Battery life on 2011 mbp

I have a 13" mbp that I love but my battery life is horrible. I have taken it to the apple store and they changed my battery charger and offered to change the battery on the machine but I just wanted to know if I am the only one having this problem. My battery is lasting 2-3 hours top and it is very frustrating!

well, what are you doing on your mac? Surfing the web should get you way more then 2-3 hours. If you are watching a movie or using Skype, then that is a reasonable time to get out of the battery.

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Serious problems with battery life in 17" MBP 2011

My battery seems to be getting worse and worse. Today I did a photo presentation pluged into the TV. Lasted about 20 minutes. Just flicking through photos, nothing intensive. My battery was at %100 when I started and when done it was at %62. %38 drop in 20 minutes and all I was doing is going through pictures. Something seems very wrong.
I would appreciate any intelligent advice.
Thnx!

From Tekserve in NYC. I purchase almost all my equipment there.
Hey there,
It looks like we actually can not replace this battery. Unfortunately because it's a 17" model, the batteries are no longer being made.
I would recommend searching on Amazon and seeing if you have any luck!
Apologies for the inconvenience,
Lindsay
TekserveApple Specialist - Macintosh Systems, Solutions and Service
Walk-in and mail address: 119 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
Shipping address: 114 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
(212) 929-3645 phone / (212) 463-9280 fax / [email protected]
Then I sent an email saying Waaah!? And this was her reply.
Apple discontinued the 17" model and stopped making parts.
I recommend calling Apple directly at 1-800-MY-APPLE (1-800-692-7743).
You WILL be answered by a "robot" but it usually takes less than 3 minutes to get to a person.
Lindsay
TekserveApple Specialist - Macintosh Systems, Solutions and Service
Walk-in and mail address: 119 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011
Shipping address: 114 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
(212) 929-3645 phone / (212) 463-9280 fax / [email protected]

2 hr battery life on 2011-2012 Mac air

My 11" Mac Air will only run 41 minutes on 50% charge. Wi-fi is off, only microsoft word is on and screen brightness all the way down! What is wrong with it?

1. Check the cycle count of the battery. It may be due for replacement.
2. If not, follow these instructions.
3. You can also try resetting the SMC.
4. Make sure your system is up to date in Software Update.
5. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store, or go to another authorized service center.
Back up all data on the internal drive(s) before you hand over your computer to anyone. If privacy is a concern, erase the data partition(s) with the option to write zeros* (do this only if you have at least two complete, independent backups, and you know how to restore to an empty drive from any of them.) Don’t erase the recovery partition, if present.
Keeping your confidential data secure during hardware repair
*An SSD doesn't need to be zeroed.

Bootcamp Windows battery life - USB power problem?

Hi,
While the battery life on my MBP is ok under Windows (3 hours), it's not great when compared to booting into OSX where I get at least 30% more. It's easy (and right) to blame Windows inefficiencies when running XP or Vista, MS have massively improved energy performance under Windows 7. Looking into this a bit, I've found there is now a new tool to help investigate energy problems:
POWERCFG /ENERGY
The generated power report shows that I have five cases of "USB Device not Entering Suspend". In otherwords (even though I don't have any devices plugged in) the USB components are burning at full power and not allowing Windows to suspend them to save energy. This may well explain why I'm not getting the battery life I could be, and it's really not Windows fault.
Does anyone else see this? I'm on MBP5.5 w/ Win7 Pro x64.
Hopefully a future Bootcamp will enable full power management support..
Cheers,
Chris.

Hello,
the core of the problem is the quality of the Boot Camp drivers.
The boot camp drivers allow very limited power management, therefore there is no real possibility to run Vista or WindowsXP without heavily using battery resources.
I don't think there will be any improvements in the future as Apple in not really committed to deliver better drivers (the present BootCamp power management drivers have remained virtually unchanged since BootCamp 1.2 beta, March 2007).
Just have a look at the threads about BootCamp especially about the problems that are plaguing the new MacBook Pro (mid 2009) i.e. poor sound quality and no microphone in Windows.
Cheers
Luca

Battery Life shrunk

Hi, The battery life in my MBP has all of a sudden vanished!! Up until last week, my computer used to last me atleast 2.5 hours on normal usage, and now that has become 25 minutes!! How can that be?? Can someone please suggest a way to fix or check this? Thanks!

