Ditto on the 2015 rMBP. The moment you get beyond light work you're looking at 5 hours but for light internet browsing it really does push towards 10. It's awesome.
The new rMBP is about five hours if you don't touch it at all. under 4 hours if used for working. It is a step down from my previous 2012 model which is a damn shame.
My experience with two 2015 rMBPs and an Air has shown that for light work, 10 hours is a completely reasonable estimate, which matches what Apple estimates.
Of course driving an external monitor, streaming video from the Internet, and using your computer for more than just word processing and web browsing, your system will use more power.
Apple's claimed battery life is based on a workload heavier than just refreshing a web page every 30 seconds. My rMBP 15" is rated for 9 hours, but I usually get over 10 doing a mix of Office and Safari browsing.
I've got a 15" rMBP and regularly get 8-10 hours of browsing, word processing, or light coding. On ArsTechnica's web browsing battery test, the rMBP exceeds 10 hours.
Recommended display brightness for standard office conditions is 150 nits. The rMBP goes up to double that, which obviously has a battery life cost. Also Chrome is poorly optimized for Mav, it takes several hours off the total.
That's actual life. I never manage more than five hours while working on my current 2014 MBP 15". The loss of additional time under load on the 2016 was a deal killer for me.
I'm inclined not to believe the 15 hour claim. I've had the 2015 MBP since it came out and get maybe 4-5 hours of battery life doing non-heavy web development nowadays. After I newly bought it I got maybe around 7 hours at most. With integrated graphics only of course - with the dedicated GPU active I get around 3 hours or so only.
This very thorough review: See under "Battery Runtime"
"Even though the battery capacity was reduced by almost 25 % compared to the predecessor, Apple still managed to improve the overall runtimes with the 76-Wh battery. Our WiFi test determines an advantage of 130 minutes, so little more than two hours." [1]
If you read actual users of the 2016 rMBP in this thread as well as reports on macrumors forum you'll see that there are a number of people who report good battery times and even exceeding those of the 2015 machine.
I would question the Consumer Reports review process given the review cited above, the reports in this thread and that in the macrumors forum.
Yeah, definitely bit disappointing. They are using quite large battery, integrated graphics, and still reach relatively poor battery life. Quick comparison to Air shows that while Air gets 13 minutes/watt-hour (take that SI!) according to the specs, new rMBP gets only 7.5 minutes/watt-hour (both being 13" models).
15" model gets only 5 minutes/watt-hour, but I guess that difference is explained with discrete GPU and larger display.
I don't know about the MB Retina, but I get more than the advertised 9 hours on my rMBP 15" running Word and Outlook.
Your problem is probably Chrome + screen brightness. Recommended monitor brightness in an office setting is 100-150 cd/m^2. The MB gets up to 375 cd/m^2 for outside use, but inside it should be at like a 35% setting. Also, Chrome guzzles juice like there is no tomorrow--use Safari.
If it’s any consolation the battery life on my 6 month old 16” MBP is also 3-4 hours when I’m doing work. The CPU is an absolute dog, and the fans kick in under the faintest of loads.
I'm surprised his battery life is so short (5-6 hours). I have the base model MacBook and I easily get 8 hours. To go as low as 5 hours, I'd have to keep CPU usage at 100% and run the screen at max brightness.
If I focus on prolonging battery life, I can get 12 hours. That means keeping the screen dim, quitting Mail.app, and closing unnecessary browser tabs. Then the only major eater of battery is compiling stuff.
Overall, I really like the new MacBook. It's thin, light, and fast enough for my needs.
I can totally vouch for this. My 5,3 MBP only got about 4 hours max when brand new as long as I was running OS X and had the power-saving video mode selected. Running Debian, I usually see around 2 hours if I'm lucky.
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