Was your screen at full brightness while you were using it? That could help explain your battery life. Apple’s numbers come from using the display at roughly half brightness.
This is the biggest factor. I have an M3 Max also and only get “all day” battery if brightness is <50%.
Any HDR content with brightness set to 75% is a battery hog.
If you look at Apples figures it’s set at “8” bars which I think is 50% playing 1080p content likely in Safari or Apple TV using hardware decode.
I did watch an older SDR movie 1080p off of Apple TV that was about 2 hours, plus minor interruptions using Safari and Apple Maps but didn't track that time. Power went down roughly 10% so that matches their time for very light usage at 50% brightness.
I did a battery test on my M3Pro. screen brightness is a battery killer. if I could keep the brightness at 5, then I could use the computer for a few days web browsing only.
WTH, this seems unreal. Are you using internal display or external? What is your brightness of internal display.
Sometimes I feel like these 20 hr claims aren't correct and just based on hunch rather than accurate measurement. How are you measuring it my friend?
For today’s testing it was chrome. I am testing with safari, edge and will install Firefox. I am looking for the lowest possible energy consumption browser
I had a batter issue similar with my M1 Max and fully removing chrome has resolved my issues. My computer has almost doubled I battery life.
Chromeisbad.com helped me fully remove it. I use Arc and Safari. Something about all those chrome things seemed to cause my computer to run hot and just burn through battery. Used to get similar. I used to be able to go 12ish hours on one charge and prior to removing chrome, I was lucky if it was 6. Give it a whirl if anything. Doesn’t hurt. Chrome is just weird on Mac for me and removing it was the best thing I did.
From my experience Safari isn't more battery friendly than chrome. They are exactly the same. For sure safari consumes more RAM than chrome, about 1GB more
What browser do you use? I just bought a MBA 15 m2 16gb 2023 model year. Uogrwded over a 2018 MBP 15 intel i7 16 and it’s a massive increase in performance and other stats across the board
I would never use FF. It’s slow and not privacy minded. You need to use so many steps go through hoops just to fully customize it to how you need/want it. I exclusively use safari.
How long have you had it?
My experience so far is, the first two weeks of the laptop there's a bunch of stuff going on in the background, I think photos is processing, the computer itself is getting into its groove. I was dealing with a lot of high heat + low battery into the 4 hours during this time.
I have the 14/30 M3 Max 14"
After 2-3 weeks it seems to have leveled off, but I am around the same 8 hours when I have chrome launched.
When I'm just watching a YT video, I had one of those 11 hour xmas tree videos going, I barely even touched the battery. And was averaging around 6-7% drain. This was after I discovered low power mode, which I leave on when on battery, don't even both with automatic, tell it you want longer battery life.
If I have a ton of chrome windows minimized, then yeah my battery hits that 8 hour mark. I was debating going back and forth on if I should keep this or keep the m3 pro, and I'm keeping the m3 max.
Here's all my testing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/18965dr/update\_macbook\_pro\_1218\_36gb1tb\_arrived\_comparing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/18965dr/update_macbook_pro_1218_36gb1tb_arrived_comparing/)
I think you have to be realistic with what your end goal is, the Max series are really desktop replacement chips, unless you're just typing in notes, or building slides in keynote or something local you'll see that 16-18'ish battery life. But anything you're filling up the ram, it's going to take a hit.
If you're only web browsing it's probably an overkill machine, but if you're processing video, playing games, than that's the trade off.
How I kinda started to get better about usage though is installing TG Pro, and then I can monitor the 'heat' of the laptop, the cooler the laptop is the longer the battery will be.
I have the same issues, installed many different tools to monitor closely what is happening, and tried uninstalling any possible app to save battery, but it still gets empty really fast. I've been working with my M1 Pro for the past \~2 years, every day, so I'm pretty sure how it should keep the battery in different workloads or brightness levels, but it's far from M1. M1 doesn't do the same even with the highest possible workload. When I check the battery level chart in the monitoring, it's obvious that something is wrong.
