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
The Best Battery Life I’ve Ever Seen
To find out how well the new lithium polymer battery does I ran my usual suite of Mac battery life tests. First up was my wireless web browsing test:
The wireless web browsing test uses the 802.11n connection to browse a series of 20 web pages varying in size, spending 20 seconds on each page (I timed how long it takes me to read a page on Digg and came up with 36 seconds; I standardized on 20 seconds for the test to make things a little more stressful). The test continues to loop all while playing MP3s in iTunes.
This is an extremely light test as none of the web pages have any flash ads, but it’s a valid test of very light wireless usage.
Eight, freakin, hours. I couldn't believe it. In my lightest test, the new 15-inch MacBook Pro lasted eight hours and eight minutes. That's with the screen at half brightness (completely usable) and no funny optimizations. The notebook is just playing music and surfing through a lot of my old reviews. There's no way this could be right. Maybe my test was too light?
I threw together another test just to make sure. The key flaw in my initial wireless web browsing test is that it none of web pages have any Flash on them. While constantly loading web pages will ensure the CPU can't go into deep sleep, Flash on the pages would make sure that the CPU utilization remains higher at all times. The next test I put together was this:
I strung together 8 reviews on AnandTech and put them each on a single page, images and all. I then scoured the web for big, animated Flash ads and added anywhere from 1 - 4 ads per page; all Flash. Each page is designed to forward to the next after 10 seconds and the loop continues indefinitely. On each machine I opened three Safari windows and pointed them at the first page in the sequence. In the background, once more, I had iTunes playing MP3s.
I found that CPU utilization varied from 5 - 35% during this test, which is about what I saw when I was actually surfing the web myself. The addition of Flash should make it more stressful, but it's still a fairly light usage test. My original web browsing test got us 8 hours, so what about this new one?
| MacBook Pro 2009 | MacBook Pro Late 2008 | |
| Wireless Web Browsing w/ Flash | 6.48 hours | 3.28 hours |
Six and a half hours, out of a 5.5 lbs notebook. For comparison, the older MacBook Pro could only manage 3 hours and 17 minutes in the same test. The new notebook lasted almost twice as long. Mathematically, this doesn't make sense. There's only a 46% increase in battery capacity, there shouldn’t be a ~100% increase in battery life...ever.
While the original web browsing test was using data from my original unibody MacBook Pro review, this second web test used a brand new MacBook Pro (purchased just weeks before this week's MacBook Pro announcement). The two notebooks had the same amount of memory (4GB), the older MacBook Pro had a slower CPU (2.4GHz vs. 2.53GHz) and a 7200RPM hard drive but the differences shouldn’t account for an extra 54% increase in battery life.
Apple must have done more than just increase battery capacity in the new MacBook Pro. My third test continues to support my findings. This is my heavy workload benchmark.
For this benchmark I'm downloading 10GB worth of files from the net (constant writes to the drive), browsing the web (same test as the first one) and watching the first two episodes of Firefly encoded in a 480p XviD format (Quicktime is set to loop the content until the system dies).
The older MacBook Pro managed 3.25 hours in this test. The new one? Just under 5:
That's a 51% improvement in battery life. It's close enough to the max theoretical 46% improvement for me to think that the significant gains in wireless web browsing are due to improvements in idle power optimizations. It's possible that all of the components in the new MacBook Pro have been optimized for lower voltages at idle.
The battery tests are repeatable however. I saw anywhere from a 50 - 100% improvement in battery life over the old MacBook Pro. Given the increase in battery capacity alone, you should see no less than a 46% increase in battery life. Exactly what is accounting for the expanded life above and beyond that, I'm not sure.
Either way, Apple's 7 hour claim is well within reason. For light workloads, even on WiFi, you can easily expect 6.5 - 8 hours out of the new 15-inch MBP. As I write this article on that very system I'm told that I have nearly 8.5 hours left on my charge. If you do a lot of writing on your notebook, the new MBP is exactly what you'll want; it will easily last you on a cross-country flight if you need to get work done.
I think I've just found my new writer's companion
My heaviest workload delivered just under 5 hours of battery life, a figure that the old MBP could only attain while running my lightest workload. This thing rocks.
I also have to commend Apple for delivering realistic battery life specs on its laptop. While 7 hours definitely involves a light workload, it is more than attainable as I've shown in the tests above.
