Consumer Reports Changes Position, Now Recommends The MacBook Pro Models

Following a first for Apple that Consumer Reports said it won’t recommend the new MacBook Pro models, Apple worked with the organisation to try and resolve the problem. Following a series of tests by Consumer Reports, battery life results ranged from 3.7 hours and 19 hours. But many thought it was a software bug all along but having worked with the guys at Consumer Reports, the organisation now says it recommends the PC following a software update by Apple.

In a statement, they said;

“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.

With the updated software, the three MacBook Pros in our labs all performed well, with one model running 18.75 hours on a charge. We tested each model multiple times using the new software, following the same protocol we apply to hundreds of laptops every year.”

While responding to a request by TechCrunch following last December’s finding by Consumer Reports, they said “Consumer Reports uses a hidden Safari setting for developing web sites which turns off the browser cache. This is not a setting used by customers and does not reflect real-world usage” but carrying out such battery life test over the web also makes it closer to real-life usage scenarios like videos, music among others.

The first set of buyers of the MacBook Pro models complained about battery life especially with variations (3 to 19 hours) as sharp as the one reported by Consumer Reports which is why Apple had to issue a patch early enough in a software update.