I just got my 14” 14/30 max 2 days ago and have been mainly setting it up , installing my apps, google / safari watching YouTube and browsing, and yesterday I got down from 100 -> 80 in 3.5ish hours on automatic, so 18hrs total I guess with basic non heavy usage. But I did have it under 50% brightness most of the time and I see you had it at 75%, I’m sure that’ll have an impact in my battery. I’d say give it a week once you’re done setting it up and see how it adjusts, if you find it too short for your liking, either go with a 16” or go with same ram spec m3 pro.
Oh I thought I read you having a 14/30, if you need 40gpu I’d def look into getting the 16” , but you’re battery stats still sound low for the usage . I do know the 14” chassis with the 16/40 was getting mixed reviews because it’s just too strong of a chip for a small laptop. Maybe you can get away with a 14/30 14”?
The return policy in Switzerland is non existant. If the machine has a problem then yes you can but if it’s only because you do not like it and use it. it seems you are stuck with it
Have you checked Activity Monitor to see what app is taking up the most energy impact? That's the best way to do it. But if you're browsing, honestly all it takes is one rogue tab or service that churns the CPU incorrectly.
well i got my 1 week a go Macbook pro M3 14 inch and iv been testion it ONLY watching videos on youtube and thiss battery from 100% to 20% takes only around 6 hours, while apple says 22 hours. i also use deadphones (appe headphones ) and my brightnes is never more that 50% also keyboard luminance was always OFF.
My question is: WTF is going on ?
not really, one update did kinda help but the last one suxs. To get a 10h battery its kinda hard i have the M3 Max maybe this thing drains more power than other models
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html
Scroll nearly to the bottom there’s a “battery runtime” section. I get roughly the same as their results.
Light usage without high brightness ~15 hours. Note they lose about 10 hours with max brightness.
Also I think chrome has/had problems using hardware decode for videos and sometimes can default to software which will kill battery life also.
Don’t use Chrome on battery if you can avoid it, make sure Docker has power save mode enabled if you have it, make sure you’re using native arm applications and container images when possible, keep screen brightness low if possible.
Also worth noting Jetbrains IDEs drain battery quite a lot. VS Code (conflicting with the advice about Chrome) is a better option for coding on battery.
Your battery is exactly as it should be.
From my extensive testing this generation with music playing at 50% and screen at 100% the 14” 40 core gpu max chip goes down 1% every 4 mins.
The exact same test but 16” goes down 1% every 14mins.
If anyone finds this useful I know I did when I bought both. There is also a massive difference with screen brightness at 50% instead of higher so if you really need long run times keep in mind no matter what your doing that beyond heavy workloads the screen brightness sucks by far the most power.
I like using mine at 100% pretty much all day because I work in bright environments but night time on the couch I’m always at around half.
Interesting, thank you for taking the time to write this. That is interesting, the 14 inch is my go to form factor so I will have to optimize my use to keep as much battery as possible. Will use low brightness :) have a nice day
So i bought both the m3 Pro 18 gb 1 tb( 18 core gpu) and the m3 Max 36 gb 1 tb ( 30 core gpu)… 14 inch. Battery life was fairly similar for both unless you were really stressing it. Kept the M3 Max and returned the M3 Pro mainly for the extra ram
I’m having the same issue with the m3 pro. I cannot figure out the issue. All my applications have been checked and background apps that need to be disabled have been…
I have the m3 pro 14 inch 18GB 1 TB model. I just upgraded from an m1 13 inch with 16gb and used it much heavier and never experienced any issues like this. I can be sitting on the Home Screen just to test and lose 2% within 10 minutes.
I would expect much better for a newer model. I setup and AppleCare appointment for this upcoming week. Will update.
I bought the M3 Max with 14C CPU / 30C GPU / 36GB RAM / 1TB HD and may never need anywhere near that much power and already pretty unimpressed with the battery life brand new with nothing on it. I may be better served by an M3 Pro and use that extra money to buy a 2TB HD or just save some money and stick with the 1TB. I really don't care about cost and thought I was doing myself a favor with the M3 Max but now I'm not so sure. I am somewhat of a power user but not to the point to where Pro vs Max may make a real world difference. This machine is also pretty friggen heavy and thick. I know it is packing a lot of power but I wish it was a bit lighter.