Hi JasonFear,
Please find below the information as requested by you:
Battery Information:
Model Information:
Serial Number: SMP-bq20z951-3a6d-610
Manufacturer: SMP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 000a
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1332
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 1501
Health Information:
Cycle count: 309
Condition: Poor
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 539
Voltage (mV): 12574
One thing I must mention to you is that even when I leave my laptop idle, the battery still drains insanely fast and will die within an hour (at absolute idle)!
And no, at the moment nothing is using more than 15% CPU. The most is being used by Safari at 11%. Looking forward to your help. Thanks!

Reduced battery life for high-end MBP 15 2011?

I just bought a new MBP 15" 2011 model (2.2 GHz), an upgrade from my previous MBP 2009 (MacBookPro5,3; Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.66GHz)). I have noticed that the real world battery life is significantly worse than the previous model (3-4 hours vs. 6-7 hours). This doesn't seem due to the actual full charge capacity, since the MBP 2009 still has over 6000 mAh, whereas the new MBP 2011 shows around 7000mAh. Rather, it seems my MBP 2011 draws a lot more power from the battery than the MBP 2009. Could it be that the high-resolution matte screen is the culprit? FYI, the spec of my MBP 2011 is as follows (old specs in the parentheses):
1. 512GB SSD (256GB)
2. 8GB memory (4GB)
3. high resolution matte screen (1680x1050) (glossy standard screen)

If I remember rightly the 2009 units didn't have on the fly graphics switching?
The new ones do. That means sometimes you can be on the more powerful graphics card with out realising - this will kill your battery life. Wrote about it here for the 2010 models: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2010/4/21Early_2010_Macbook_Pro_-_Battery_LifePoor.html
There's a great piece of software that will allow you to control & see which graphics card you're on - I bet if you stick to the integrated graphics you'll see your battery life improve significantly.
You can get that here: http://codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus

MBP early 2011 battery life

I have the early 2011 release of the 17" MBP (8gig ram, 2.2ghz quad i7, 500 gig harddrive) and it seems like the battery life has just been cut inhalf. It lasts me about 3 and a half hours from just general use. Is my battery faulty? Really appriciate any feed back

That battery looks pretty good, capacity is really strong for so many charge cycles, but the voltage looks low, would expect it to be in the 11.5 to 12.5 volt range and you are showing 11.27 volts. A little low but not critical.
How have you been handling that battery with respect to discharge/charge? While Apple has a lot of material talking about periodic deep discharge to shutdown and charge as a means of calibrating the battery, in reality that does not calibrate the battery itself. That only serves to calibrate the charge reporting circuitry built in to Lithium-technology batteries. In fact, the Battery University, an independent group testing batteries, has shown that repeated deep discharge behavior significantly shortens Lithium battery lifetimes. The optimum balance of use (discharge) and line-connection seems to be around 50% discharge before charge. Deeper reduces cycle life very fast, lower discharge makes for a very high cycle life but why buy a portable?
Anyway, just some thoughts. Use of high intensity applications, including other operating systems, looks like it is degrading the charge time but the battery itself looks healthy.
Just keep using it, perhaps try not discharging below 50% for a while and see how it behaves for your.

Help with my MBP (Late-2011) battery life~

Hi All,
I just bought this MBP like 2 weeks ago & I found that the battery life is a little short.
Only lasted 3.5-4 hours. In saying that, I'm not doing anything extreme. Only browsing the web and doing some homework on Words & Excel.
If I happened to go on youtube or some video streaming site, the battery life only go as far as 2-2.5 hours.
Is this normal? I'm new to MBP & I'm loving every single bit of it.
I read the description on the website says the battery can last up to 7 hours.
I was wondering if my battery faulty or something? or is it just me?
I have turned down the brightness of the screen to about 40% and keyboard light is at about 20% (just estimate).
Turned off my bluetooth device. What else can I do to make the battery life last longer??
Any tips anyone can share with me?
Thanks in advance !!

