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I used more or less non stop my new Macbook Pro M1 for about 7 hours and noticed that at the end of the day the battery was already at 14% despite the fact it was fully charged when I started working.

While working I was using a second monitor, a wired keyboard, a wireless mouse and a USB hub. The programs I actively used that day were Safari, Chrome, Sublime Text and iTerm2. Safari, Chrome and Sublime were constantly using more or less 500 MB of RAM.

Apple said the new M1 had an autonomy of 20 hours so I'm a bit surprised that after only 7 hours of work it is already at 14%. Is this suppose to be normal? Is it the same for everyone out there?

Thank you.

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    It's 20 hours when browsing the web or watching movies. You were doing a heck of a lot more than that. Going for 7 hours without draining the battery looks pretty good to me.
    – fsb
    Feb 18, 2021 at 18:34
  • I have a MBA M1 and will agree with what @fsb said. The battery life claimed on mine is around 18 hours and I am actually able to get that (under specific conditions of managing screen brightness etc.) IMO the biggest drain on these new M1 macs is the screen brightness as far as I have experienced and using a second screen certainly did not help with that. Try without a second screen with about the same workload and see what battery life you get. Also, if you click on the battery icon then if there are any apps using significant battery you can see them there.
    – asymptoticallyboundedgluon
    Feb 18, 2021 at 19:14
  • @asymptoticallyboundedgluon well it seems that it always puts the apps I'm currently using atm in the "App using significant energy" tab and I don't really know what I can do about it. Even Safari is often considered as using significant energy.
    – Eleveres
    Feb 18, 2021 at 19:43
  • @Eleveres That is not the case for me. I get that significant energy usage only when I have opened many tabs and some of them are running videos and so on. The problem aggravates if you keep any browser (whether chrome or safari etc) open for hours on end. I suspect this is mostly because of indexing and caching (I don't have too much technical knowledge) all the tabs you keep opening and closing. At least, that is what happens in my case. If I am doing light usage i.e. 20-30 tabs open with a few video tabs and some pdfs etc and so on then my battery life exceeds 24 hours very very easily.
    – asymptoticallyboundedgluon
    Feb 18, 2021 at 20:52
  • I have multiple windows opened in split screen and use the dev tools often so I guess that's why. Thank you for help!
    – Eleveres
    Feb 18, 2021 at 21:49

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