Apple's Redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Battery Life: Take Two Steps Forward, and Two Steps Back
If we look at the power consumption comparison we did in our GeForce 9300 review you'll see that the NVIDIA chipset pulls around 10W less power than G35 at idle, extending up to 15W under gaming loads. NVIDIA's 65nm GeForce 9400M used in the new MacBook and MacBook Pro is effectively the same chipset and thus it's safe to assume that there's a healthy reduction in platform power consumption afforded by the new hardware.
Apple reduced the capacity of both the MacBook and MacBook Pro batteries by 10W (60WHr down to 50WHr for the Pro and 55WHr down to 45WHr for the standard MB). Given that total platform power consumption should go down by around 10W, Apple's efforts here seem to make perfect sense. Smaller batteries mean lighter and potentially thinner notebooks; unfortunately it also means that battery life won't improve at all.
To test this theory I ran two of the battery tests I did back when the first Penryn MacBooks launched:
The web browsing test shows that the MacBook Pro battery life remains basically unchanged, while the MacBook takes a slight hit compared to its predecessor. For all intents and purposes, these notebooks won't last any longer than the old ones.
The same thing is true about the heavy usage scenario: battery life basically remains unchanged:
Note that in both of these tests the MacBook Pro's GeForce 9600M GPU was disabled and only the chipset's internal GeForce 9400M was used. Apple indicates that you lose 20% of your battery life if you use the 9600M on the MacBook Pro; to test this I ran the heavy usage scenario benchmark but with the 9600M enabled:
| GeForce 9600M Disabled | GeForce 9600M Enabled | |
| Battery Life (Heavy Usage Test) | 3.13 hours | 2.37 hours |
Using the dGPU dropped battery life by 24%, which is close enough to Apple's numbers to call them relatively honest. I also appreciate that Apple's 5 hour battery life is about what I got with the MacBook Pro in my web browsing test. Honesty is very important in any relationship, even if it's one between a manufacturer and a consumer.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
66 Comments
View All Comments
joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Uhm, Apple charges $150 to upgrade from 2 to 4 GB. A 2 GB 1066 DDR3 notebook dimm is about $60 on Newegg. What are you smoking??strikeback03 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
He didn't mention how many slots are populated in the standard configuration. If standard is a pair of 1GB sticks, then you need a pair of those $60 2GB sticks to get 4GB.joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
It doesn't matter. 2 GB of memory (2 Dimms) cost about $80, and 4 GB cost about $120, as stated in the article. But Apple is charging $150 to upgrade from one to the other, when it only costs $40 more.Thanks for correcting me, because Apple is raping their customers even more than I thought.
strikeback03 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Might be true, but as you can't choose zero RAM as a shipping configuration, from the customer perspective (assuming 2 2GB sticks are needed) you either pay $120 to Newegg and do the work yourself or pay $150 to Apple.Also, I highly doubt Apple is paying Newegg prices for components, so even more profit. But RAM upgrades seem to always be something the manufacturers have raped customers on.
Brucmack - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
It'd be nice to provide a couple of extra data points...- Macbook battery life on XP
- Lenovo battery life on XP & Linux
wolf550e - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Anand, please perform same test on Ubuntu 8.10 and tell us whether it's closer to OS X or Vista.R3MF - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
but i live in hope of a response:Is this integrated nvidia chipset the same as was rumoured to work with the Via Nano CPU?
Kind regards
boe - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
I'm curious to how XP would compare to Vista/ OS X.snouter - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
No 1680x1050? When will Apple step up and offer this? This is even more egregious than the lack of an SSD option, although, an SSD could be added to the MBP later, and the screen is forever.The MBP should only offer the CPU models with 6MB cache. This would have been one more way to differentiate the MBP from the MB. Put the Pro in Pro dammit.
No matte option on the MBP? Please.
====
I upgraded my 2.16GHz Merom to a 2.4GHz Penryn, largely for the LED screen, but, now I've even more glad that I did.
If Apple does not add some flexibility to the 15" MBP build options, I'll be waiting for the 17" MBP. My workplace bought me one, and... 1920x1200 LED is pure love, though I could live happily with a 1680x1050 on my preferred form factor, the 15".
Apple has a knack of diminishing their gains with some weird regresions and non-moves. It's love hate for sure.
iwodo - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
With much increased battery life, ( not that it uses that much less power, but you accomplish the same task in less time would means less power usage )I hope Intel hurry up with their controller chip.