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2013 11" Battery Life Thread (real world)
- Thread starter catalyst07
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How many cycles so far? Is the same machine you got 5 hours the first time? Did you let the battery drain till sleep? Any advice on the way you are managing the battery life would be appreciated, as I am starting to think my MBA is a bad unit:
4:17 hours first cycle, fully charge and run out of battery in less than 4 hours the second time (no heavy use, no video, no audio, no downloads, activity monitor with no issues), now charging it against waiting for the third opportunity.
Thank you musika.
Your battery doesn't sound right. Mine had 85% charge when i took it out the box. I charged it to 100% then drained it to 5% and that took 9hrs. Charged it again to 100% which took about 2hrs.
Second charge is sitting at 70% with 5hrs 45mins to go and have been using it for about 3hrs 30 mins.
Second charge has just been light use with 20mins of streaming video and the rest email and safari.
Thanks for your info, it'll really help me when it comes to decision making time.
I only had Chrome running in the background with a couple of tabs open, that's hardly a heavy load under today's standards. I really don't want to be cooking my hands as I work.
Just one cycle so far. Yes, it is the same machine that I got about 6 hours on. To be honest, I've been told that my idea of "light browsing" isn't actually light browsing. Turns out shuffling around 10-15 tabs while streaming live audio and video isn't light. So consider that when you hear me talk about the 6 hours I got on the first cycle. Another thing to consider is that the first several cycles will always be the shortest.
See how the third try goes on your machine and let us know how it goes!
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No problem! Glad I can help.
I'm typing on my machine right now (3 tabs open in Safari and nothing else). This computer is like an ice cube! You'll have no problem at all with browsing.
Keep in mind that, when testing the battery, folks are saying that browsing in Safari is getting better battery life than Chrome. Just make sure you don't judge the computer instead of the browser.
I'm doing some (actually) light browsing right now on my i7 machine. Just a couple of forum tabs and Tumblr are open. Nothing else. I've been running like this for about 20 minutes.
The computer is actually cold to the touch. Yeah, not cool, cold. It's amazing. It's giving me chills. My girlfriends 2012 base model was way warmer than this after a few minutes of browsing.
I started at 100% and now I'm at 99%. When I first started browsing, the battery time estimation gave me a reading of around 4 hours. Ever since then, it's been climbing. It is giving me an estimate of over 10 hours now. That number keeps climbing. I believer that, if I were to continue to use the computer in this way (just a few tabs), then that estimate could probably be somewhat accurate.
The battery time estimation seems to take what you're doing with the computer at the time and assume that you'll be doing that for the rest of time. Either way, it's interesting.
I can safely say, though I will continue to keep an eye on battery (keeping track of my usage with my iPhone's stopwatch), that there is nothing to worry about with this computer.
For non-taxing tasks, the kinds where you don't want the computer to heat up and die quickly, the i7 model delivers. When you're ready to fire up the real power of that processor, I'm sure it will drain quicker. But that is obvious.
The computer is actually cold to the touch. Yeah, not cool, cold. It's amazing. It's giving me chills. My girlfriends 2012 base model was way warmer than this after a few minutes of browsing.
I started at 100% and now I'm at 99%. When I first started browsing, the battery time estimation gave me a reading of around 4 hours. Ever since then, it's been climbing. It is giving me an estimate of over 10 hours now. That number keeps climbing. I believer that, if I were to continue to use the computer in this way (just a few tabs), then that estimate could probably be somewhat accurate.
The battery time estimation seems to take what you're doing with the computer at the time and assume that you'll be doing that for the rest of time. Either way, it's interesting.
I can safely say, though I will continue to keep an eye on battery (keeping track of my usage with my iPhone's stopwatch), that there is nothing to worry about with this computer.
For non-taxing tasks, the kinds where you don't want the computer to heat up and die quickly, the i7 model delivers. When you're ready to fire up the real power of that processor, I'm sure it will drain quicker. But that is obvious.
You're talking about your i7 here? What's your brightness set at? I haven't pulled the trigger yet because I'm waiting on the Back to school special which I'm guessing will be announced Monday or Wednesday.
With light browsing and installing all my apps yesterday (dev tools, steam games, drop box, synching music, etc) I was easily getting over 6 hours out of box. As much as I like the 12hour plus battery life claims, I can't see myself having issues taking the laptop out to any conference or meetings where the load would be substantially lower.
As for heat, my fans have been on for the past 30+ mins with 100%+ load due to my windows vm going nuts with updates and the laptop is just warm. I don't think you guys have to worry about heat issues or anything.
i7/8gb/256.
As for heat, my fans have been on for the past 30+ mins with 100%+ load due to my windows vm going nuts with updates and the laptop is just warm. I don't think you guys have to worry about heat issues or anything.
i7/8gb/256.
Well...totally different experience for me. 24 hrs in owner ship, 2 complete recharges. No changes to basic settings.