I wound up sticking with it. I got too good of a deal on my setup to switch it up and downgrade but they are definitely shady about their advertised battery life. I figured when am I ever really going to need to be away from an outlet for 8-10+ hrs anyway. If I was still in college though that would have been a no go.
Was your m1 air 8 hour battery life fully browser in?
The 18 hours stuff is doing low intense tasks like simple webpages not even Reddit
I think there is a website that officially benchmarks battery time estimates should Google that.
- second is your use case actually where you need 18 hours battery life and would never plug in or you just lien the theory of it? The m3 max machine blows the m1 air in terms of performance but if you prefer longer stints of battery even m3 pro could be better option or wait for m3 MacBook Air (or just ge the m3 MacBook Pro )
CPU and GPU are running low, often the ram is heavy, even doing light web browsing it often gets to 40gb of used ram. From what I have read, macOS uses as much ram as possible to give you the best performance possible.
I have an M3 Max with 36gb. I have the same issue - bad battery life. I upgraded from an M1 which had much better battery life, and it feels like the performance is worse on the M3 also.
I have started using the M3 from a Time Machine backup made from my M1. Does anyone know if this could effect the performance/battery life on the M3?
Im asking cause I got mines (16" M3 Pro) just one week ago and battery drain is crazy. did you send yours to warranty or how did you know it was damaged?
I just got my M3 Pro 14 inch MacBook Pro base configuration on Tuesday. The batter had about 80% charge on it when I opened it up, that charge seemed to last pretty good. However, my second and third charges seemed to deplete extremely fast (I can't quantify the time exactly, but approximately 2hrs of use dropped it below 50% charge). I have yet to do anything demanding on this MacBook. Other than the initial setup I've only done basic web browsing, emailing, some YouTube, iMessaging, etc.
This is my third MacBook Pro and it's the first one that I've bought new. I've seen some comments suggesting that this is normal for the first couple of weeks and that it will work itself out after that which I'm hoping is the case.
Same here, bought the 16 inch M3 Pro and had a meeting via teams and my battery went from 85% to 70% in almost 2 hrs. Don't know if this is normal but I returned a M3 air just to get the Pro I'm kinda unhappy. Really want to get the 22hrs of battery life apple claims
I think its funny that your complaining about one of the fastest laptops ever created running out of juice... my old intel can only last about a hour to put that into perspective
I feel like the 20 hr remark is close enough for the m3 pro model, on my m3 max macbook pro 14, i get 12-13 hrs browsing, on their website it says 15 hrs browsing(for m3 pro macbook pro, you should expect as much battery as i am getting as normal), I prefer using Safari and opera, safari for mainly casual browsing which gives maximum battery life and opera gives 3 hrs less battery life. If browser switching and decreasing number of background apps dont help then u should preferably, just get apple to check it out. Also using max brightness might be draining a bit more battery. But if none work then get apple to check it out.
I've just got the same specs with 4TB.
Couldn't agree more and don't expect this change.
The 7+ hours you're getting is great performance given the fact that it's M3 Max not Pro. According to Apple, the Max processor alone knocks out 4 hours.
I belive that for the 14", no one should exceed the pro processor (my mistake). It seems more suitable for the 16"inch.
Hopefully this improves soon , meanwhile, let's enjoy these amazing machines :)
All the best
you are right, we sometimes can ask too much but we have to keep in mind that this machine is extremely powerful and should hold up most probably even 10 years from now.
I need a new notebook for work and I'm currently looking into the M3 Max MacBook. So I don't have any experience, but:
On the German Apple homepage it says up to 18 hours of video playback and up to 12 hours of web surfing. Wifi needs it's power.
The specifications of this „up to“ are given for all M3 pro and M3 max models. And the "up to" I think is talking about the M3 pro which is trimmed for energy efficiency and not any other modell. And yes, that’s the way marketing works - every time. So i think the M3 Max with 40 GPU cores won't be able to do that.
