5 ms·
> 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 secon
by otalp 10y ago
> 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.
What could possibly the reason for such drastic variations in the same laptop, over a short period of time, when the testing conditions remain consistent?
- falcolas 10y agoBackground processes and vastly different webpages visited. That's all I can come up with. Frankly, I'm not sure either is a valid excuse for such a huge deviation.
- annerajb 10y agoIf they have some automated setup for doing this web browsing (maybe a selenium that visits websites for 10 hours?) They should be consistent after a restart and I bet they charge them to full before conducting the next test.
- coldtea 10y agoWhen they say: "ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third" they don't mean that each of the three trials consists of the same load. The mechanism sounds highly random too: "Consumer Reports tests battery life using a real-world test: They turn on the laptop's screen and surf webpages using Chrome. It's not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video that wouldn't require internet access, and the publication said that even recent software updates did not help the problem." Such tests should be repeatable, with same webpages, durations of visit, etc to have any meaning (and to be able to actually indicate issues with different battery life, and not merely different load).
- coob 10y agoDoesn't seem fair to base a test on using Chrome when Apple bundles a more power efficient browser with the OS.
- canuckintime 10y agoRead from the orginal source[1]. They do their laptop tests with default browser, Safari, and got those highly variable results. They then did tests with Chrome and got more consistent results (but still lower than Apple's promised estimates) [1] http://www.consumerreports.org/laptops/macbook-pros-fail-to-earn-consumer-reports-recommendation/ http://www.consumerreports.org/laptops/macbook-pros-fail-to-...
- otalp 10y agoThis is where it gets more bizarre. They did not use Chrome. According to their website: "We conduct our battery tests using the computer’s default browser—Safari, in the case of the MacBook Pro laptops." They proceed to find serious aberrations with battery life under Safari. Then they say, "Once our official testing was done, we experimented by conducting the same battery tests using a Chrome browser, rather than Safari. For this exercise, we ran two trials on each of the laptops, and found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs." Chrome giving much better battery results than Safari? That is unheard of. It's not a software issue either. I can confirm that with the latest Chrome my Air runs for about a third of the time that it runs with the latest Safari(I have the most recent Sierra). So this makes very little sense.
- givinguflac 10y agoAgreed, when I read they got longer results with chrome I did a double take. It's never even been close in my experience so clearly they screwed something up in safari.
- copperred 10y agoAny issue fixable by software is a software issue.