If you have AppleCare, they will mail you the battery.
If you do not have AppleCare, call Customer Relations 1-800-767-2775. See what they can do for you. CS will determine if your model MBP qualifies for a free battery.
An Apple Store is not the only place to go. There may be an AASP closer. See KB Article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304398 How to find your nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP)
Another thing you can do is to go to System Profiler. Copy/Paste the Power info here. *Do not post any serial numbers.*

A1281 is the battery i got for my 15inch MBP. Is the battery life only 2 - 3 hours for a new battery on this device.

A1281 is the battery i got for my 15inch MBP. Is the battery life only 2 - 3 hours for a new battery on this device.
This is from Apple.
2 to 3 hours seems very low.
what is teh standard or advertised spec for a 15 inch Macbook Pro with this battery.
I would like to know so that i can return it if this is not normal.
Its expensive so comments would be appreciated.

I say it depends on your model? average usage is about 3-4 hours depending on what you use and how you use it. Adobe Flash player eats a lot of battery power so if you are on a web page and has flash player, likely that it's eating up battery because of it's power thirsty.
Also check your systems activity monitor. It could be possible that one of your program/apps did not close right and may be still running. So check for that and end the process if necessary.
If you have a backlight keyboard, in a broad daylight, it's not necessary to have it on.
I also suggest that you use it plugged in most of the time, and it's not going to hurt or damage the battery if you have it plugged in all the time. Only use on battery if you are going to places that has no access to the outlet. If you are at home, then keep it plugged in. Just keep in mind to fully drain the battery until it your MBP turns off on it's own. This is the calibration process so that you have the most accurate battery readings.
The standard for 2011 MBP is 7 hours on battery. Before that model is 10 hours, but i don't believe that previous models will last 10 hours. Last week I calibrated my battery readings from fully charged and it took 9 hours to completely drain out the battery (I have a 2011 model),
If you think it's not normal and that your battery doesn't meet your expectation then set up an appointment with the genius bar and have them test the battery. They will determine whether it is faulty or not.

I have the 13 inch macbook pro bought in august 2011,the battery life instead of 7 hours lasts only for 3-4 hours why is this so

i was very impressed when i saw the 7 hour battery life of the macbook 13 in the store . but after using the system it only lasted 3-4 hours completely , same was the case for windows 7 pro. all the other functions of my mac are working fine.I buyed the system pin packed in front of me.I questioned the retailer about this but he had no clue what was happenig which caused this.I think this has something to do with china as my mac has been assembled in china and designed by apple californiahttp://computershopper.com/laptops/reviews/apple-macbook-pro-13-inch-2011-versio n these are the specs and the review of the system.but remove the phenominal battery life from the pros.I'm new to apple so please also provide me a location where i can get apple support in Pakistan

The 7 hour battery life is maximum that can be expected with minimal drain, but 3-4 hours either means you are using it very, very hard or the battery is bad. OR the gauge needs calibration, see below.
Turn off WiFi if you are not using it, and dim the display to also save battery power. It also depends on the applications that you are using.
One months is awfully fast for you to lose that much battery time. If the laptop was new, then I would talk to the seller about an exchange, at least exchanging the battery.
Have you tried calibrating the battery? See
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/9036.html
for how. Please note, this only calibrates when the MBP charges the battery and resets the calibration of time or percentage of battery charge left. The lithium battery does not have a memory.

Battery capacity 2010 MBP vs 2011 MBP

We have two 17 inch MBPs in the household. I am very surprised to see a big difference in the full charge capscity numbers in the System profile:
MBP 2010 12234 mAh
MBP 2011 8844 mAh
I know the quoted battery life for the 2011models is less than the 2010 models but I thought this was because sandy bridge used more juice, not because they put a smaller capacity battery in.
Mac Tracker says they both have a 95 watt hour lithium polymer
Any insights?
<Serial Number Edited by Host>

They are both about 100WHr but at different voltages:
12234 mAHr * 8330 mV / 1000 / 1000 -> 101.9 WHr
8844 mAHr * 12491 mV / 1000 /1000 -> 110.5 WHr

Retina MBP 2.6 only 3 hours of battery life?

