Test finds Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro only laptops to match or beat advertised batter...
Apple's MacBooks are the only current laptops to meet or exceed their makers' battery life claims, British testing publication Which? found in a comparison of several major brands.
The site used three different MacBook models including the 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro, and found that while Apple claimed 10 hours on average, the real-world figure was 10 hours and 15 minutes, easily outranking computers by Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba. A 13-inch MacBook Pro in fact lasted for 12 hours.
The evaluation process involved draining each laptop repeatedly in several different every-day tasks, such as watching movies, or loading websites over Wi-Fi.
In some cases there were major discrepancies between results and marketing. HP's Pavilion 14-al115na, for instance, is claimed to run for 9 hours, but in practice lasted just 4 hours and 25 minutes. Similarly, the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 managed just 3 hours and 58 minutes despite nominally being capable of 7 hours.
Image Credit: Which?
"It's difficult to give a specific battery life expectation that will directly correlate to all customer usage behaviors because every individual uses their PC differently -- it's similar to how different people driving the same car will get different gas mileage depending on how they drive," Dell told Which? in trying to explain the gap.
HP meanwhile said that its battery testing "uses real life scripts and runs on real applications like Microsoft Office," and that particular specifications -- like resolution -- can impact power consumption.
The Which? results are in some ways actually more conservative than ones generated by U.S. magazine Consumer Reports when it retested Apple's 2016 MacBook Pros. In the latter case, one unit managed nearly 19 hours.
Consumer Reports originally delivered scathing numbers, suggesting that battery life could fluctuate wildly from as much as 16 hours to less than 4. Apple then intervened, pointing out that the publication had an obscure developer setting turned on in Safari that was triggering a bug and hence bad battery readings. The glitch was later resolved in macOS 10.12.3.
The site used three different MacBook models including the 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro, and found that while Apple claimed 10 hours on average, the real-world figure was 10 hours and 15 minutes, easily outranking computers by Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba. A 13-inch MacBook Pro in fact lasted for 12 hours.
The evaluation process involved draining each laptop repeatedly in several different every-day tasks, such as watching movies, or loading websites over Wi-Fi.
In some cases there were major discrepancies between results and marketing. HP's Pavilion 14-al115na, for instance, is claimed to run for 9 hours, but in practice lasted just 4 hours and 25 minutes. Similarly, the Dell Inspiron 15 5000 managed just 3 hours and 58 minutes despite nominally being capable of 7 hours.
Image Credit: Which?
"It's difficult to give a specific battery life expectation that will directly correlate to all customer usage behaviors because every individual uses their PC differently -- it's similar to how different people driving the same car will get different gas mileage depending on how they drive," Dell told Which? in trying to explain the gap.
HP meanwhile said that its battery testing "uses real life scripts and runs on real applications like Microsoft Office," and that particular specifications -- like resolution -- can impact power consumption.
The Which? results are in some ways actually more conservative than ones generated by U.S. magazine Consumer Reports when it retested Apple's 2016 MacBook Pros. In the latter case, one unit managed nearly 19 hours.
Consumer Reports originally delivered scathing numbers, suggesting that battery life could fluctuate wildly from as much as 16 hours to less than 4. Apple then intervened, pointing out that the publication had an obscure developer setting turned on in Safari that was triggering a bug and hence bad battery readings. The glitch was later resolved in macOS 10.12.3.
Comments
seriously, all that bad press when they were introduced seems an awful long time ago.
But will it matter in terms of sales?
Apple being Apple may not be shouting this from the rooftops whereas if it was the other way round....
