The influential Consumer Reports website has now awarded the 2016 model a ‘Recommended’ tag; after initially deciding against it due to what it deemed ‘wildly unpredictable’ battery expectancy.
Apple fought back earlier this week claiming Consumer Reports' test methodology, which involved turning off the cache in the Safari browser, had uncovered an easily fixable bug.
After retesting the MacBook Pro with the updated software, CR declared all three models performed well, with up to 18.75 hours of charge.
CR explains: “The process we followed with Apple is the same process we follow with any manufacturer when we discover a significant problem. We shared our test results with the company so it could better understand our findings and deliver a fix to consumers. Since Apple made a fix, we retested the laptops.
“Now that we’ve factored in the new battery-life measurements, the laptops’ overall scores have risen, and all three machines now fall well within the recommended range in Consumer Reports ratings.”
In our own tests of the MacBook Pro, we experienced no such issues with the battery life, and few other sites reported it either.
Certainly not the 3.5 - 19 hour variances experienced by CR, anyway. Now we know why.