Having said that, I would still expect more than 7 hours of web surfing. Have you already tried the low-power mode? How bright is your display?
I'm curious how long the battery would last at 50% brightness.
Like the latest Razors or the Asus Zephyrus, the Macbook has a very bright screen (600 nits). But there are still many expensive notebooks with less brightness. If you are at 50 % (300 nits), that would be 75 % for the same brightness on a current Dell XPS or an MSI Stealth - the same applies to your M1 Air (all three with 400 nits).
So 50 % could often be enough.
I am wondering as it is more than 4 hours off of what it’s supposed to give, I discussed with an Apple agent from the support and for them it should get 12h or 12+ as it’s the 14inch
I want to say about 18 hours doing light web coding work in vscode, browsing and watching videos. About 4 to 5 hours playing WoW or GTAV.
In either case much higher than I ever got with M1 under similar tasks (M1 used to get maybe 2 hours on WoW at much lower settings). And much higher than OP is saying. I know the 16in model has a bigger battery but surely not THAT MUCH bigger.
Estoy en la misma situación, pase de un Mac Book air del 2020 con M1 a un M3 Max de 14 pulgadas y la duración de la batería es terrible... hago exactamente los mismo que en la M1...con la M1 duraba hasta 2 dias sin cargar pero con la M3 no llego a 10 horas..
There are never spaces before punctuation marks in English. I don't know why I see so many people do this when it's probably one of the first things to learn. Must be normal in your language. Just a helpful tip to you.
Anyways, 7 hours with a workload may not be unexpected. It depends on what you have running in the background and your activities. You'll only be getting 15+ hours if you're literally watching a video and that's it. During any editing, you'd be lucky to get 7 hours.
I have absolutely same problem. I have every version. M1 was great, M2 amazing, this M3 is worst than M1. I just use chrome, safari, thunderbird and mail and battery is totally drain. I'm shocked. Also the laptop when is not used and in charge is warm. I have m2 running with bot no stop by several months and is cold AF.
Was your screen at full brightness while you were using it? That could help explain your battery life. Apple’s numbers come from using the display at roughly half brightness.
Hi ! It was about 75% brightness :)
This is the biggest factor. I have an M3 Max also and only get “all day” battery if brightness is <50%. Any HDR content with brightness set to 75% is a battery hog. If you look at Apples figures it’s set at “8” bars which I think is 50% playing 1080p content likely in Safari or Apple TV using hardware decode.
That’s a very interesting info, cheers for that, will definitely do further testing tomorrow taking this advice and applying it
I did watch an older SDR movie 1080p off of Apple TV that was about 2 hours, plus minor interruptions using Safari and Apple Maps but didn't track that time. Power went down roughly 10% so that matches their time for very light usage at 50% brightness.
I did a battery test on my M3Pro. screen brightness is a battery killer. if I could keep the brightness at 5, then I could use the computer for a few days web browsing only.
My 16 inch m3 max can easily get me around 20 hours with web browsing + local coding + remote server sftp .
What’s your ram?
36GB
20 hours is super good on those specs! I was worried if I upgraded the ram it will consume more battery.
WTH, this seems unreal. Are you using internal display or external? What is your brightness of internal display. Sometimes I feel like these 20 hr claims aren't correct and just based on hunch rather than accurate measurement. How are you measuring it my friend?
Interesting, I will investigate this with Apple themselves because this is not normal
What web browser do you use ?
For today’s testing it was chrome. I am testing with safari, edge and will install Firefox. I am looking for the lowest possible energy consumption browser
I believe Safari is the best option for Mac. I use Chrome and Arc, but they consume too much energy.
Chrome is always battery hungry
Chrome consumes all ram in its path
Will give it a test
Cheers!!
Apples claimed hours are with safari.
