Consumer Reports has since responded to Apple’s claims and has agreed to revisit the tests to see if they will get different and more consistent numbers this time. “We have now downloaded the software fix and are rerunning our battery tests with the fix in place on the same computers previously tested. If the battery life results are consistently high, the ratings score for MacBook Pros would rise, and those laptops will then receive Consumer Reports’ Recommended rating given their performance in all our other evaluations.”
Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pros are the first laptops that weren’t recommended by Consumer Reports. As the organization points out, “Although those computers performed well in tests of display quality, performance, and other factors, we found the battery life to be so variable on the models tested that we could not recommend them to consumers.”
Will this fix change their recommendation? We guess that’s an outcome that Apple is hoping for, although at the same time there have been multiple user reports who are claiming subpar battery life, way below what Apple had advertised, that has yet to be addressed.