Consumer Reports Retests the New MacBook Pro Lineup ⇥ consumerreports.org

Consumer Reports:

We first evaluated the MacBook Pro laptops in December, and found that battery life results were highly inconsistent from one test to the next. (They ran anywhere from a low of 3.75 hours up to 19.5 hours between charges.) That led the laptops to receive low overall scores, despite strong showings in areas such as display quality and performance.

The process we followed with Apple is the same process we follow with any manufacturer when we discover a significant problem. We shared our test results with the company so it could better understand our findings and deliver a fix to consumers. Since Apple made a fix, we retested the laptops.

The new tests show battery lives far in excess of Apple’s estimates and anything I’ve heard from MacBook Pro owners, which suggests that Consumer Reports’ battery test is not an effective real-world benchmark. But now, at least, its results are consistent.