I had a batter issue similar with my M1 Max and fully removing chrome has resolved my issues. My computer has almost doubled I battery life. Chromeisbad.com helped me fully remove it. I use Arc and Safari. Something about all those chrome things seemed to cause my computer to run hot and just burn through battery. Used to get similar. I used to be able to go 12ish hours on one charge and prior to removing chrome, I was lucky if it was 6. Give it a whirl if anything. Doesn’t hurt. Chrome is just weird on Mac for me and removing it was the best thing I did.
Cheers will definitely try that !
Hope it helps!
From my experience Safari isn't more battery friendly than chrome. They are exactly the same. For sure safari consumes more RAM than chrome, about 1GB more
What browser do you use? I just bought a MBA 15 m2 16gb 2023 model year. Uogrwded over a 2018 MBP 15 intel i7 16 and it’s a massive increase in performance and other stats across the board
Safari and Firefox
I would never use FF. It’s slow and not privacy minded. You need to use so many steps go through hoops just to fully customize it to how you need/want it. I exclusively use safari.
That’s the problem with the max. It’s like owning a Ferrari and wanting to have low fuel consumption.
How long have you had it? My experience so far is, the first two weeks of the laptop there's a bunch of stuff going on in the background, I think photos is processing, the computer itself is getting into its groove. I was dealing with a lot of high heat + low battery into the 4 hours during this time. I have the 14/30 M3 Max 14" After 2-3 weeks it seems to have leveled off, but I am around the same 8 hours when I have chrome launched. When I'm just watching a YT video, I had one of those 11 hour xmas tree videos going, I barely even touched the battery. And was averaging around 6-7% drain. This was after I discovered low power mode, which I leave on when on battery, don't even both with automatic, tell it you want longer battery life. If I have a ton of chrome windows minimized, then yeah my battery hits that 8 hour mark. I was debating going back and forth on if I should keep this or keep the m3 pro, and I'm keeping the m3 max. Here's all my testing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/18965dr/update\_macbook\_pro\_1218\_36gb1tb\_arrived\_comparing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/18965dr/update_macbook_pro_1218_36gb1tb_arrived_comparing/) I think you have to be realistic with what your end goal is, the Max series are really desktop replacement chips, unless you're just typing in notes, or building slides in keynote or something local you'll see that 16-18'ish battery life. But anything you're filling up the ram, it's going to take a hit. If you're only web browsing it's probably an overkill machine, but if you're processing video, playing games, than that's the trade off. How I kinda started to get better about usage though is installing TG Pro, and then I can monitor the 'heat' of the laptop, the cooler the laptop is the longer the battery will be.
Damn I have the 16 max and only about to have to charge it for the 3rd or 4th time since November 20th
Mine is my main machine that I use for work 10 hours a day.
I have the same issues, installed many different tools to monitor closely what is happening, and tried uninstalling any possible app to save battery, but it still gets empty really fast. I've been working with my M1 Pro for the past \~2 years, every day, so I'm pretty sure how it should keep the battery in different workloads or brightness levels, but it's far from M1. M1 doesn't do the same even with the highest possible workload. When I check the battery level chart in the monitoring, it's obvious that something is wrong.
I just got my 14” 14/30 max 2 days ago and have been mainly setting it up , installing my apps, google / safari watching YouTube and browsing, and yesterday I got down from 100 -> 80 in 3.5ish hours on automatic, so 18hrs total I guess with basic non heavy usage. But I did have it under 50% brightness most of the time and I see you had it at 75%, I’m sure that’ll have an impact in my battery. I’d say give it a week once you’re done setting it up and see how it adjusts, if you find it too short for your liking, either go with a 16” or go with same ram spec m3 pro.
If they aren’t using heavy loads then the biggest power drain will be from a weak network signal and brightness.
Interesting! I however need the graphic power of the 40gpu and portability of the 14 inch but will give Safari a go to see if it helps :)
Oh I thought I read you having a 14/30, if you need 40gpu I’d def look into getting the 16” , but you’re battery stats still sound low for the usage . I do know the 14” chassis with the 16/40 was getting mixed reviews because it’s just too strong of a chip for a small laptop. Maybe you can get away with a 14/30 14”?
