Apple's 15-inch 2010 MacBook Pro: More Battery Life Tests, High Res Display Evaluated
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 24, 2010 1:57 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Displays
- MacBook Pro
- Arrandale
- Laptops
Snow Leopard Battery Life Issues with Flash: Fixed
Snow Leopard brought forth 64-bit versions of many Apple applications. Finder, TextEdit and Safari (among others) could now run in x86-64 mode. However, last year I found that browsing websites that used Flash with 64-bit Safari dropped battery life by over 40% in Snow Leopard compared to 32-bit Safari in Leopard. To fix the problem you had to force Safari to launch in 32-bit mode.
While Apple never recognized the problem nor discussed why it happened to begin with, it appears that it’s since been addressed in OS X 10.6.3. The results below tell all:
| Snow Leopard Battery Life Improvement | ||||
| Flash Web Browsing Battery Life | OS X 10.6.1 | OS X 10.6.3 | ||
| 15-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2009) - Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz | 277 minutes | 344 minutes | ||
Flash web browsing battery life improved tremendously from the original release of Snow Leopard. While it's still not as high as in Leopard, it's a definite improvement.
Windows 7 Battery Life
A handful of users asked that I look at battery life under Windows 7. Being your humble servant, I of course obliged. I attempted to recreate my OS X benchmarks under Windows 7 as best as possible, using Chrome and Windows Media Player in place of Safari and iTunes of course. You can’t draw any conclusions about OS X vs. Windows 7 battery life from these numbers however. As I mentioned in the original review, under Windows 7 the MacBook Pro keeps the discrete GPU enabled 100% of the time. There’s no way to shut it off. Battery life will inevitably be lower than OS X.
| Windows 7 Battery Life | |||||
| Light Web Browsing | Flash Web Browsing | XviD Playback | |||
| 15-inch MacBook Pro (Mid 2010) - Core i7 2.66GHz | 255 minutes | 255 minutes | 153 minutes | ||
It appears that the dGPU being on all the time is the reason we can't get better browser battery life regardless of workload. The XviD playback test also takes a hit compared to OS X thanks to the discrete GPU. In our previous articles we found OS X to be roughly equal to Windows 7 in XviD battery life.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
Awesome tip! I didn't know you could do that!Output of running that:
LTN154MT07
Color LCD
Which appears to be a Samsung LCD of some kind, but doesn't have a datasheet on that website. Interesting. I'll update the article, thanks!
Cheers,
Brian Klug
Brian Klug - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
I also got that same error trying to post with the command; I think the CMS is escaping some characters in there and erroring out. ;)Thanks for bearing with it and posting that, I was going to resort to trying to pull that info out of some EDID tool from Windows and Boot Camp, but this is better.
-Brian
maxxl - Saturday, April 24, 2010 - link
You're welcome Brian :)Ah! I almost forgot… there's one more thing - apart of giving LCD model to you, running this little command gives me complete control over your new shiny MacBook Pro also ;) Just joking… enjoy! ;)
ppayne - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
Is it possible to give an idea of fan noise? I hate it and have generally been pleased with the 2009 15 inch laptop. I can hear the difference between running with discrete graphics on and with them off. Usually see 4000 when doing stuff with my laptop like Photoshopping or playing Plants vs. Zombies, though sometimes it goes way down to 2000 rpm. (I have a 160 gb Intel SSD installed.) Can you give an idea of fan RPMs when things are quiet and slightly loud?aj28 - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
Can't say how much quieter than the 2009, but it's a heck of a lot quieter than my 2008, and I kept that thing clean too! The dual fans make a world of difference. Maybe they're using a smaller glob of thermal paste too, compared to the huge mess they had been using...iwodo - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
It seems Glossy Screen has Black Edge around it while Matter is Aluminium colour....?Computer Scooter Joe - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
You are correct. The glossy screens have a panel of glass that covers the entire screen + bezel edge to edge. The bezel on these is black.On the matte option, the screen is recessed a tiny bit, and they get rid of the full glass covering, replacing the bezel with aluminium.
vailr - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
Could someone run Everest (in Windows) and see exactly which chipset is being used in these new MacBook Pros, and also include the similar Gulftown CPU desktop iMacs (if available)?P55 or PM55, H55, HM55, H57 and etc.
Thanks.
araczynski - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
a person peeve, but i hate it when companies call pretty much any device that can do 1280x800 or more "HD". Whenever I hear "HD" i expect 1080p minimum.i know, 720p IS "HD", so all displays that can fart anything close to that think they're HD too, but I think the name is used more to confuse consumers than anything.
araczynski - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
a person peeve, but i hate it when companies call pretty much any device that can do 1280x800 or more "HD". Whenever I hear "HD" i expect 1080p minimum.i know, 720p IS "HD", so all displays that can fart anything close to that think they're HD too, but I think the name is used more to confuse consumers than anything.
calling 1280x800 or even this 1650x1050 "HD" is a joke to me. like calling a bottom of the line minimally configured mustang a 'race car' just because it has the mustang name.