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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
113 Comments
View All Comments
RikkiTikkiTavi - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Interesting. As I said my expertise on the mater is limited. It would be interesting to know what reasons there are for cylindrical cells.As I see it, they are more inefficient in both space usage and manufacturing. I'll see if I can find something on this.
santala - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
Indeed, the older Macbook batteries contain flat rectangular cells, which was plain to see once opened. Therefore the comparison used by Apple currently, which leads you to believe that they used to be cylinderical, is wrong. They have been rectangular on Macbooks before, the material and size simply has changed, not the shape of the cells themselves.PlasmaBomb - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
My apologies, you are indeed correct... browsing my pics folder came up with the answer-http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/PowerBook....">http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/PowerBook....
Old powerbook = cylinders (NiMH I think).
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/Mackbook.j...">http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/PlasmaBomb/Mackbook.j...
Macbook = flat cells
(feel free to take a copy of the pics)
So they haven't used cylindrical cells for a long time, bad apple for deliberately misleading people :|
Sorry as I said I don't have a macbook to play with :(
The lithium ion battery from my laptop looked pretty much like this -
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/lithium-ion-ba...">http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/lithium-ion-ba...
when I dismantled it (it was dead).
evilspoons - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I have a Mid-2007 15" MacBook Pro (Santa Rosa 2.2 GHz) with 3 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive (both upgraded by me from 2 GB - the extra 1 GB was free, otherwise I'd have 4 GB, and the 120 GB hard drive it came with was awful).Most of the time the battery life is just fine - but damn, this new 15" will DOUBLE what mine gets? Wow!
I think the new 15" MBP - in matte - with 4 or 8 GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD (or a 128 GB plus a hard drive, if there somehow was room: I need my iTunes library!), and maybe with the upcoming quad-core laptop CPUs would make just about the perfect computer.
Hopefully this is what the next generation MacBook Pro will look like and it'll be out about the time I start wishing my 2.2 GHz was faster.
jeffbui - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Anand, I'm sure you've put in that X25-M. Let us know how much more battery life the notebook gets. Thanks!JarredWalton - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
My understanding is that the X25 is a high performance part that doesn't dramatically improve battery life. However, it should be better http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=34...">by about 6%, give or take.PlasmaBomb - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Still 6% of 8 hours is a decent amount...about an extra half hour.
cserwin - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
As a modeler of RC airplanes, I know that LiPO's require extreme caution, especially when charging. Search youtube for "LiPO Fire".Basically, if you charge the batteries too fast, they burn. Could the smaller brick have to do with battery charging rates?
mmntech - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I'm an RC pilot as well and IMO, the safety risks with LiPo packs have been greatly exaggerated in recent years. Most laptops and other portable consumer electronics devices these days already use Li-Ion or LiPo as is. All packs do have a serious risk of explosion and fire, but they usually don't spontaneously combust unless they're cheaply made and have internal faults. Remember that RC packs are rated for much higher performance than laptop packs. They're also subject to more stress in the form of vibration and hard impacts. In 99.9% of cases, they're safe in consumer electronics provided they aren't abused.The batteries used for laptops have built in charge circuitry and balancers.
PlasmaBomb - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
That is what the chip in the battery and charging controller are for.