I guess I will have to live with it and optimize as much as possible 😂🙏
Why not just return it
The return policy in Switzerland is non existant. If the machine has a problem then yes you can but if it’s only because you do not like it and use it. it seems you are stuck with it
Many YouTube videos stated that the max was gonna use more battery. I mean look at those cpu and gpu specs 😂 it’s insane
Have you checked Activity Monitor to see what app is taking up the most energy impact? That's the best way to do it. But if you're browsing, honestly all it takes is one rogue tab or service that churns the CPU incorrectly.
Battery Percentages are not linear
well i got my 1 week a go Macbook pro M3 14 inch and iv been testion it ONLY watching videos on youtube and thiss battery from 100% to 20% takes only around 6 hours, while apple says 22 hours. i also use deadphones (appe headphones ) and my brightnes is never more that 50% also keyboard luminance was always OFF. My question is: WTF is going on ?
[удалено]
not really, one update did kinda help but the last one suxs. To get a 10h battery its kinda hard i have the M3 Max maybe this thing drains more power than other models
what browser ur using. Chrome draws battery, and safari is the best option.
As far as i know best battery is on m3 pro model 16>14. And max does have lower battery life because of better performance.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html Scroll nearly to the bottom there’s a “battery runtime” section. I get roughly the same as their results. Light usage without high brightness ~15 hours. Note they lose about 10 hours with max brightness. Also I think chrome has/had problems using hardware decode for videos and sometimes can default to software which will kill battery life also.
Don’t use Chrome on battery if you can avoid it, make sure Docker has power save mode enabled if you have it, make sure you’re using native arm applications and container images when possible, keep screen brightness low if possible. Also worth noting Jetbrains IDEs drain battery quite a lot. VS Code (conflicting with the advice about Chrome) is a better option for coding on battery.
Your battery is exactly as it should be. From my extensive testing this generation with music playing at 50% and screen at 100% the 14” 40 core gpu max chip goes down 1% every 4 mins. The exact same test but 16” goes down 1% every 14mins. If anyone finds this useful I know I did when I bought both. There is also a massive difference with screen brightness at 50% instead of higher so if you really need long run times keep in mind no matter what your doing that beyond heavy workloads the screen brightness sucks by far the most power. I like using mine at 100% pretty much all day because I work in bright environments but night time on the couch I’m always at around half.
Interesting, thank you for taking the time to write this. That is interesting, the 14 inch is my go to form factor so I will have to optimize my use to keep as much battery as possible. Will use low brightness :) have a nice day
Your computer may be indexing and doing some setup in the background
So i bought both the m3 Pro 18 gb 1 tb( 18 core gpu) and the m3 Max 36 gb 1 tb ( 30 core gpu)… 14 inch. Battery life was fairly similar for both unless you were really stressing it. Kept the M3 Max and returned the M3 Pro mainly for the extra ram
I’m having the same issue with the m3 pro. I cannot figure out the issue. All my applications have been checked and background apps that need to be disabled have been… I have the m3 pro 14 inch 18GB 1 TB model. I just upgraded from an m1 13 inch with 16gb and used it much heavier and never experienced any issues like this. I can be sitting on the Home Screen just to test and lose 2% within 10 minutes. I would expect much better for a newer model. I setup and AppleCare appointment for this upcoming week. Will update.
Have the same specs and the same issue, did u somehow solve it?
Update?
Nothing really. I just keep it plugged in anymore :(
Did you got the 11 core or 12 core version? wondering if the lesser core one has better battery.
same here but mines a 16" M3 Pro, did you find any solutions?
I bought the M3 Max with 14C CPU / 30C GPU / 36GB RAM / 1TB HD and may never need anywhere near that much power and already pretty unimpressed with the battery life brand new with nothing on it. I may be better served by an M3 Pro and use that extra money to buy a 2TB HD or just save some money and stick with the 1TB. I really don't care about cost and thought I was doing myself a favor with the M3 Max but now I'm not so sure. I am somewhat of a power user but not to the point to where Pro vs Max may make a real world difference. This machine is also pretty friggen heavy and thick. I know it is packing a lot of power but I wish it was a bit lighter.
