Complaints surround Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pro Battery Life

The long awaited 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is here. It was finally released on October 27, much to the delight of Apple’s MacBook fans, who’ve been waiting since 2012 for a new edition to the line. But not everyone was happy when they got home with their new purchase.

The new 15” MacBook Pro may not be all it’s cracked up to be – or more specifically, not all it was advertised to bet. Just weeks after the highly anticipated release, complaints are pouring in, and most of them have to do with the machine’s questionably short battery life.

According to the Apple website, the higher-end 15-inch display with touch pad is powered by an “impressive all-day battery life” of up to 10 hours.

“The new MacBook Pro packs more performance into a thinner design, yet still provides all-day battery life — up to 10 hours… for the 15-inch model.”

2016 MacBook Battery 3-4 Hours Under Normal Use

Customers seem to disagree. On November 20, the following thread was opened on the Apple Support Forums by a customer who’d purchased the 2016 ‘MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.1), 15″ with touch bar‘.

“I just received my new 15″ MacBook Pro with touch bar. The battery life is horrible!!! I have Safari open with 6 tabs and with 95% battery, I am told that I have under 3 hours of battery life left! I thought these things were supposed to get 10 hours? I ran the battery down in 3 hours last night only browsing the web. I wasn’t watching videos, just browsing. Is there something wrong with my laptop?”

A plethora of replies have come in since. A few have come from fellow MacBook owners and Apple employees trying to offer suggestions to solve the problem, but the vast majority of them are similar complaints. Not just from 15” MacBook owners, but the 13” variety as well, all reasonably frustrated by the false advertisement of a 10 hour battery that only lasts 3 to 3.5 hours.

Apple Claims Valid Results in Battery Testing

The question remains, was the original poster correct in his assumption that something was wrong with his computer, or did Apple grossly overestimate the battery life of its Lithium-Ion in 2016 MacBook Pros?

We all know that the battery life of any computer system will vary greatly by what we use it for. But Apple’s own fine print, relating to the testing of batteries, reads:

“The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The iTunes movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%.”

If that’s the case, and their test results came up with “up to 10 hours” of battery life, we must assume that something is terribly wrong with a substantial number of the new MacBook Pros with touch pad that hit the market weeks ago.

Thus far, the community has come up with all sorts of ideas as to why the battery life isn’t what it’s supposed to be, but no resolutions – aside from returning the item to the store and possibly replacing it with a new one – have been verified.