Wow, great battery life.

[altecXP]

I started at 100% battery today at 3:30PM. I then put my 13in Air to sleep until 5PM, then with WiFi off watched about 20min of a movie. I closed the lid and then walked to my car and drove home. When I came home I turned WiFi on and browed the web while watching the last 25min of the movie. After that I watched about 5 15-40min Flash videos while also sitting in a Java/HTML5 chatroom, and using Adium.

With another video running I have a little over an hr left and with no Flash running IM almost at 2hrs left. It's now 9:30PM. I have already gotten over 5.5hrs out of it while watching video, and still have at least 1more hr left.

If I can get 6.5-7.5hrs out of it when watching video and suing flash, what times are people getting when not suing flash and are just using Pages, or flash-free internet? I can easily see getting 8+hrs.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Hah, I don't think any of us sue flash, we use it though sometimes. <end spelling rant>

I use the computer for 7-8hrs/day with mostly using evernote, mail, ical, and word, and the occasional distracted web surfing. At the end of the day, I tend to have ~10% left give or take.

 

[Maven1975]

Hah, I don't think any of us sue flash, we use it though sometimes. <end spelling rant>

I use the computer for 7-8hrs/day with mostly using evernote, mail, ical, and word, and the occasional distracted web surfing. At the end of the day, I tend to have ~10% left give or take.

I have read complaints about Lion and battery life. These post seem to show good results.

Has something changed with the latest Lion release?

 

[Internaut]

I'm liking it

I may need to use my Air for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours in an evening - with light(ish) use I can get a week on one charge.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I have read complaints about Lion and battery life. These post seem to show good results.

Has something changed with the latest Lion release?

I don't think anything substantial changed, it's about usage.

I think the key to getting good battery life is having very few background services running, and as few as possible programs that have timed auto syncing.

I have dropbox and evernote auto-sync, that's it. Mail is set to update once an hour.

I had to manually disable the assistant services to MyTomTom, Nike+ Connect, and iTunes.

And of course, the flash block plugin for chrome is awesome at improving battery life.

 

[bill-p]

I don't think that's "great" at all if you are already used to battery life figures on the 2010 MBA.

I can get 8 hours easily on battery with Flash on or with AutoCAD running the entire time, and 11 hours with no Flash on my 13" MBA just doing Office work... or 12 hours just reading a book.

5 - 6 hours is okay, but I'm just too spoiled to even consider it.

 

[NDDL05]

Last time I calculated I couldn't get more than 5 hours web browsing with flash blocked. Forget trying to watch flash video for more than a few hours. Think I'm going to break out the stopwatch again. I haven't been impressed so far.

 

[orfeas0]

I started at 100% battery today at 3:30PM. I then put my 13in Air to sleep until 5PM, then with WiFi off watched about 20min of a movie. I closed the lid and then walked to my car and drove home. When I came home I turned WiFi on and browed the web while watching the last 25min of the movie. After that I watched about 5 15-40min Flash videos while also sitting in a Java/HTML5 chatroom, and using Adium.

With another video running I have a little over an hr left and with no Flash running IM almost at 2hrs left. It's now 9:30PM. I have already gotten over 5.5hrs out of it while watching video, and still have at least 1more hr left.

If I can get 6.5-7.5hrs out of it when watching video and suing flash, what times are people getting when not suing flash and are just using Pages, or flash-free internet? I can easily see getting 8+hrs.

Using pages? Well I can tell you that I have the 11" model (2011) and it was claiming 11hours while reading a pdf in preview (wifi and bluetooth off, and brightness to minimum).
How awesome is 11 hours battery life for reading?

 

[Aras87]

I'm enjoying great battery times as well! Even when using flash+safari! It is truly impressive to get 7hrs battery life from a machine this thin and light.

 

[NDDL05]

I'm enjoying great battery times as well! Even when using flash+safari! It is truly impressive to get 7hrs battery life from a machine this thin and light.

Want to trade computers?

 

[itbeme]

Just picked up an MBA yesterday and I am still in the demo period. I am not getting near that (2.5 hours twice today). at a bit over two hours I am running on reserve. Ok I have done some audio editing an light surfing, but other than that nothing major. Do I have a lemon, perhaps ? I am thinking I should be doing better than that....
Rgds

 

[GGJstudios]

Just picked up an MBA yesterday and I am still in the demo period. I am not getting near that (2.5 hours twice today). at a bit over two hours I am running on reserve. Ok I have done some audio editing an light surfing, but other than that nothing major. Do I have a lemon, perhaps ? I am thinking I should be doing better than that....
Rgds

Check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:

(not indexing)

(indexing)

Battery life is dependent on many factors. See BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE in the following link. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

I can get 5 hours of heavy use and 7+ hours of just surfing the net

 

[Aras87]

Want to trade computers?

NO!

What is your screen brightness setting ? I use mine at one notch above the middle setting which is probably something around 60%. Screen is most probably the biggest juice drinker on MBA.

 

[NDDL05]

NO!

What is your screen brightness setting ? I use mine at one notch above the middle setting which is probably something around 60%. Screen is most probably the biggest juice drinker on MBA.

My brightness is right at 50%. I've got Bluetooth off, and still can't pull more than 5 hours with only Safari open just browsing the web. Oh well, I'm usually never in a position where I NEED 7 hours of battery life. Just wish I could actually get it.