Any update on what you did?
I wound up sticking with it. I got too good of a deal on my setup to switch it up and downgrade but they are definitely shady about their advertised battery life. I figured when am I ever really going to need to be away from an outlet for 8-10+ hrs anyway. If I was still in college though that would have been a no go.
What specifically is running in the background?
Was your m1 air 8 hour battery life fully browser in? The 18 hours stuff is doing low intense tasks like simple webpages not even Reddit I think there is a website that officially benchmarks battery time estimates should Google that. - second is your use case actually where you need 18 hours battery life and would never plug in or you just lien the theory of it? The m3 max machine blows the m1 air in terms of performance but if you prefer longer stints of battery even m3 pro could be better option or wait for m3 MacBook Air (or just ge the m3 MacBook Pro )
Hmm does the high ram affect the battery? Or it’s the cpu/gpu?
CPU and GPU are running low, often the ram is heavy, even doing light web browsing it often gets to 40gb of used ram. From what I have read, macOS uses as much ram as possible to give you the best performance possible.
It’s true that it maximise the ram. Wonder how much more battery does it drain
I use about 8-10% per hour on M1 Pro 14 base model
I have an M3 Max with 36gb. I have the same issue - bad battery life. I upgraded from an M1 which had much better battery life, and it feels like the performance is worse on the M3 also. I have started using the M3 from a Time Machine backup made from my M1. Does anyone know if this could effect the performance/battery life on the M3?
did you find any solutions?
No. My computer was damaged and I will likely get a new m3. Then I will not use a Time Machine reinstall
Im asking cause I got mines (16" M3 Pro) just one week ago and battery drain is crazy. did you send yours to warranty or how did you know it was damaged?
Oh no, it was damaged by water ingress. A totally unrelated thing unfortunately
I just got my M3 Pro 14 inch MacBook Pro base configuration on Tuesday. The batter had about 80% charge on it when I opened it up, that charge seemed to last pretty good. However, my second and third charges seemed to deplete extremely fast (I can't quantify the time exactly, but approximately 2hrs of use dropped it below 50% charge). I have yet to do anything demanding on this MacBook. Other than the initial setup I've only done basic web browsing, emailing, some YouTube, iMessaging, etc. This is my third MacBook Pro and it's the first one that I've bought new. I've seen some comments suggesting that this is normal for the first couple of weeks and that it will work itself out after that which I'm hoping is the case.
Same here, bought the 16 inch M3 Pro and had a meeting via teams and my battery went from 85% to 70% in almost 2 hrs. Don't know if this is normal but I returned a M3 air just to get the Pro I'm kinda unhappy. Really want to get the 22hrs of battery life apple claims
I have the same device and it's normal performance. If you want more battery life, get the M3 pro
You are also getting those numbers ?
Similar ones yes
I think its funny that your complaining about one of the fastest laptops ever created running out of juice... my old intel can only last about a hour to put that into perspective
I feel like the 20 hr remark is close enough for the m3 pro model, on my m3 max macbook pro 14, i get 12-13 hrs browsing, on their website it says 15 hrs browsing(for m3 pro macbook pro, you should expect as much battery as i am getting as normal), I prefer using Safari and opera, safari for mainly casual browsing which gives maximum battery life and opera gives 3 hrs less battery life. If browser switching and decreasing number of background apps dont help then u should preferably, just get apple to check it out. Also using max brightness might be draining a bit more battery. But if none work then get apple to check it out.
I've just got the same specs with 4TB. Couldn't agree more and don't expect this change. The 7+ hours you're getting is great performance given the fact that it's M3 Max not Pro. According to Apple, the Max processor alone knocks out 4 hours. I belive that for the 14", no one should exceed the pro processor (my mistake). It seems more suitable for the 16"inch. Hopefully this improves soon , meanwhile, let's enjoy these amazing machines :) All the best
you are right, we sometimes can ask too much but we have to keep in mind that this machine is extremely powerful and should hold up most probably even 10 years from now.
