New MacBook Pros Fail to Earn Consumer Reports Recommendation

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I don't know what is going on with the new MacBook Pro but these wildly varying battery test results are just bizarre. As a result of the poor test results, Consumer Reports does not recommend buying a new MacBook Pro, at least until the company figures out its battery problems.

For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours. Those were just a few of the results; we tested battery life on these laptops repeatedly.
 
And in typical Apple fashion they outright deny any knowledge of issues. Their products are always perfect in every way and they are never at fault. Isn't this the same company that denied for years malware infecting their OS?
 
I didn't know laptops were up to 15+ hours on 1 charge. That's awesome. I thought my Chromebook was good at 10 hours.

*I'm sure others can do this to, so not attributing it Apple only
 
Oh shit time to sell all the stock, pawn all my Apple hardware, move to a bunker, and await the end of the world. ;)

Apple will continue to do Apple and people will keep buying regardless.
 
Apple's probable response to the widely varying battery life expectancies shown from this test is that they were using it wrong. :p
 
The 15 inch is almost (possibly) understandable. The disparity between low power mode and full zorch mode on the CPU, plus switching from integrated graphics to discreet can chew through a battery something fierce. Despite Apple's claims, updates have not made the OS smarter about that (although a big part is 3rd party apps triggering discreet graphics for no good reason, so not entirely their fault) The 13" on the other hand makes no sense. Although things like apple mail do increasingly stupid things under the hood. Perhaps the quality assurance applied to the native mail app is spreading along with whatever brain eating amoeba infected the apple mail team a few years ago.
 
I have the 13inch with touch bar and just anecdotally it seems to last about the same as the 2014 mbp I have. I know the battery has less capacity but I think the way I use the laptop, the CPU never gets taxed so all battery life for me comes down to screen power draw.
 
There is much more (should I say less?) wrong with the new Macs than just the battery. The whole thing is an abomination to the word pro and it shouldn't be recommended for all its merits (or lack there of).
 
From reading the article, one point they mention is that when using Chrome, battery life was consistently high over 6 tests. Makes me think the problem is partly due to Safari (or at least what Safari is doing in terms of CPU/memory usage).
 
GuruX said:
From reading the article, one point they mention is that when using Chrome, battery life was consistently high over 6 tests. Makes me think the problem is partly due to Safari (or at least what Safari is doing in terms of CPU/memory usage).
Click to expand...


That's a good point and it wouldn't surprise me. It's incredible how much more resource hungry the internet gets every day. Old ancient slow computers that otherwise run fine are complete dogs on the internet mainly because of flash but also just the sheer number of images these days. It takes quite a CPU to run the modern internet in a responsive and satisfying way. I've got a 15 year old computer that can run 3D accelerated games smoothly with a high framerate, but get on the internet and it's a dog. And yes chrome still is one of the best optimized web browsers for sure, although it comes at the price of being monitored by google.
 
GuruX said:
From reading the article, one point they mention is that when using Chrome, battery life was consistently high over 6 tests. Makes me think the problem is partly due to Safari (or at least what Safari is doing in terms of CPU/memory usage).
Click to expand...
they should use Edge.
 
The disappearance of the battery of the battery time estimate happened exactly after the Macbook support forum was flooded with complaints, so no coincidence. I don't get why the 15" Macbook needed to get thinner, all anyone wanted was a better graphic solution and a fingerprint reader.
 
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