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Aluminum Unibody MacBook Q&A - Published November 4, 2008
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What is the "Unibody" MacBook battery life in "real-world" tests?
Please note that the "Late 2008/Unibody" MacBook models have been discontinued. The "Unibody" MacBook was replaced by the "Mid-2009" 13-Inch MacBook Pro on June 8, 2009.
Apple estimates that the "Unibody" MacBook models provide "5 hours of wireless productivity" which the company further defines as "wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%".
By comparison, for the last "White & Black" MacBook models -- the "Early 2008/Penryn" line -- Apple estimated "4.5 hours of wireless productivity" performing the same test. It is also worth noting that the "White & Black" MacBook models have a 55 W/Hr Li-Poly battery, but the "Unibody" models have a smaller 45 W/Hr Li-Poly battery, so the formal estimates indicate substantially improved efficiency.
However, regardless of the numbers provided by the manufacturer, it is important to see how the systems perform in impartial "real-world" battery life tests.
In typical daily use, Engadget discovered:
We didn't put the laptops through a litany of hardcore battery benchmarks -- we'll leave that to the more minutiae-obsessed critics. Instead, we wanted to see what these performed like in real-world scenarios, say, a day editing Engadget, or scrambling some brains in a deathmatch. On the MacBook, we found we could get around 3 hours of solid use before we needed to plug in again.
In a simple "battery drain" test while playing a "ripped" DVD from the hard drive, MacWorld reported:
The new 2.4 GHz and 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBooks have comparable battery capacities, each lasting a little over 2 hours, 30 minutes. That’s plenty long for most movies, though if you’re watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring you might miss the end. However, these results indicate that the new MacBook has about 22 to 24 minutes shorter battery life than the old white plastic 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook, which finished our test at 2 hours, 57 minutes.
In aggressive testing -- making no effort to use battery conserving features -- Walt Mossberg from the WSJ found:
On my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features and play an endless loop of music, the new MacBook lasted three hours and 53 minutes -- six minutes longer than the old one. That suggests that, in normal use, with power-saving on, you could achieve Apple's claim of five hours of battery life, or come close.
In detailed testing as part of an extensive onslaught of tests that should be read in its entirety, AnandTech discovered that the "Unibody" MacBook provided 4.77 hours of use and the previous "Early 2008/Penryn" models provided 5 hours of use in wireless web browsing, concluding that "the [Unibody] MacBook takes a slight hit compared to its predecessor."
Ultimately, it appears that Apple's battery life numbers for the "Unibody" MacBook models are realistic for day-to-day use making an effort to conserve the battery. However, as Apple notes as well, battery life may vary depending on "configuration and use" and this is clearly reflected in the variety of real-world tests performed.
Also see: What is the "White & Black" MacBook battery life in "real-world" tests?
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