Share your MBA 11 battery life

i've had mine for 3 hours now.. (turned on for that long)

and ive been downloading and browsing, playing a bit of music for a short while and it did get drained quite a bit when i did the downloading..

(when i booted it up it was at around 85%)

it still says 45 minutes though, but i have plugged it in now

I just got mine last night, I have been transferring files and browsing the web a bit, and i got about 2 hours of battery life. Not very happy at all. I just sold my iPad2 to get this macbook air, and so far the battery life is not even close to the iPad.

jlluna said:

I just got mine last night, I have been transferring files and browsing the web a bit, and i got about 2 hours of battery life. Not very happy at all. I just sold my iPad2 to get this macbook air, and so far the battery life is not even close to the iPad.

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Transferring files and indexing is considered much heavier use than normal. I think after your machine is all set up, you will see close to the 5 hours that was promised.

But even then, I hope you realize that is still half of the 10 hours that an iPad gets.

macfly4 said:

Just got an ultimate MBA 11" and haven't been thrilled with the battery.
5 hours would have been great but i am seeing closer to 3.
how about in this thread we just list :

1. MBA specs
2. typical apps running
3. Battery life

what i propose, since we all use them differently, is just charge it up, start using it and note the time. especially note if it is continuous use.
As an addendum feel free to add details like what apps were running throughout, other usage patterns that might help give people a better idea of battery life.

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What about your own typical apps that led you to 3 hrs?

2011 i5 with 128gb SSD. Have had it on about 4 hrs now. Streaming music from iTunes to airport express with JBL Soundstage attached at work. Have had 3-4 tabs open in Safari, and Mail open. Got about 18% left. I avg around 4hrs like this for last 2 weeks. Love it.

Mhotep said:

2011 i5 with 128gb SSD. Have had it on about 4 hrs now. Streaming music from iTunes to airport express with JBL Soundstage attached at work. Have had 3-4 tabs open in Safari, and Mail open. Got about 18% left. I avg around 4hrs like this for last 2 weeks. Love it.

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So a few browser tabs, writing in mail, streaming music = 4 hrs
Anything more intense like Photoshop, programming, etc would probably cut that down to maybe 2-3, I guess?

I have to take a trip here in about 3 weeks, 5 hour flight. hope i could watch some movies on the plane.

jlluna said:

I have to take a trip here in about 3 weeks, 5 hour flight. hope i could watch some movies on the plane.

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With WiFi off, you shouldn't have any problems making that 5 hours

jlluna said:

I have to take a trip here in about 3 weeks, 5 hour flight. hope i could watch some movies on the plane.

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Bring a charger. And headphones. Charger because you won't be able to last that long on movies (maybe 1) and headphones because you'll use less battery power by outputting the sound to them.

supersalo said:

With WiFi off, you shouldn't have any problems making that 5 hours

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And Bluetooth.

jlluna said:

I have to take a trip here in about 3 weeks, 5 hour flight. hope i could watch some movies on the plane.

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It'll last one movie (personal experience), even with every antenna turned off and brightness down a bit. One movie's probably all you'll need anyway on a 5h flight with all the interruptions

Jobsian said:

It'll last one movie (personal experience), even with every antenna turned off and brightness down a bit. One movie's probably all you'll need anyway on a 5h flight with all the interruptions

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2-3 hours worth of distractions? But yea, if you can, find out if the airplane has chargers under the seat and get the according converting plug if need be.

I get a little more than 5 hours now, with 10.7.1. Just regular use (surfing web, playing music). Before yesterday's update, on 10.7, I was getting ~2-3 hours doing the same stuff.

Edit: brightness @ halfway. Wifi is on.

with wifi on, the screen turned mostly down, the keyboard light off, just taking notes or light browsing of the criminal code in court, has got me between 6 and 7 hours, depending on the screen brightness.

11" 256 i7

just typing the other night i wanted to see how long it would last on lowest brightness and just word 2011, and it went for just a tad over 8 hours

ritmomundo said:

I get a little more than 5 hours now, with 10.7.1. Just regular use (surfing web, playing music). Before yesterday's update, on 10.7, I was getting ~2-3 hours doing the same stuff.

Edit: brightness @ halfway. Wifi is on.

