Mac Neo Battery Life Concerns
Hey all- Just wanted to check in on how mac neo owners are finding their new laptops battery life. With the official figure of 16 hrs with light use, and the legendary reputation of apple silicon my expectations were pretty high, honestly it wasn't even a concern on my mind.
But after my first 2 days of using the laptop im starting to question if either I have a defective unit or if the figures that are projected are being heavily exaggerated by apple/glazers.
My first day I used it for some light coding, emails, bit of youtube. honestly nothing too crazy, most of the screen on time was just it sitting there on my desk lookin pretty. started the day with 100% at 7am and ended with 10% at 4pm, but only had about 7 hours of SOT during that period. going to 0% would have added a bit more so lets call it 7:30 SOT... OK but not exactly what i was expecting
Today, I was like ok im just going to do some SUPER lightweight stuff, im literally just going to do my taxes. I sat outside in the fading evening light, with probably around an 80% brightness, and locked in for 45 mins. This was just a few browser tabs, pdfs open, and email open (about the lightest workflow i could ever imagine). Used 15% in those 45 mins. extrapolating that out, that would give me only 5 hours of SOT total... I literally had nothing running in the background either.
anyways, pretty much everywhere ive seen people praising the battery life calling it 'just shy' of offical 16 hr figures, but here i am getting between 1/4 and 1/2 of official figures. The only place ive seen really post similar data to my experience is dave2d which ive attached an image of, who shows you can expect around 6hrs of SOT with a mixed workload.
Its obviously way too early to make a call on the battery life yet and im super excited with how this laptop has performed otherwise, but I genuinely would like to know if other people are having the same experience or if I should swap my laptop out for another unit (faulty maybe?)
Thx all!
Posted Mar 14, 2026, 12:32 AM UTC