Apple tries to hide that the power adaptors of MacBook Pro models are insufficient

Apple's MacBook Pro models are getting more powerful with every generation and the chips also consume more power, which is a challenge for the cooling units. The smaller 14-inch in particular is affected, which was very evident in our in-depth review and the performance is not very stable. Another factor is the insufficient power supply.

In our review of the MacBook Pro 16 with the M5 Pro with the 140W power adapter, we measured a maximum consumption of 145 Watts, which eventually dropped to 134 Watts. Using a more powerful PSU, we measured up to 147 Watt. This means in peak load scenarios, the battery has to compensate for this difference (which is obviously not that big in this case). However, the system indicates that the battery is fully charged and is not charging, and the MagSafe LED is also green. Our measurement device on the other hand shows that the consumption can reach up to 40 Watts and it takes about 10 minutes before the consumption levels off at the expected idle value again. The situation is much worse on the smaller MacBook Pro 14 with the M5 Max, where the maximum power input is capped at 97 Watts (even when you use Apple's 140W PSU or an even more powerful 180W USB-C PSU), which results in a battery loss of 15 % during our one-hour stress test. Sure, you can say that our stress test is a worst-case scenario, but the battery also drains by around 10 % after playing Cyberpunk 2077 for one hour at reduced display brightness. The behavior under sustained workloads is interesting, because the battery indicator stays at 100 % for a while and then suddenly skips a few percentage points and drops to 96 or 97 %.

The fact that manufacturers use insufficient power adaptors is nothing new and it is also not limited to Apple. Especially compact laptops with Intel GPUs (and their high short-term power limits) are often affected. However, we do not like the way Apple handles this problem. In short peak load scenarios, users get the impression that the battery is not drained and the power adapters are therefore sufficient. It is also annoying that Apple artificially limits the power input of the smaller 14-inch model to 97 Watts, even if you use stronger PSUs. Users of the MacBook Pro with the M5 Max will probably stress their systems for longer periods or play games, without draining the battery in the process, but this is not possible because of this limitation. Especially in Europe, where the MacBooks are shipped without power adapters by default, this does not make much sense and it is annoying.