Consumer Reports Finds Wildly Inconsistent Battery Life With New MacBook Pros ⇥ consumerreports.org

Jerry Beilinson, Consumer Reports:

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.

Those were just a few of the results; we tested battery life on these laptops repeatedly.

This doesn’t look good.

Strangely, Beilinson writes that a handful of tests performed using Chrome instead of Safari yielded more consistent and longer battery life than tests using Safari. If you’re seeing bizarre battery performance with your new MacBook Pro, maybe give Chrome a shot. This seems counterintuitive to me, though — Chrome has always been a battery hog.