Consumer Reports Gives The Green Light On MacBook Pro Purchase
Consumer Reports says it can now recommend Apple’s new MacBook Pro after tests revealed concerns about inconsistent battery life.
Apple and Consumer Reports teamed up over the holidays to study the battery tests and find a solution to the response of the product reviewer’s initial concerns.
In a statement released by Apple this week, obtained by CNN, the company said that Consumer Reports was using a “hidden Safari setting,” which in turn “triggered an obscure and intermittent bug reloading icons.” That “created inconsistent results in their lab.”
“Consumer Reports has now finished retesting the battery life on Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops, and our results show that a software update released by Apple on January 9 fixed problems we’d encountered in earlier testing,” the publication wrote on Thursday, per CNN.
In Consumer Reports initial review it said the battery life was “highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.” One MacBook Pro 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. Another had 19.5 hours of battery life in its better test and dropped to 4.5 hours in its worst.
While battery life can vary in each test, usually a laptop battery life only varies five percent from test to test. Consumer Reports said the type of fluctuation seen in their trails of the MacBook Pro is extremely rare.
Consumer Reports decided to factor in the lowest battery life measured in each model they tested since averaging battery life length would not reflect what a customer would experience accurately.
With that said their results showed some bad stats. The 15-inch model tested received a score of 56 out of 100. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar got a 47 and the 13-inch with a Touch Bar only scored a 40.
That put the MacBook Pro well below the MacBook Air, which scored 70 out of 100 and is also a lot cheaper than the Pro.
Of course Consumer Reports and Apple have a history as the magazine failed to recommend the iPhone 4’s even though the phone rated higher than any other smartphone on the market.
On the other hand Consumer Reports was the first major publication to investigate Apple’s ‘bendgate’ phone cracking controversy. The magazine found that the iPhone 6 was far more durable than what YouTube videos made it appear.
But it seems this feud was ended peacefully and together as a team.