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2016 MacBook Pro Fails To Receive a Recommendation From Consumer Reports (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the wildly-inconsistent dept.

Consumer Reports has released its evaluation of the new MacBook Pro laptops, and it's not good. The 2016 MacBook Pro is the first MacBook to fail to receive a recommendation from the nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing. 9to5Mac reports: In a post breaking down the decision not to recommend the new MacBook Pros, Consumer Reports explains that while the new models held up well in terms of display quality and performance, the battery life issues were too big of an issue to overlook. The organization tested three MacBook Pro variants: a 13-inch Touch Bar model, a 15-inch Touch Bar model, and a 13-inch model without the Touch Bar. The general consensus was that "MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next." Consumer Reports explains that the 13-inch Touch Bar model saw battery life of 16 hours in one test and 3.75 hours in another, while the non-Touch Bar model maxed out at 19.5 hours, but also lasted just 4.5 hours in another test. The 15-inch model ranged from 18.5 hours to 8 hours. Generally, according to the report, it's expected for battery life to vary from one trial to another by less than 5 percent, meaning that the battery life variances with the new MacBook Pro are very abnormal. Once that was completed, Consumer Reports experimented by conducting the same test using Chrome and "found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs." While the organization can't let that affect its final decision due to its protocol to only use the first-party browser, it's something users may want to try.

6 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> Something is rotten in the state of Apple.

    I blame the Russians. Clearly they influenced the reviewers, so the results should be ignored.

  2. Chrome produces high battery life on Mac by imgod2u · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hell must've frozen over. Next thing you'll tell me a reality TV star became President....

    1. Re:Chrome produces high battery life on Mac by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Consumer Reports isn't a tech rag. They don't give a damn about technical specs except as guidelines for what to buy (e.g. "get at least 8 GB of RAM").

      They test products based on how the average person will use them. So if the average person spends 80% of their computer time in a browser on Facebook or YouTube, by God they're going to test how the laptop performs running a browser on Facebook or YouTube.

  3. In other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The batteries aren't big enough, and Apple's power saving features are too aggressive, leading to a situation where the slightest load that pokes the machine in the wrong way (ie, anything that causes the GPUs to switch, or more CPU cores to wake up) will cause your battery % to drop through the floor.

    It's a shame, really. If they weren't so obsessed with thinness to the point of discarding RAM slots, SSD sockets, and battery capacity- it might actually be a decent machine.

    I wonder how many people pointed out these issues prior to launch. The answer is either "lots" (who were summarily ignored), or "none at all" (because everyone was fearing for their jobs- thou shall not go against thy word of thy great Ive). Either way, this only serves to highlight the growing dysfunction within Apple. And I can guarantee you their response to falling Mac sales won't be to release the machine people want, but rather to cancel the whole lineup entirely.

    1. Re:In other words... by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The batteries aren't big enough, and Apple's power saving features are too aggressive, leading to a situation where the slightest load that pokes the machine in the wrong way (ie, anything that causes the GPUs to switch, or more CPU cores to wake up) will cause your battery % to drop through the floor.

      According to one report, they originally planned to use a bigger battery and ran into manufacturing problems and had to fall back to the smaller battery. That said, the story seems suspect, given that they used a bigger battery in every prior model, meaning that the larger-capacity batteries should already exist and be thoroughly tested. It seems more likely that it's a cover story (as in "cover your *** story"), and that some designer's mandate for decreased thickness overrode all the engineers saying that reducing battery capacity was a bad idea.

      The answer is either "lots" (who were summarily ignored), or "none at all" (because everyone was fearing for their jobs- thou shall not go against thy word of thy great Ive).

      If the answer is "none at all", it probably isn't because they feared for their jobs, but rather because so many of the older generation have left for other companies, and the new college hires running the show strongly exhibit the Dunning–Kruger effect. But I suspect the answer is "lots", and that the engineers were ignored in favor of thin. The evidence of design trumping function is just too overwhelming in product after product to believe that engineering has much (if any) real input until after things go catastrophically wrong and a product starts slipping.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  4. They forgot... by fuzzyf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I got the mid 2015 15" pro and I'm hoping it will last years. I've had Lenovo, HP and Dell through work and they are fine. The Macbook Pro on the other hand is really really nice to work with. Trackpad is just superb and Magsafe should be standard on all laptops (IMHO).
    The only thing I would like different is more RAM (I use several VMs).

    So when the new model arrived I was sure I would be a bit anoyed about the increased ram size and other new features that I would miss, but no.
    I'm actually happy I got the previous model. It's so much better for my use.
    I wouldn't even consider the new model. Who the f..k buys a pro laptop without any USB A ports? How isolated are you? Dongles? I hate dongles. I'm not spending that much money to carry around a bunch of dongles.

    If Apple wants their Pro line to be used by bloggers then ok. They lost their way.