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Unless the software update magically increased the capacity of the battery, there is no way that the 10.7.1 update INCREASED your battery times by 2-3 HOURS. Just not happening. Either your measurements were wrong prior to the update or they are wrong now. But the update did not double your battery time.

I get about 6 hours on my 13" i7 air and i always have iTunes, safari and the mail app always open. Wifi and Bluetooth are both on and brightness is usually around half. Depending on what sites I'm on i can sometimes only get 5 hours. Playing games like WoW, CoD 4 and Starcraft 2 can bring the battery times down to around 3 hours.

Let the battery get a few cycles through before you judge its performance. When you first run Lion it does indexing which is pretty CPU intensive, just like games.

ljmjag said:

Unless the software update magically increased the capacity of the battery, there is no way that the 10.7.1 update INCREASED your battery times by 2-3 HOURS. Just not happening. Either your measurements were wrong prior to the update or they are wrong now. But the update did not double your battery time.

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Well, I've only had the update for 1 day, so I'll know for sure after using it a few more days. I had 10.7 for a few weeks, and I was consistently getting about 2.5-3 hours. Before upgrading to Lion, I was getting about 5 hours in Snow Leopard (2010 11" ultimate). Yesterday, it magically increased back to roughly 5 hours. So yeah, I think it definitely was 10.7.1, because there were no other major changes that happened. Whatever they changed in 10.7 that caused my battery to cut in half, they fixed in 10.7.1 to bring it back to normal.

Brandon0448 said:

I get about 6 hours on my 13" i7 air and i always have iTunes, safari and the mail app always open. Wifi and Bluetooth are both on and brightness is usually around half. Depending on what sites I'm on i can sometimes only get 5 hours. Playing games like WoW, CoD 4 and Starcraft 2 can bring the battery times down to around 3 hours.

Let the battery get a few cycles through before you judge its performance. When you first run Lion it does indexing which is pretty CPU intensive, just like games.

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Uh... the 13 gets 2 more hours than the 11? It isn't going to get better than ~5 for the 11 inch users. As you use it you might gain a few minutes or so but the battery is only so big.

The 13 inch Air and Pro get ~7 hours depending on what you're doing. The 11 doesn't get that.

Just posting this cause it sounds like you think both machines will equal out over time or something.

DieterRams said:

So a few browser tabs, writing in mail, streaming music = 4 hrs
Anything more intense like Photoshop, programming, etc would probably cut that down to maybe 2-3, I guess?

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More than likely yes.

DieterRams said:

So a few browser tabs, writing in mail, streaming music = 4 hrs
Anything more intense like Photoshop, programming, etc would probably cut that down to maybe 2-3, I guess?

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So then, what should it be on the 13" for these same two set of uses?

Sounds Good said:

So then, what should it be on the 13" for these same two set of uses?

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Seeing that the 13 Air/Pro get the "same" battery life, I would be able to squeeze around 4 out. Of course, these are all rough estimates and it is going to vary depending on whether you have background programs running, what your'e doing while browsing, brightness, and everything else.

Okay, I've the 2011 11inch with 10.7.1 installed. 128 SSD and 4GB RAM. I can definitely say that my battery life is better with 10.7.1 - probably getting anywhere between 30 mins and 1hr30mins more. I'd say I've been getting 4-5 hours out of the battery so roughly what apple has promised me.

As I'm writing this, I've got Safari open with iTunes music playing in the background and the Twitterific for Mac app running in the background. Also, my brightness is turned down to a little less than half. My battery is at 73% and the estimated time remaining is at 3:33 so not too bad. I will note this, I opened up the mail app to see how it affected battery running in the background and my battery estimates dropped to 2:30 even though I have mail set to check only every hour. So from now on I'll only be opening that when I NEED to check my mail.

Some battery saving tips - Uninstall flash player if you have it installed, don't open mail unless you need it, keep brightness down, install some safari extensions like AdBlock, FlashToHTML5 (it's for youtube videos), and ClickToFlash and ClickToPlugin if you really want flash installed. But I'll tell you that flash is a HUGE battery killer. Also, watching videos will drain your battery quick (in case that wasn't general knowledge)

Hope this helped! Any other battery saving tips would be helpful to me as I like to get the most out of my battery.