Brightness and battery drain

[mfalkens]

Macbook pro m2 14-inch, 15.4.1. Battery is drained pretty heavily, even if the brightness is just 1 notch above the factory standard at 642 nits. Are there any background processes that are draining the battery or is this just the cost of the brighter display?

[waydabber]

There should be no background processes when the app is idle - but you can check the Activity Monitor for CPU usage (% CPU column) - you can also enable "Energy Impact" if it is not available to see what apps are using energy.

Panel brightness will not show up this way in Activity Monitor - but 642 nits is pretty high (constantly beyond 100% with default settings) - battery usage and brightness has a quadratic relationship, so a small increase in brightness will drain battery a magnitude more - this is why Apple limits brightness in the first place.