My 1 week old Retina MBP 2.6 is only getting 3 hours max on battery with light surfing. When watching videos i also only get 3 hours tops. Bluetooth is off, keyboard light off, screen backlighting 50%, gfxCardstatus set to integrated only (also confirmed in energy saving settings). I run 10.7.4, all updates installed.
Is this normal? Isn´t it supposed to get at least 5 hours when browsing the web (no youtube)? Should i return it and get the 2.3 instead for more battery life?
Thanks in advance.

There have been reports of problems with various models experiencing low battery life after installing Mountain Lion but as you're still using Lion, you should be getting at least 7 hours on battery for light web surfing (not a lot of YouTube videos, etc.).
My suggestion would be to take the machine into your local Apple Store and let them deal with the problem. Before that you can download the free "Battery Health" from the App Store which lets you see your battery health in real-time, as opposed to always having to go into your System Report. There's no reason that you should be getting less than 7+ hours of battery life.
Clinton

MBP 15" Retina Battery Life Problems

Hello all!
I recently got the highest end MBP 15" Retina and it runs AMAZINGLY fast, but the only problem I'm having with is the battery life.
For example, right now, at 100% charge, the predicted time is 4 hours and 35 minutes, but it's plummeting very quickly; I don't think I'll get more than 1 or 2 hours.
On the website, the average predicted battery life is almost 8 hours. I understand that the numbers on Apple's website may not be exact, but I feel like getting a quarter or even half of the advertised battery life suggests there is something wrong as well? o-o
I'm not doing anything intensive on my computer either; just simple web browsing and chatting on Skype.
I've searched the internet for solutions, and I've already tried resetting PRAM AND NVRAM settings, I've turned off Bluetooth, and checked off all of the Power Saver settings in Preferences.
My battery's condition is "Normal" since I recently purchased it.
I'm curious if anyone has a solution to this problem? (To give an idea of how fast the battery is draining, I started writing this post with 100% battery, and now it's at 98% several minutes later)
If anyone has any advice, it'd be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advanced!

puzzledsean wrote:
I'm not doing anything intensive on my computer either; just simple web browsing and chatting on Skype.
Skype is one of the most resource hungry application that one may use. It will drain the battery very quickly. When using it, connect your MBP to the power adapter.
Read the Apple hype regarding battery run time. The operative term is 'UP TO' not will achieve 8 hours run time. In the 'real world' conditions, battery run time will be determined by the number and type of applications you are using. If you are just text editing, you may very well get 8 hours from from the battery, but certainly not with Skype games or video.
Ciao.

13" Air Mid 2011 hot cpu, fan on high, short battery life

Since it seems many have this problem, here is what I have found so far.
Background: 13" Air i7 Mid 2011 4gb RAM, 256 SSD, purchased in Aug 2011. Battery life is normally 5.5hours with wifi on, blue tooth off. I charge the battery until status says charged then I unplug until I get the reserve power message at 9%, most days I charge 2 times, sometimes 3 times. When I plug in an external monitor using my thunderbolt to dvi or thunderbolt to hdmi my battery life drops to 2.5-3.5hours (extra work, less battery, makes sense), back left is hot and fan is running. When I have apache web server, mysql, php, netbeans, firefox with over 30 tabs, safari with over 10 tabs, thunderbird, avast antivirus, adium, skype and other random pgms loaded my battery life stayed over 4.5 hours, activity monitor at about 80% idle. The back left corner of the keyboard stays cool during this time.
I have read the CPU power and cores are adjusted automatically based on usage, and this is what I have found to be true with great consistancy.
About 1-2 months ago my battery life dropped to about 2.5 hours. I have been trying to figure the cause. At the same time my back left corner of the keyboard is getting hot like I have the external monitor plugged in. The fan is running all the time. I look at the activity monitor and it shows 80%-90% idle. I have been on the phone with support and we tried the SMC reset, but the fan is just doing it's job of cooling the cpu. Apple phone support seemed to feel this was normal, even though I told them the back left of the keyboard was not normally this way. I have narrowed it down to.... the cpu is being told to run harder than before, so where is the mixedup signal? I began this morning reading all the messages here in the disscussions this am (and there are many with the same description), many references to activity monitor.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1473 - the activity monitor in this will show the process that is using the cpu the most.
In my case I had installed HP scanner software 2 months ago, which is badly written and very misbehaved, see the following link. This process would go to 100% cpu every few seconds (not all the time, so I could not see it in the summary, ), shown when I sorted by cpu % usage.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Mac-Printing-and-Scanning/OS-X-scanner-driver-maxes -CPU/td-p/197310
I have removed my scanner drivers.
My battery life is back to 5.5hr, back left of keyboard is cool to touch, and the fan is off.
My findings, when the back left of the keyboard is hot, the CPU is running hard. External monitors heat up the cpu. Activity monitor can tell you what is using the cpu, by sorting by %cpu usage (don't trust the summary, look at the individual processes, as shown in the link TS1473) and watching for 10-30 seconds, a misbehaved app may not be at the top all the time. I hope this helps.
Thanks for all the great posts here, I was able to solve a 2 month problem.

