Photo Credit: Osxdaily.com
Disclaimer: All models mentioned in this FAQ’s page have been discontinued by Apple. Just the same, this is an up-to-date guide which you can find useful if you are interested in getting a new notebook from the used market.
Apple’s official release for both the 13-inch Late 2012 and Early 2013 Retina Display MacBook Pro laptops (A1425), based on the company’s test results, is that these notebooks have “up to 7 hours” runtime in “wireless web” use.
The same 7 hours of runtime is Apple’s estimate for both the Mid-2012 and Early 2013 15-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro, as well as in the 13-inch regular Mid-2012 MacBook Pro laptops.
This is largely due to the same integrated and glued 74-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery used in both 13-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro laptops. As for the 15-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro models, they have an integrated and glued lithium-polymer battery but with the 95-watt-hour capacity.
On the other hand, the regular 13-inch Mid-2012 MacBook Pro has an integrated, un-glued, 63.5-watt-hour battery while the 13-inch Mid-2012 MacBook Air has the same integrated, un-glued battery, only with a 50-watt-hour capacity.
Official Battery Life Testing Criteria
On the official website, Apple claims that the battery life was originally tested using a pre-production version of the 2.5GHz Core i5 13-inch Retina Display Pro and then later updated in January 2013 with a pre-production 2.6GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro series. Apple boasts of the “battery life varies by use and configuration” and “wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%”
Tests from third parties are also available online while Apple’s official battery life test results in recent years are always a reliable measurement for people considering to purchase these laptops in the used market.
Photo Credit: Apple.stackexchange.com
Third-Party Battery Life Test Results
Independent testing methodologies may differ and in different scenarios and will be very beneficial for a more well-rounded perspective of deciding which Apple notebook to choose from.
NotebookCheck came up with close results as Apple’s simulated web surfing test, however, with an increase in display brightness, the battery life drops considerably.
To quote, “We run this [WLAN surf] test (a script visits a new website every 40 seconds) with the display brightness set to 150 cd/m2. The MacBook lasted for 6 hours and 42 minutes before we needed to plug it back in – pretty close to Apple’s claim of 7 hours. When we turned the display brightness to its maximum and activated the keyboard backlight, the notebook managed about 5 hours.”
Macworld, on the other hand, have significantly different test results for a “harsh” usage scenario where it “involves playing a video in a continuous loop until the battery is drained,”:
To quote, “The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro had the shortest battery life of all the current Apple laptops. It averaged 4 hours and 40 minutes, 67 minutes shorter than the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro with the same 2.5 GHz Core i5 processor, and 44 minutes shorter than the 13-inch MacBook Air”
AnandTech, also has their own battery test results indicating that the 13-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro uses a custom “light, medium, and heavy workload” battery and that this notebook can withstand nearly 7.5 hours in light usage, approximately 5.5 hours in medium usage, and roughly around 3.5 hours in heavy usage. With heavy usage, this website also reports the following:
“The 13-inch rMBP sets a new record for our new suite, outlasting the 13-inch MBA by 15% (despite having a 48% larger battery). Worst case battery life is much better on the smaller rMBP compared to the 15-inch model thanks to its use of a dual-core processor with no discrete GPU. Performance obviously suffers, but if all you care about is battery life the 13-inch rMBP will do better on a single charge.”
Battery Life Summary
Apple’s battery life numbers are a reliable and “real-world” estimate on what to expect from these 13-inch Retina Display MacBook Pro laptops – realistically – for actual, light web usage overall. With that said, if the laptop is used for more than just typing documents and browsing or reading through websites, the battery life will drop expectedly as compared to the tests abovementioned.
