While Apple claims that nothing is wrong with the batteries in the new MacBook Pros, Consumer Reports begs to differ as for some reason during their testing, the results were extremely varied ranging from battery life much longer than Apple estimated, and much shorter than Apple estimated.
In turn this led to the organization deciding that they just could not recommend Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pros. However could 2017 solve the MacBook Pro battery issues? According to IHS, as reported by DigiTimes (via MacRumors), it seems that for the 2017 refresh of the MacBook Pro, Apple could be making the switch to IGZO displays, a display that consumes less power which in theory should allow the laptop to run for longer.
There is also the upside that it will allow for significantly higher brightness, according to DisplayMate president Raymond Soneira who spoke to MacRumors. However he also notes that IGZO’s material costs are higher which means more expensive manufacturing costs, and that there have been yield issues which is why the technology isn’t so widely adopted yet.
As it stands the MacBook Pros uses a-Si TFT-LCD panels for its display, so it will be interesting to see how different the IGZO panels could look. It is widely expected that Apple will refresh the laptops later this year. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had predicted last year that the refresh will result in upgrades to the CPU as well as a lower price point, but either way do take these reports with a grain of salt for now.
Filed in . Read more about Laptops and Macbook Pro.