
Plus, some websites will drain your battery much faster than others. Even this unflattering test (for the new MacBooks, not the old ones) has limitations: last we heard, Apple runs it using its own Safari browser instead of the more popular (and, according to macOS’s Activity Monitor, more energy-hungry) Chrome. Apple’s estimate for the new 14-inch is 11 hours, the same as the 2020 Intel MacBook Air.

#New mac air battery pro
Apple says the test involves browsing 25 popular websites using Wi-Fi, with screen brightness set to “8 clicks from bottom.” Under these conditions, the 16-inch MacBook Pro fails to beat even the M1 MacBook Air - it only gets 14 hours of life compared to the Air’s 15 hours. That point is backed up by the fact that Apple’s more realistic wireless web test tells a very different story. In a more realistic test, the 14-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t beat the Air - those numbers didn’t make it onstage Plus, modern CPUs have so much silicon dedicated to video playback that it’s almost become effortless for them. That’s not generally what people use their laptops for unless they’re marathoning the Lord of the Rings extended cuts.
#New mac air battery movie
For one, Apple says these figures are derived from watching a movie using the Apple TV app. But using video playback as a measure of battery life is really only useful if you’re trying to sell a particular narrative - not if you just want to let people know how long their laptops will actually last.

In its keynote and press release, Apple says the 14-inch MacBook Pro will provide 17 hours of video playback and estimates that the 16-inch model can last for an unprecedented-for-Macs 21 hours. But the metric Apple used to back up that claim is a bit suspect, and its other numbers tell a very different story. But there’s one big question that comes with the new sizes and processors: how’s the battery life? To hear Apple tell it, it’s going to be great - the company even said onstage that the 16-inch had the best battery life ever, besting last year’s M1 Macs (which it also boasted would have the longest-lived batteries). Apple’s new MacBook Pros are here, and they may actually live up to the “Pro” moniker.
