M1 Air/Pro battery drain test review disparities?

[Oops?]

Hi, 

 

Anyone able to help me understand why different reviewers find such different results for the M1 Air vs Pro battery drain tests?

Originaly thought in light tasks the Pro would outperform given bigger battery, but in more demanding tasks the thermal throttling of the Air would limit its power draw and see it use less battery/last longer, but this doesn't really align with the results. What am I missing?

(I understand that obviously different tasks impact battery differently just struggling to understand how varied the results are given how similar the specs are aside from the Pro having a ~17% larger battery)

 

 

Thinking ill pick one up come back to school sales in Aus. Had planned to get the Pro for the better battery life, but really don't like the touchbar - and am now just confused how much worse the battery life of the Air would be? Usage is typical on the go Uni Student (Word, chrome, zoom, email) no heavy tasks given home desktop. In this setting would you expect the difference to be <2hrs, or >2hrs?

 

Cheers!

[martward]

I wouldn't necessarily look at which of them has more battery life than the other, but which of them has enough battery life for your purpose. 

For instance TechCrunch (don't know the site, just picked one at random from google) says it lasts up to 16 hours of web browsing and video playback, that's 2 working days. Considering you're not spending 8 hours a day on the laptop a day, usually, you should only have to charge it every other day. 

That's how I would look at this decision at least. I'm not going to give an advice about the products because I have never used a Mac and I simply don't know enough to give a valuable advice.

 

tl;dr I think the difference will be approx. 2 hrs, but I think you should look at the individual battery life to see if it's enough.

[Vishera]

48 minutes ago, Oops? said:

Anyone able to help me understand why different reviewers find such different results for the M1 Air vs Pro battery drain tests?

Different workloads consume different amounts of power,

The more demanding it is,the more power it will consume.

[Oops?]

17 hours ago, Vishera said:

Different workloads consume different amounts of power,

Think you misunderstood (or I have your answer?) - my question is why the difference between Air & Pro is so varied, as in the last column of the table.
I.e. Pro has a ~17% larger battery so why does it last anywhere from 50% longer to 20% shorter (even on tests running single continous workloads?) instead of just ~17% longer?

[Vishera]

Just now, Oops? said:

Think you misunderstood (or I have your answer?) - my question is why the difference between Air & Pro is so varied, as in the last column of the table.
I.e. Pro has a ~17% larger battery so why does it last anywhere from 50% longer to 20% shorter (even on tests running single continous workloads?) instead of just ~17% longer?

The Pro consumes more power,the SOC is less restricted in power so it can use more power and there is a better cooling solution to go along with it

The bigger battery can have better battery life or it can be lower than the air depending on the less restricted SOC's need for power.

[Roswell]

20 hours of YouTube playback seems a little off. It only has a 58wH battery so... that would mean it’s consuming only 2.8W of power while watching said YouTube video?

 

Maaaaaaybe if you mute the speakers and turn the backlight down to 5%? Even then...

[Darkseth]

When i was writing on a resume (Word, Excel, some PDFs, Safari were open), i lost like 15% in 3 Hours.
20 hours seems realistic.

On Zoom (native) with 60-100 People, 50%~ Screen Brightness and 60-70% Volume, it consumed once 10% in 90 Minutes, and another time 20% in 3 Hours. So that should be around 15~ Hours Batterylife with Zoom.

The M1 Package can go as low as 50 mW consumption when doing just nothing, fluctuating upo to 80 mW~ 

When i play a 1080p Youtube Video (Not fullscreen, just Safari Window, so i can see Powermetrics), it spikes to 2w~ (like when Video starts, you switch windows etc), but goes down to 250-300 mW consumption during Videoplayback, which remains quite consistent.

That leaves 2,5 Watt for the Display and speakers.