A quick search shows that even Dell's Studio 15 only offers a battery rating of up to 5.5 hours. It looks like, once again, other notebook makers will have to play catch up to Apple in this department.
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iwodo - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
I was going to Post about how great and cheap the Apple SSD upgrade was. Then i as i digg deeper and find out. The 128Gb SSD is using the old Samsung Controller. Which is very slow compare to Vertex. ( In the range of 100MB/s )i would guess the 256GB being much more expensive is because it uses the new Samsung Controller ( as used in OCZ Summit; funny it seems how every one seems to refer to chipset used in OCZ these days. They have done well and make a name out of their SSD products. )
The reason why it doesn't use other SSD as well as Intel's SSD is simply because of cost. Intel doesn't sell their SSD controller. They only sell it as a whole package.
Comparing to Samsung, Apple already has a long term contract from Samsung with some of the best price in industry. After all they are the largest Flash memory consumption company. SSD are nothing more then a bunch of Flash Memory Chips and a Controller chip linked together. Apple can already get Flash Memory for discounted price, all they need is to pay the added Samsung's controller price and packaging price.
I really hope Samsung make a breakthrough in SSD controller. Then I suspect all future Apple computer will be equipped with an SSD. ( Hopefully it will come with SATA 3.0 Spec )
sprockkets - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I'm still trying to figure out where this thing gets its air intake and output to if the fan's exhaust goes right into the screen hinge and there are no readily apparent air intake ports on the bottom."For the most part, the 9600M was useless on the MacBook Pro unless you were gaming under Vista or did any heavy 3D accelerated work under OS X."
Classic.
Pirks - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Air intake is through keyboard.P.S. I wish you had some notebook repair technician buddies like mine who repaired hundreds of various notebooks of the past decade including Apple ones. You'd post MUCH less dumb BS about Apple then :P
sprockkets - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
What BS? My coworker and I both repair laptops. The G4 macbook he had to fix is not a good example of a laptop being easy to take apart.Are you trying to say that MacBooks are more reliable than the competition? Because most people complain just as much as anyone else about their share of issues, and Apple dismisses them like any other large company. Case in point, the intermittent fan issue.
And, you didn't answer the question about how the air gets out.
A simple picture of the back would solve this issue, but no one has a picture of it, not even apple.
Bottom line: When Apple decides to stop their BS with Windows being a helpless virus ridden victim and instead simply promote what makes a MacBook worth the extra $500, I'll get one.
LOL like that will ever happen!
sprockkets - Sunday, June 14, 2009 - link
Oh, shit, I didn't look at who I was replying too, no wonder why...Pirks - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Lame winzealot's excuse. You can buy and try any MacBook right here right now and sell it later after a few months if you don't like it. At least THEN you'll stop posting BS about something you only seen in pictures :P BTW new MBP 13" is the perfect choice for that since it's cheap for a Mac Pro-line notebook, only $1199 ;)Pirks - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Nah, screw that, don't buy any Mac stuff, I just recalled another crazy guy whaaasomething who went nutso after buying MBP. I don't want another lunatic like him in here, so forget it. Better post anti-Apple posts like you do now, they are at least bearable.charlienail - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
apple and some other manufacturers have been shipping lithium polymer batteries for years!! this is not something new to these laptops. what is new is that they have used the space gained by removing the ability to exchange batteries.only a low percentage of laptop owners have a second battery so apple is targeting the much larger majority of people who never make use of the replace battery. this is similar to the new SD slots, if less than 1% of your customers are using the express card slot why not give them something they are much more likely to make use of. (plus windows laptops have had these readers for years)
i can see how the evolution of apple away from pro needs (replacable battery, anti-glare screen, express card) could be worrying for them but i like the direction they're going because i'm not a pro user and i want cheaper macs. the pros can at least take heart that the amazing 17inch is now only 2500 and still caters to their needs. (who needs a replacable battery when you've got almost a 100 watt hours in the thinnest lightest 17inch available)
araczynski - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
my favorite part: " If you can hold out until next year you'll be able to get that capacity at half the price."i'm sure if you wait until next year you can probably also have the laptop at half price too, so do yourself the double favor and just don't buy the laptop at all :)
DigitalFreak - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Question is, do you still get the battery life if you run Windows?