After dancing around the issue since the announcement of the MBP last January, Apple has finally released battery specifications for the laptop line.

From the MBP specs page:

• 15-inch MacBook Pro - 60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery providing up to 4.5 hours of battery life
• 17-inch MacBook Pro - 68-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery providing up to 5.5 hours of battery life

Of course, with the caveat that battery life depends on configuration and use. No further detail was given on how Apple arrived at these numbers.

Using some simple arithmetic and assumming both batteries have an output of 10.8v, the MBP 15" battery has a power rating of 5.55 amps and the 17" battery - 6.29 amps.

The 5.5 hour figure for the MBP though is surprising. Even with the larger screen and the additional peripherals of the 17", it's running time is 19% longer even though the 68 watt-hour battery only increased capacity by 12%.

So after yesterday's posting, I decided to dig deeper into Apple's claims for MBP battery life.

Opening up System Profiler reveals some more info for my MBP 1.83Ghz in the Power section:

When I took this reading, the battery was 89% charged per the power meter, which was consistent with the Remaining Capacity figure (4895/5491 * 100 = 89.178).

Doing some more back of the napkin calculations, the figures in System Profiler does confirm Apple's claims - 5491 milliAmp Hour / 1235 milliAmps = 4.44 hours. This figure assumes the amperage will stay constant, which in reality, will not be the case when other power management features kick in.

The only inconsistency is that the System Profiler voltage is 12,515 mV, while the battery is only rated at 10,800 mV (10.8 V). Does anyone have an explanation for the discrepancy? Can somebody with a MBP 17" post their System Profiler figures here?

I traipsed to the local Apple Store and lucked on a newly installed 17. As soon as the salesguy put it up for display, I had the honor of being the first to play around with it.

Here's the goods on the MBP 17" power specs.

I forgot to get the unplugged amperage, but if Apple's claim of up to 5.5 hours is true, it should be 1,247 mA (6859/5.5).

Before I managed to get the goods on the battery though, the salesguy descended and stopped me

Haha nice try though javester! Maybe I will post it once I get one in 3953486837u46834^34 years x.x lol