You should probably ask this in the MacBook Air forum. This is the forum for the white and black plastic MacBooks that were discontinued in 2010. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_air

Air Mid 2011 hot cpu, fan on high, short battery life

Since it seems many have this problem, here is what I have found so far.
Background: Air i7 Mid 2011 4gb RAM, 256 SSD, purchased in Aug 2011. Battery life is normally 5.5hours with wifi on, blue tooth off. I charge the battery until status says charged then I unplug until I get the reserve power message at 9%, most days I charge 2 times, sometimes 3 times. When I plug in an external monitor using my thunderbolt to dvi or thunderbolt to hdmi my battery life drops to 2.5-3.5hours (extra work, less battery, makes sense), back left is hot and fan is running. When I have apache web server, mysql, php, netbeans, firefox with over 30 tabs, safari with over 10 tabs, thunderbird, avast antivirus, adium, skype and other random pgms loaded my battery life stayed over 4.5 hours, activity monitor at about 80% idle. The back left corner of the keyboard stays cool during this time.
I have read the CPU power and cores are adjusted automatically based on usage, and this is what I have found to be true with great consistancy.
About 1-2 months ago my battery life dropped to about 2.5 hours. I have been trying to figure the cause. At the same time my back left corner of the keyboard is getting hot like I have the external monitor plugged in. The fan is running all the time. I look at the activity monitor and it shows 80%-90% idle. I have been on the phone with support and we tried the SMC reset, but the fan is just doing it's job of cooling the cpu. Apple phone support seemed to feel this was normal, even though I told them the back left of the keyboard was not normally this way. I have narrowed it down to.... the cpu is being told to run harder than before, so where is the mixedup signal? I began this morning reading all the messages here in the disscussions this am (and there are many with the same description), many references to activity monitor.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1473 - the activity monitor in this will show the process that is using the cpu the most.
In my case I had installed HP scanner software 2 months ago, which is badly written and very misbehaved, see the following link. This process would go to 100% cpu every few seconds (not all the time, so I could not see it in the summary, ), shown when I sorted by cpu % usage.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Mac-Printing-and-Scanning/OS-X-scanner-driver-maxes -CPU/td-p/197310
I have removed my scanner drivers.
My battery life is back to 5.5hr, back left of keyboard is cool to touch, and the fan is off.
My findings, when the back left of the keyboard is hot, the CPU is running hard. External monitors heat up the cpu. Activity monitor can tell you what is using the cpu, by sorting by %cpu usage (don't trust the summary, look at the individual processes, as shown in the link TS1473) and watching for 10-30 seconds, a misbehaved app may not be at the top all the time. I hope this helps.
Thanks for all the great posts here, I was able to solve a 2 month problem.

You should probably ask this in the MacBook Air forum. This is the forum for the white and black plastic MacBooks that were discontinued in 2010. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_air

Battery life on 2011 mbp

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