and Thinkpads are decent although not as well made with the same material quality as they once were. But I don't see anything keeping me from sticking with macs for a long time to come. The quad cores should be out soon. With 8 GB of ram and quad core you will be able to run multiple VM's as well as OS X making MBP's the most versatile laptop you can buy today.marraco - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
...and the sound of those macs are awful. really crap hardware.you play am mp3, and half of the instruments don't sound. those cheap speakers cannot reproduce half the frequencies.
Griswold - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Thats alot of bullshit in this wall of text. Dont they teach you apple fanboys how to structure a post?Especially the QA part on the off-the-shelf PC parts. If their QA was so great, how come they didnt avoid that shitstorm with nvidia IGPs? And thats not the only example.