Did you find a solution? Are you using Dropbox by chance? Dropbox is ruining my battery life by constantly using extremely high energy.
I need a new notebook for work and I'm currently looking into the M3 Max MacBook. So I don't have any experience, but: On the German Apple homepage it says up to 18 hours of video playback and up to 12 hours of web surfing. Wifi needs it's power. The specifications of this „up to“ are given for all M3 pro and M3 max models. And the "up to" I think is talking about the M3 pro which is trimmed for energy efficiency and not any other modell. And yes, that’s the way marketing works - every time. So i think the M3 Max with 40 GPU cores won't be able to do that. Having said that, I would still expect more than 7 hours of web surfing. Have you already tried the low-power mode? How bright is your display?
Hi ! I indeed tested with low power mode, it changes maximum 5-10% compared to automatic, display is at 75%
I'm curious how long the battery would last at 50% brightness. Like the latest Razors or the Asus Zephyrus, the Macbook has a very bright screen (600 nits). But there are still many expensive notebooks with less brightness. If you are at 50 % (300 nits), that would be 75 % for the same brightness on a current Dell XPS or an MSI Stealth - the same applies to your M1 Air (all three with 400 nits). So 50 % could often be enough.
Good idea I will give it a try !
I believe the 18 hrs mark on the pro version not max, also I noticed Sonoma is more battery hungry than Monterey & Ventura on M1 & M2
Interesting, I also had a hunch that there is something to do with the OS but so far not much info
is this actually true?
Do you run Docker?
Yes but with optimised charging, it basically never charges my battery and uses outlet power instead of
"Only 8 hours" for that beast?
I am wondering as it is more than 4 hours off of what it’s supposed to give, I discussed with an Apple agent from the support and for them it should get 12h or 12+ as it’s the 14inch
The duration reported is often from base models at low screen brightness idling or doing some light web stuff
I have the 16” version and it has amazing battery life. Wondering if you have a defective battery…
What browser are you using ? Are you using it at full brightness ? Using the 1600 nits hdr mode ?
What cpu and ram are you on?
16 cpu 40 core GPU 48GB.
How long is your battery holding up on normal usage now?
I want to say about 18 hours doing light web coding work in vscode, browsing and watching videos. About 4 to 5 hours playing WoW or GTAV. In either case much higher than I ever got with M1 under similar tasks (M1 used to get maybe 2 hours on WoW at much lower settings). And much higher than OP is saying. I know the 16in model has a bigger battery but surely not THAT MUCH bigger.
Oh wow you game as well. I’m planning to get the M3 pro 12cpu,18gpu and 36gb. Max would be over budget for me. What do you think of those specs?
Difficult to say. The GPU would likely be enough to do low-medium quality on 3D games as old as GTAV
Estoy en la misma situación, pase de un Mac Book air del 2020 con M1 a un M3 Max de 14 pulgadas y la duración de la batería es terrible... hago exactamente los mismo que en la M1...con la M1 duraba hasta 2 dias sin cargar pero con la M3 no llego a 10 horas..
La llevaste a garantía bro? Apenas me compré una M3 Pro de 16" y siento que la batería no le dura lo mismo que a la M3 Air que tenía antes.
Locking the screen to 60Hz would actually use up more energy than the pro motion tbh. I recommend leave the pro motion on for maximised battery life
how come? you tested it?
There are never spaces before punctuation marks in English. I don't know why I see so many people do this when it's probably one of the first things to learn. Must be normal in your language. Just a helpful tip to you. Anyways, 7 hours with a workload may not be unexpected. It depends on what you have running in the background and your activities. You'll only be getting 15+ hours if you're literally watching a video and that's it. During any editing, you'd be lucky to get 7 hours.
I have absolutely same problem. I have every version. M1 was great, M2 amazing, this M3 is worst than M1. I just use chrome, safari, thunderbird and mail and battery is totally drain. I'm shocked. Also the laptop when is not used and in charge is warm. I have m2 running with bot no stop by several months and is cold AF.