Apple's new MacBook Pros fail to impress Consumer Reports over battery life
24 Dec 2016
Consumer Reports, which has a reputation for thoroughly testing the products it reviews, said Apple's new MacBook Pros had problems with battery life. Consequently it could not assign it a "recommended" rating, it said in a blog post on Thursday.
Consumer Reports conducted the tests on all three of Apple's new MacBook Pro models - the 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, and both the 13- and 15-inch models with the Touch Bar, a new kind of touchscreen integrated into the laptop's keyboard.
Consumer Reports said, " The MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.
"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."
In the test, Consumer Reports, turned on the laptop's screen and surfed webpages using Chrome. It was not a test based on benchmarking software or watching video that would not require internet access, and according to the publication, even recent software updates did not help the problem.
However, 9to5mac.com, had a different take on the issue. According to 9to5mac.com given that Consumer Reports was seeing as little as 3.75 hours in its own tests would be good enough reason to withhold a recommendation. However it was the high end results of the organisation that were puzzling.
According to Consumer Reports, "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.
According to 9to5mac, it could not understand the numbers it had emphasised. "Apple's own estimates are certainly close to ideal conditions, and yet the company claims only ten hours while Consumer Reports lists 16, 18.5 and 19.5 hours among its results."