The new MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch laptops are everything we wanted. Powered by the powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, Apple's latest notebooks ditch the new Liquid Retina XDR display, MagSafe charging, thinner bezels, and (finally) the Touch Bar. Both laptops are a true return to form for the MacBook Pro. They also have excellent battery life.

As Tom's Guide battery tests reveal, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip can run for 14:08 hours (using ProMotion refresh rate); the 16-inch MacBook with the M1 Max, also lasted 15:31 hours using ProMotion. Both laptops can be used all day, which is quite impressive considering the power under the hood of each.

We compared the battery life of the MacBook Pro 2021 laptop to other notebooks. This includes competitors such as Asus, Dell, Samsung, and Microsoft. We also compared it to two older Apple notebooks with the M1 chip. Comparison results for the new MacBook Pro can be found below.

The new MacBook obliterated the Dell XPS 13 OLED's 7:59 battery life; the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio fared better at 10:42, but still fell short of the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 and Samsung Galaxy Book Pro fared better at 12:03 and 13:30, respectively. These numbers fall short compared to the MacBook Pro, but are still respectable; of the competing notebooks tested against the MacBook Pro, the Asus Zenbook 13 OLED has the lowest battery life at 14:57.

Compared to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with the M1, the new laptops lag behind. This may be a negative view, as it is evidence that the new M1 chip is not all that Apple says it is. However, given the power of the new chips, it is surprising that their power consumption is not much higher; the fact that a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip lasts only an hour longer than an M1 MacBook Pro is proof of their power efficiency.

While the new MacBook Pro does not have as long a battery life as the MacBook Pro with the M1 chip, it lasts longer than most Windows laptops and delivers amazing performance. The M1 Pro and M1 Max are, for the time being, Apple's top-tier performance chips for the foreseeable future.

Apple made many bold claims when it announced the new M1 chip, but so far, the MacBook Pro notebooks have met or exceeded all expectations. For more raw numbers showing how robust these new Apple laptops are, see how they fared against top-tier Windows laptops in our performance benchmarks.