Last month, Consumer Reports came up with some interesting battery test results with the latest MacBook Pro models. Results ranged from 3.75 hours to 19.5 hours. Many in the Apple community thought that something was off, either a software bug or a benchmarking issue — it turns out it was both.
Apple worked with Consumer Reports over the holidays to find out why the battery test results varied so much. It’s hard to get the exact same battery life every time. That’s why benchmark lovers run a test multiple times to find the average result.
And yet, battery life shouldn’t vary from 1x to 5x. Many early buyers have already been complaining about the battery life of the new MacBook Pro. That’s why Apple removed the “battery time remaining” estimate in a macOS update.
But it doesn’t explain Consumer Reports’ benchmark. It turns out that Consumer Reports turns off Safari’s local cache for their browsing test.