Blaming Consumer Reports for having what the writer claims is an obscure setting is totally wrong. First off, it is not obscure AT ALL. It is the equivalent of setting "private browsing", and also QA testers, programmers and others NEED and REGULARLY USE that setting. Second, it is a feature that Apple chooses to provide. Consumer Reports did not create their own hack or load their own codes or scripts. It is a setting that APPLE PROVIDES in the browser, is listed BY APPLE as a setting/menu option, and IT IS APPLE'S JOB TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WORKS, even if it is obscure (which it isn't). Finally, CONSUMER REPORTS HAD USED THAT SAME SETTING IN THE PAST. Let me restate. CONSUMER REPORTS USED THAT SAME "DEVELOPER SETTING" FOR THEIR PAST TESTS FOR MACS IN YEARS PAST AND THEY PERFORMED FINE. Why? Because the bug in Apple's OS didn't exist in the past. It was only when the bug was present that it was a problem. When Apple's bug in Apple's operating system caused a problem in Apple's browser, they fixed it. Consumer Reports didn't change squat. Apple did, and the good results were reached as a result.
Oh yes, another thing: those "developer settings" are used when Consumer Reports tests other computers too. When they test computers by Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus etc. in those charts up there, they use those same "developer settings" because running the sort of tests that they do without those settings is ridiculous. They ran those same tests using Chrome, Edge, Firefox, IE etc. browsers with the same "obscure settings" and had no problems. Why? Because the bug was not in Windows, only macOS. Had it been in Windows, Microsoft would have released a fix just like Apple did.
Bottom line: quit blaming Consumer Reports for Apple's bug. Unless you are one of those people who claims that Consumer Reports shouldn't have released the review in the first place without giving Apple time to fix their product flaws first. Sorry, but Consumer Reports is not Apple's PR department. Apple's PR department did their job when they (falsely) claimed that Consumer Reports' test was wrong. Even though Consumer Reports RAN THE EXACT SAME TEST AGAINST THE EXACT SAME HARDWARE AFTER APPLE FIXED THE BUG AND GOT THE DESIRED RESULTS.
But Consumer Reports took the position of accusing Apple of lying about its battery claims, when the batteries or power management system were not at fault at all. Any application can have a bug, first-party or third-party. Bugs are squashed all the time.
Yes, we should be thankful that they found this bug, but how they handled their initial report was very unprofessional. They jumped to the wrong conclusion out of the gate and spread damaging misinformation across the interwebs.
Apple's battery bug only occurred when 1) dev settings in Safari enabled. 2) performing automated, looped testing. In no way would it ever affect someone in real world usage, because we don't hit favicons hundreds of times in a loop for hours on end. Or if using a different browser. So clearly a test conditions issue.
Side note, I see you like to post a lot of disparaging commentary about Apple. My Troll Early Detection System is spinning up...
The battery life has been good enough for me since I don't use the battery that often, but it in no way compares to the battery in the previous model.
The bug was in Safari (an app-li-cay-shun), not MacOS (which is an operating sis-tum).
Read up, then come back.
Apple fixed it quickly, and battery life went back up to it's advertised levels. Do we see competitors doing that? No. They'll only guarantee long batter life only if the user keeps the laptop turned off.
Consumer Reports should have given Apple a chance to resolve it before having a hissy-fit and crying wolf. I don't trust anything CR does anymore. They are all about sensationalism like everyone else to drive those web-clicks.
They were pretty upfront about the inconsistent results obtained on the MacBooks, and I do remember many people complaining about the battery life as well when these machines came out. It's not their responsibility to go after every manufacturers to get them to tweak or debug their machines so they look good.
Apple did their job and contacted them, identified the issue and corrected it. Now everyone is happy and Apple has every reason to brag about its excellent machines.
The problem, and we saw it before during the iPhone 4 "AntennaGate" is that Apple has such a high profile that all its products are under intense scrutiny and the slightest issue is immediately blown out of proportion. I shudder to think of the reaction if they had a mishap like the Note 8 explosions. Looks like all the other manufacturers are reporting outrageously overinflated battery life specs, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. It's only a problem when Apple does it. I guess that's what being the best is about.
Now a Mac has app related problems also, the new batteries are too small for the laptops to run at peak performance very long. A classic example is compiling C++ code that is heavy with templates. In other words Apples laptops suck for professional usage on battery power. Apples advantage is only clear if you fit their description of an average user.
This is actually pretty simple to understand A battery with a given amp/hour rating will simply have a shorter life span than a larger battery given the same load. When one runs apps that leverage the GPUs or CPUs heavily power draw maxes out draining the batteries pretty fast.