New 15" MBP gets over 8 hours of battery life

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Not indicative of real-life use - at the same rate, I'd be claiming over 7 hours out of a Sony SZ with the standard, replaceable cell, and that's clearly BS.

5:30 ~ 5:45 would be more realistic. Not bad in absolutes, but a poor compromise for people who actually need long runtimes given it's not all-day.

*Wonders when the 60wh Hypermac battery will be back in stock*

 

nice improvement over the old MBP. Though i would be great if there's addon batteries like Dell E6400 to extend the battery life beyond 20 hours.

 

theres external battery packs that can be used if really really needed.... don't think enough people need something like that on a Macbook to waste the time making one specifically for it though.

 

The third-party HyperMacs and Quickersomething are the only options at this time as far as external power is concerned.

The manufacturer ecosystem is pretty poor on an MBP. Take way the eye candy, blow the JRDF away and these 'Pros' are really fancy low-level consumer machines in terms of the sort of people they're aimed at. A nearly 6-hour runtime for people who will probably never replace a battery in their entire ownership period is definitely a jump.

I've backordered the 60wh Hypermac and will be pairing it with a Rev.C Air - which I'll probably hold off for about two months just to get the guaranteed first-month manufacturing defects out of the way - and the 17-inch Crapbook Pro in the hope that I have something which actually gets all-day runtime. I'm skipping the 13/15 refreshes this time around - not an improvement, and I have plenty of spare batteries anyway.

 

The best part is the fact this battery also has the resource management chip in it. That's the real benefit, the long life of the battery stays long for a long time!

The battery in my older mac gets about... 2 minutes of life because it has been so abused (rarely power cycled, always plugged into a outlet). These new macs will maintain battery health/life a lot more.

 

yes,thats what is nice on these new fully unibody macs. but 8hours is a bit far fetched.it will be 5-6 hours in real time performance and it wil be less under windows.

 

I had a new unibody 15". Here's what it's like using under real conditions.
100% brightness, wifi on, bluetooth off, 9400m graphics, in an office environment, surfing, no flash, no videos, just email, chatting, reading webpages, no downloading, 5400 rpm hitachi hard drive, word processing, reading pdfs....About 3 hours 45 minutes.

That's just the truth and people will disagree, but I did it twice after the battery was calibrated. 8 hours has got to be unrealistic. Apple's estimates are no different than any other manufacturers: I halve it and that's usually about right. 7 hours / 2 = 3.5 hours and I got 3.75-3.9 hours. You have to turn up the brigthness more than on a matte screen to overcome the reflections. The battery life is better than the previous generation, but it's not a savior magic battery at all. I have never found mac os x to be better on the battery than a windows machine. It's about the size of the battery, and the 15" has a 73 wH battery, right in between a typical 6 and 9 cell, and that's just what the battery life I got indicates.

 

yeah? the screen is basically the biggest power hog on the system. thats why full brightness kills the battery. (obvious?).

run half brightness and you will get an extra hour or so, 25% and you can get over 5.

 

@pufftissue: Good point about the brightness - however, I need the runtime so I keep even my Glarebooks at 1 (= any runtimes I write down) / 2-segment brightness, perfect my squint and Bollywood-dancing head movements as I try and find an angle where I can make out the screen. 1-segment should get you just under 6 in real life use.

 

Glarebooks.... heh.

 

The likes of members here I can understand, but it seems Anand has also bought wholesale into Apple BS as of late - a shame, but it happens to all 'journalists' eventually.

There seem to be a developing number of Air (equipped with the same 'resource management' and cell chemistry / stated number of usable cycles) owners who're running into runtime problems with less than half the number of cycles that Apple claim the cells will last for. Moreover, it should be noted that the same heavy users have managed to reach nearly half the number of cycles since the Air's release - that's not even 18 months ago, folks.

Obviously with the chronically short-duration Crapbook Airs, discharging it fully every time you go out is much more possible. I used to do it every time I took it out. And while the new Crapbook Pros may be longer-lived, you're still running into the cycle-adding percentage if you use the machines for e.g. 4 hours.

I look forward to the 2-year anniversary of the Rev.A Air with some interest - my guess is that far more 'Air as main machine' users would have racked up ~500 cycles by then - although I'm sure the Fanboi Bad News Suppression Field will be in full effect.

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I happen to have the old Rev. B that I gave away back in front of me at the moment which I'm just updating / cleaning up - one I gave up on with under 20 cycles. It's only up to 62 now so I guess this probably has a fair chance of lasting the full Applecare period.

 

if you hate them so much, why did you buy them in all 3 size flavors?

 

It doesn't in fact end there, although I'm considering doing away with the 15-inch if the external battery situation works out. And I've answered this at least twice. Oh yeah - damn, search is out. OS X is the reason, and that's all you need to know.