Hey tribe, are you using an MBP 16? I was interested in knowing how long your machine runs on battery? The ad copy says 11h, but about 2 years in and I am seeing ~ 4h at max. (I do have a couple of IDEs + browsers + terminal and Postegres running). So I am wondering if I am taxing my system too much or if I am doing something else wrong.

I’m using the MBP 16, I never got 11h out of it

Same here, Slack + Browsers + VSCode and it it’s not even close to 11.

I think 11h might be achievable with only light browsing in Safari

But how much is it approximately? Is it > 5h?

as soon as the external GPU activates, my battery life plummets. And it is all the time since I use an external monitor

@melodic-jordan-81418 No. I am plugged in most of the time. But I sometimes need to work from another location and don’t bother plugging in and have started noticing that the battery life is terrible. The other thing is that I have a dell dock which I use on my desk which also charges my laptop and that is 65W (as against 100W with the official charger). This is actually better from what I read but I was wondering if this has affected the life of the battery. But by the looks of it, not. It is just not great overall.

Using external monitors will force mac to use discrete GPU (even if Intel graphics are capable of driving the monitors), and that leads to higher thermals and lower battery life. I can't wait for those new 16" Macs.

I am never plugged into external monitors without power. So this is only from using the laptop as is.

Same for me dropped to 5-6 hr (on good days) after ~2y. Now I keep it plugged with type c monitor and don’t care.

Number of Electron apps you run directly impacts battery life, sadly IDEs today are either Electron or JVM (unless you use Xcode), all of which are battery drainers. Not to mention that Intel itself is way too power hungry.

Using Slack, Basecamp, sublime text and 2-3 more apps with full brightness, my 16 inch (2019) gives about 5-6 hours. I use safari as the main browser though

From day 1, I am getting 4-5 hour. The app I use, vs code, brave (20 tabs), safari, postman, 2 node server, slack, zoom, Spotify. With external monitor, it dries up in 2 hours or less.

Been using MBP 16" for almost 2 years now and I was never able to get more than 5 hours battery life. I try to run minimum amount of apps (when I’m in zone I close all the communication apps). VSCode + Chrome (2 accounts) is all I run most of the times.

I got an MBP 16" this week. The battery never lasted more than 3Hrs. Don't know how can they claim 11Hrs of backup and not get at least 5.5Hrs.

Thanks for chiming in everyone. Good to know that I am not alone. I think we have enough for a class action law suit. What say? 🙃

haha… I suggest selling it off and moving to M1 now would be more productive 😉

Have an update on this thread -- I formatted and setup OSX from scratch today morning and have been on battery for the past hour and a half. Been downloading + installing software and setting up the laptop. Surprised to see it has burnt through only 30% of the battery. Usually in so much time, I would be down 50 - 60% So if you are getting really poor battery performance, might be worth it to clean up the machine and get rid of bunch of stuff you no longer use which run in the background and hog your battery.

I had physically cleaned mac's air vents and the heating problem completely went away. Just need to remove the back lid, tutorials are on YouTube. Apple should provide a cleaning facility.

Sorry -- when I said "clean up", I meant the software bit. (Thought I have physically cleaned the machine as well) -- and it helps a bit if your air vents are clogged.

This could be the battery calibrating after an SMC and PRAM reset. Give it a few days