Apple's 2009 MacBook Pro: Battery Life to Die For
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
SSD: Optional and Non-Intel
My only major complaint about the MacBook Pro is, once again, that it does not come with a SSD standard. I understand, however, to cut costs and do such a thing would be impossible today. For $350 Apple will upgrade your hard drive to the latest 128GB Samsung MLC SSD; for $800 you'll get 256GB. I can't stress how much you shouldn't buy the 256GB drive; prices are dropping too quickly for that to be a good deal. If you can hold out until next year you'll be able to get that capacity at half the price.
My other major complaint is Apple's refusal to offer Intel's X25-M as an option on its MacBook Pro line. The Samsung drive Apple uses is the same drive Corsair is selling right now. It's a decent drive, offers good compatibility and reliability, but in terms of worst case scenario performance I haven't found it nearly as good as the Intel drive.
I'm not saying that Apple should only offer the Intel drive, but it should at least be an option. For a company obviously concerned with the overall package, it seems odd to leave out one of the strongest SSDs on the market. Especially given how close Apple and Intel are already.
A good, standard SSD is the only thing separating this MacBook Pro from perfection.
Update on Build Quality and Trackpad
The build quality of the new MacBook Pro remains unchanged and unparalleled. This thing is solid, and it looks pretty sweet too.
The glass covered trackpad that I had issues with in my original review now works totally fine. I no longer have any problems with clicks not registering under OS X. Within a month of the first unibody MacBook Pro release Apple put out an update designed to address those issues, so I believe this has been fixed for a while.
Thanks to the cool running Penryn core, the MacBook Pro doesn't really get more than warm at its base. The glass covered display is still quite glare happy, but indoors it looks great and in certain situations outdoors it’s acceptable.
I won’t go too much further into the displays or other features of the unibody MacBook Pro, I already did that in our original coverage of the machine.
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sxr7171 - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
While OSX may be nice, there are far better machines with better battery life, lighter, thinner, sturdier and much better materials (magnesium alloy, carbon fiber) and a removable battery so you can swap out fully charged batteries for all day computing.Apple's laptop hardware is overhyped.
Pirks - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
Words, empty baseless words from another one of a legion of DT wintrolls. No proof, nothing. Keep posting stupidity without any proof, I enjoy that. Or give some model names, specs, something concrete. Nah, you can't, you can only bark. You can't bite ;)Johnmcl7 - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
It's all there if you want to read it but I suspect you'd rather not as that would hurt too much. However I'm typing this on an old Sony TX1HP/W with a BPL5 and BPS5 battery which is good for aroud 18 hours of battery, before you start whining about performance the AT conclusion makes no such reference. I should also note this machine is smaller and lighter than a Macbook Air, packs in an optical drive and more ports. It was also one of the first laptops with an LED backlit screen long before Apple were making a song and dance about it.If you want to see genuine innovation Sony are a good place to start because there's a good chance that in a couple of years time their current features will be a new 'innovation' in an Apple system a few years down the line.
SansSociety - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
I dunno where you guys get these outrageous 10+ hour battery life figures from. My Thinkpad T60 with the 9 cell (6 months old) gets no where close to 10 hours. I doubt you guys are getting the type of endurance you claim from T43s and the Sony TX's. 18 hours on the TX with extended battery? Come on... Time it.physics - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Your results are consistent with what I've been getting on my 2 month old 17" MBP. My machine has the BTO 2.93 Ghz processors & 7200 rpm HD options and reports a projected 10 hour battery life endurance on my light usage off the plug. My current usage pattern is a split dual Unix terminal with iTunes playing songs from my HD and the integrated GPU(NV 9400) active. I believe that this projection is pretty accurate, since after about a couple of hours on the battery I get a projected endurance of about 8 hours. The coffee shop where I use this mode has no outlets for the customers and there are no unlocked WiFi routers within range.With Airport on and normal internet access, with streaming internet audio, I would expect to see battery endurance figures down to about 8 or 9 hours. It's refreshing to see a manufacturer publishing honest performance figures on their products, makes me more inclined to believe their advertising claims on future products. I'm salivating for the quad-core 17" MBPs on the 32-nm process next year.
cvt - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
There is no way apple should be bragging about Li-Pol.Its not a good, special, amazing, whatever move, its years late.
They should be ashamed it has taken so long for them to bother.
As for other notebook makers....
I think this is all dismally pathetic, especially that it deserves a story. Li-Pol have been around for years, have proven themselves in harsh conditions, and to be safe for many years. This "custom made" etc... is sickening, trying to make it sound as if they did something special. There marketing should be more along the lines of "sorry it took us so many years to bother trying a different type of battery, but we were scared". At least there'd be some honesty in it then.
Pirks - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
I wish any other WinPC maker got really scared and produced a notebook of the same specs/weight/size with the same stellar battery efficiency as new MBP. Could you scare them for me, cvt? Puhleeaase? With sugar on top! :))goku - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Great, so Apple boosted their usage times by putting a larger capacity battery via replacing with the easy to replace and cheaper Lion cell batteries with the Lion Polymer batteries which aren't replaceable. This Macbook is nothing special, with my IBM T42 and its 15" screen, 55whr battery and its 9600pro, I got around 7-8 hours doing the exact same thing and with a drive bay add-on battery (23whr) I got 12 hours. So while Apple got 7 hours on 73whr battery, I got 12 hours, mind you the T42 has R9600pro and Intel Pentium M 1.7.chumbud - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Would you people quit comparing portables that are either 1) substantially slower in speed, 2) smaller screen size, 3) smaller amount of RAM, and/or 4) weighs considerably more?goku - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
Would you people quit comparing portables that are either 1) substantially slower in speed, 2) smaller screen size, 3) smaller amount of RAM, and/or 4) weighs considerably more?No. This was a top of the line laptop at the time it was introduced, how is it that we've managed to go backwards in all of the time that has passed? Less you not forget those Apple laptops have WORSE equivalent graphics processors and you see this is something that REALLY isn't special at ALL. Also we're talking about battery life here, that it has such amazing battery life like they broke a record when I've demonstrated that IBM has had laptops that got much better battery life in recent memory.