I have an M1 MacBook Pro and have noticed that my battery life is much worse when watching videos on Plex vs. YouTube, Netflix, and other applications. With Plex (either the desktop app or via the browser), my machine runs much hotter than normal and the battery only lasts a few hours. Is there a reason why this is happening and is there any way I can prevent it? Or has the app just not been as well optimized as YouTube and such? It’s not the end of the world, but I’m just curious if anyone knows why this is happening. Thanks!
I’m not aware of a particular issue with battery life.
The media you get from YouTube or Netflix is usually highly optimized (e.g. for streaming in general, but also for compatibility with browsers). This will use formats that are rather easy to decode and play. Plex on the other hand play what you’re feeding it… if that’s a rather high-quality Blu-Ray rip, it’ll use more resources to decode/play that.
I’m not sure that alone will cause your battery capacity to burn down to 4 hours from the promoted 17-hours video playback (which is based on that “highly optimized” media).
I have however been reading on Macworld about users reporting issues that their M1 MBPs losing their full battery power overnight on macOS 12.2. Nothing I’ve personally experience… just double-checking if this might be linked?!
Hey, thanks for the feedback. The laptop is brand new and the battery life is great overall. I really don’t see this battery drain on anything but Plex. And it seems to happen regardless of the video resolution. For example, I get the same battery life watching 4k HDR content as I do with 480p content. I do always have “Play Original Quality” enabled. I suppose I could try testing it with “Convert” instead if there is any reason to suspect that would change anything. I could post battery use graphs if it matters, but it appears to drain a good 2-3x faster using Plex.
I suppose you could try playing the same video file on your MBP using a different app for a “fair comparison” (not to compare it against Youtube, Netflix and the likes)… just to see if playing those files natively is what drains your battery
Where is the Plex server running on? On the same macbook? Or somewhere else on the network?
Keep in mind that no Plex app (except plexamp) is natively compiled for the M1. The software translation from x86 to ARM surely’ll take also its toll.
My Plex server is running on an older i5 Mac Mini.
Now that I know this isn’t really a known issue I’ve been running a few tests. Today I noticed that when the CPU on my M1 MacBook Pro is maxed (rendering some media for work), both Plex and VLC play back 4k / 1080 content really choppy while QuickTime and Safari (eg. Netflix, YouTube) play back 4k very smoothly. Not sure why, but it seemed related and worth mentioning. Thanks for all your feedback so far.
Keep in mind you’re comparing apples and oranges.
4K only specifies the resolution of your video but nothing about the codec or bitrates – which are very different in the use cases you’ve mentioned.
If it’s not useful info then ok.
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