MBP 14" battery drain in sleep, normal?

So I got my first MacBook after all the praise it got for it's performance and battery life. However, I am really disappointed with the overall battery life. I have had it for about 1 month now, and battery life is very meh. I got the base model which is also suppost to be the best one for battery life.

My biggest concern is the drain during sleep, I'm not that heavy of a user, and I don't use my laptop every day so I often just close the lid (sleeping mode) with almost all apps closed. When I come back like 6 hours later it can lose 10% which to me seems completely insane. I mean an iPhone lose like 2% during that time, and it has got multiple services going on in the background. Over night the Mac usually lose about 15%. I once left my Mac for 2 days at home with about 50% and when I came back, it was at 5%. Even my 5 year old dell laptop performs better than this.

For actual screen time, it's better but still below expectations. I usually get like 5h total SOT (light usage, mainly web browsing and some coding). If I use it all day it probably lasts a little longer.

I have no idea what is going on, and I expected much better in terms of battery life (which was a major selling point for these laptops). Is it suppost to lose 10%+ over night during sleep? How is your MacBooks performing?

I have seen very occasional cases where my MBP’s battery drains about 10-15% overnight and the Mac gets quite warm in the case. Looking at iStat Menus it appears to be background processes waking up the Mac throughout the night, in short intervals. Could be due to a website (the problem resolved itself after closing Safari), or could be Power Nap, file syncing (OneDrive etc.), notifications, or devices trying to connect to the Mac.

Most of the time I have enjoyed good battery life and cool temperature, though.

chengengaun said:

I have seen very occasional cases where my MBP’s battery drains about 10-15% overnight and the Mac gets quite warm in the case. Looking at iStat Menus it appears to be background processes waking up the Mac throughout the night, in short intervals. Could be due to a website (the problem resolved itself after closing Safari), or could be Power Nap, file syncing (OneDrive etc.), notifications, or devices trying to connect to the Mac.

Most of the time I have enjoyed good battery life and cool temperature, though.

For me it's all the time, it doesn't matter if I close safari/Chrome it drains just as much with them closed. I don't use any file syncing services on my Mac at all. In terms of heat, that's not an issue my Mac is very cool, it's always cold to the touch (I live in a cold place as well).

I have been trying to find what is consuming this battery in the background, but I can't really find anything that seems out of the ordinary in Mac OS. I have disabled most battery intensive features (I have low power mode on though). Also there is no Power Nap on the M1 MacBooks AFAIK.

Just to clarify though, it's not normal to lose 10-15% with no usage overnight? How much battery should one expect to lose overnight on a new M1 MacBook?

abl63 said:

For me it's all the time, it doesn't matter if I close safari/Chrome it drains just as much with them closed. I don't use any file syncing services on my Mac at all. In terms of heat, that's not an issue my Mac is very cool, it's always cold to the touch (I live in a cold place as well).

I have been trying to find what is consuming this battery in the background, but I can't really find anything that seems out of the ordinary in Mac OS. I have disabled most battery intensive features (I have low power mode on though). Also there is no Power Nap on the M1 MacBooks AFAIK.

Just to clarify though, it's not normal to lose 10-15% with no usage overnight? How much battery should one expect to lose overnight on a new M1 MacBook?

Click to expand...

It’s not normal to lose 10-15% of charge overnight with no usage. Most of the time my Mac woke up with the same charge % as when it went to sleep the night before.

I stand corrected re Power Nap, it seems to be behave like “Power Nap” on AS, and the only way to disable it is via pmset.

I compared battery drain to my brothers M1 Air and it lost 0% overnight. Disabling PowerNap and tcpkeepalive with pmset didn't seem to do anything for the battery. But after some experimenting I have noticed that unplugging my wireless mouse USB dongle which I always kept in seems to "solve" my issue. Battery drain overnight has now been 1% for the past 2 nights.

Very weird behavior that the USB dongle can drain battery while Mac is asleep. The mouse is also turned off.

abl63 said:

I compared battery drain to my brothers M1 Air and it lost 0% overnight. Disabling PowerNap and tcpkeepalive with pmset didn't seem to do anything for the battery. But after some experimenting I have noticed that unplugging my wireless mouse USB dongle which I always kept in seems to "solve" my issue. Battery drain overnight has now been 1% for the past 2 nights.

Very weird behavior that the USB dongle can drain battery while Mac is asleep. The mouse is also turned off.

Not that weird, really. All sorts of things plugged into ports can cause power drains even when not in use.

macworld published this article about battery BT drainage entitled
"Apple releases macOS Monterey 12.2.1 with Bluetooth battery drain fix"

Sanpete said:

Not that weird, really. All sorts of things plugged into ports can cause power drains even when not in use.

I don't agree, a USB device into a USB C port shouldn't consume that much power during sleep unless it's some device that gets its power from the MacBook. It's not like it's charging the mouse, it's just a wireless receiver for the mouse. The mouse is also turned off so battery consumption should be close 0. I have had this USB receiver connected to other laptops 24/7 without any battery drains, so there is definitely something going on that shouldn't be on my Mac.

abl63 said:

I don't agree, a USB device into a USB C port shouldn't consume that much power during sleep unless it's some device that gets its power from the MacBook. It's not like it's charging the mouse, it's just a wireless receiver for the mouse. The mouse is also turned off so battery consumption should be close 0. I have had this USB receiver connected to other laptops 24/7 without any battery drains, so there is definitely something going on that shouldn't be on my Mac.

I'm talking about what is, not what should be. One problem is that Apple can't control what other companies make, and they don't always get along as well as one would hope.