Schiller: Apple Working with Consumer Reports to ‘Understand’ Their MacBook Pro Battery Tests

Apple is working with Consumer Reports to better understand their MacBook Pro battery tests, according to Phil Schiller. The company’s SVP of marketing sent out a tweet late Friday night, saying CR’s test results don’t match Apple’s data.

Schiller’s comments follow Consumer Reports’ scathing review of Apple’s new MacBook Pro, in which the product-testing magazine said, for the first time ever, that it could not recommend the laptop due to inconsistencies in battery life.

Here’s what Consumer Reports said:

Typically, a laptop’s battery life may vary from one trial to another by less than 5 percent. To arrive at our final battery life score we average those measurements together.
However, with the widely disparate figures we found in the MacBook Pro tests, an average wouldn’t reflect anything a consumer would be likely to experience in the real world. For that reason, we are reporting the lowest battery life results, and using those numbers in calculating our final scores. It’s the only time frame we can confidently advise a consumer to rely on if he or she is planning use the product without access to an electrical outlet.

Consumer Reports noted in its testing that all the three models of the 2016 MacBook Pro gave very inconsistent battery life results in their testing. While battery life can vary to a certain degree on laptops, the varying degree of results reported by Consumer Reports points to this likely being a software issue.

“For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours.”

 So what do you think ?