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Battery Question on Mid-2013 13" MBA (i7/8GB)

anglognzls

anglognzls

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 6, 2011
27
0
Hello guys,

Recently purchased a mid-2013 13" MBA (i7/8GB/256gb) less than 2 weeks ago, and it seems like i'm not getting the advertised 12 hours of battery. I only get about 7-10 hours per charge, if i'm lucky. I don't play any games or do any intensive stuff on my laptop (just YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), so this concerns me a bit. I plan on keeping this laptop for 3+ years, so please let me know what's going on with this thing. Should i take it to Apple store before my 14 days ends or am i just overreacting? Thanks in advance!

Here's a screenshot of what my activity monitor and battery health has been looking like for the past week.

oti1co.jpg
 
Last edited:
L

l0gikb0mb

macrumors regular
Apr 6, 2012
136
1
Me too. Mine was at 85% with 5:30-6 hours remaining only with only safari open one tab... I also noticed that site scrolling and general UI is much laggier than my MBP 2012 13"

Not impressed so far with this purchase. I have a feeling since the new battery life is so new it might have variations right.
 
3lite

3lite

macrumors 6502a
Nov 7, 2011
635
29
Makes me worry about the incoming MBP like with the new Haswell. So far, everyone who has bought the 2013 MBA has said it is inferior to the 2012 MBA for whatever reason.
 
robvas

robvas

macrumors 68040
Mar 29, 2009
3,240
629
USA
12 hours is best-case, screen brightness at 75% and browsing websites without Flash installed, in Safari. If you're getting 10 hours while using sites like YouTube that's perfectly fine.
 
clyde2801

clyde2801

macrumors 601
Mar 6, 2008
4,365
54
In the land of no hills and red dirt.
robvas said:
Anandtech did and article and it's not a big difference.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall it was possibly up to an hour's difference when using processor intensive programs.

The i5 despite it's lower clock speed was on par with it's predecessor last year due to the faster PCIe SSD and Intel 5000 graphics. The i7 had a modest performance improvement (up to I think 20%) over last year's model.

Open up Activity Monitor and see if there's an app or process taking up an inordinate amount of processor activity or memory. I had a Macbook that always, constantly sounded like a jet engine revving up until I figured out a buggy driver for an old HP scanner was causing one processor to go at 100% all of the time for no good reason. Obviously, with this condition it went through battery life insanely fast.


IMHO, if you're already using a 2011 or 2012 air to do modest consumerish tasks, there is no need to upgrade unless you're having to use it for extended periods while on battery power, and catch yourself sweating and cursing for not being able to find an AC outlet.
 
anglognzls

anglognzls

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 6, 2011
27
0
Alright, i thought switching from Chrome to Safari would help since Chrome was using more %CPU when it came to flash based sites than Safari, but that didn't really change much. And now, my battery life only goes up to 95% for a full charge...The heck is going on?! Lol. I haven't changed the way i use my laptop, and always have my brightness at 50% or less. It's only has 17 cycles in it, so i'm worried. Someone tell me this is normal...
 
Last edited:
robvas

robvas

macrumors 68040
Mar 29, 2009
3,240
629
USA
Remove Flash from Safari.

It's normal for the battery to not go all the way to 100%
 
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