Only program running? Parallels Dos VM.
Only program running? Parallels Dos VM.
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Bring up activity monitor. I bet you it's pegging your CPU. Mine did that during updates off a fresh install of win7.
Starting third cycle, zero usage, activity monitor OK, no energy saving config, 60-70% screen brightness: 100% 3:56 hours to go, so disappointing...
That is correct and it is on Apple's website on tips for maximizing your battery charge.
Battery will reflect the time left depending on what task rare you doing at that moment, if you just open iMovie and export a 3 hours movie the battery will last 2-3 hours, if you close iMovie and go back to Safari browsing it will go up to 8 hours, etc.
Readers here are posting 14 hours on the 11", I can do the same if I close all apps, wait 1 minute and check the battery icon, the computer will give me a huge time left on battery as it is calculating based on the usage and if you are not using it it will last very long, as soon as you start using the laptop again even by opening an app battery reading will go down, the same goes for people surprised about light browsing battery readings, when you do light browsing you probably stop opening tabs and apps as you will be reading website articles or pausing a lot between webpages, then on those "idle" times the laptop will give you very good battery readings as again you are not using the processor at all, just a window open with Safari showing a website.
As soon as you start using the laptop a little more the battery goes down considerably, the Macbook Air as a secondary machine for email, safari, twitter and probably one open app at a time will be fantastic machine with long battery times between charges but if you want to use this laptop in the same way as you are using your desktop machine you better plug your power adapter because your battery will how down very quick.
Battery is good for moderate use but not out of this world, maybe in a couple of years we can truly go 24 hours or more without charging.
If people are really concern about battery the should go with the 13" for $100 you will get probably a real 2 more extra hours of use but is not as portable as the 11".
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1446
For example, if you are using a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) to edit a text document and the menu bar reports 8 hours of battery life, then you close the text document and begin playing a DVD movie, the time left in the menu bar will decrease. If you immediately quit DVD player and resume editing a text document, the time left in the menu bar display should return to a higher number due to the reduced power usage by the computer.
Remember that is rises during usage. I started my browsing session with around 3-4 hours and within 30 minutes it had climbed to 14 hours.
Do not believe any of that, keep using it and you will probably get 6-6 1/2 of normal use. (not light browsing use)
Spot On! No drop from 100% at anytime once running. Might try a free VM program see if thats better. Dont know wether Crossover will support DOS games.
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It looks like you got next year's machine
i get 18 hours and few times 22 hours and 15 but normally always like above 12 hours, 5 cycles.
82% and 9:41hrs left after 3 1/2 hours of use with Tweetbot, Mailplane, Calendar, Chrome, Safari (6 tabs), Mail.app and occasional Screen Sharing to a Mac Mini
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13" or 11"? are 22 hours of non stopping constant use?
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13" or 11"? are 22 hours of non stopping constant use?
13 inch, i5/128GB/4GB, no that would be over a period of two or more days, the laptop would be sleeping at night. normally the third day id have to charge it...would be 3 6hr sessions about.......last years model i heard only lasted about that on full charge so all ready its worth getting the new one straight away.
yes that sounds correct, I get 2-3 days without charging with regular use, sleeping times, breaks, etc, normal life.
I'm very happy with the battery.
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on Maverics just today to test some software but i was on Mountain Lion the past week with similar results.
11"/i5/8GB/256 report on battery life: yesterday, my Mom was doing some office work on her Macbook Air. She started at around 6:30 AM doing word processing, email responses, formatting stuff on MS Excel. Time flew really fast for both of us as we both were working to meet deadlines.
At around 3:00 PM, she suddenly turned to me and said "I ran out of juice!" The Macbook Air had shut down by itself. She had been working non-stop for close to 8 hours on the machine and had forgotten about the battery altogether. I plugged the Magsafe to charge it back and the Air turned back on again shortly thereafter. Mom took a short break and got back to work soon after.
All-in-all, quite impressed with the Macbook Air. Seems the battery life is as advertised, at least on ours and on the type of usage that my Mom has been doing on it.
At around 3:00 PM, she suddenly turned to me and said "I ran out of juice!" The Macbook Air had shut down by itself. She had been working non-stop for close to 8 hours on the machine and had forgotten about the battery altogether. I plugged the Magsafe to charge it back and the Air turned back on again shortly thereafter. Mom took a short break and got back to work soon after.
All-in-all, quite impressed with the Macbook Air. Seems the battery life is as advertised, at least on ours and on the type of usage that my Mom has been doing on it.
i ordered my 13" i7 8gb ram 512 gb ssd on the day of. i received it the following week.
the first time i let it charge up to 100% then drained it down to around 2%. i charge up with the lid closed over night.
the following day i installed virtualbox, downloaded a bunch of live linux iso distros and installed them as vms.
running virtual box vms really takes a noticeable hit on the battery. i wasn't measuring the time exactly but noticed it went down from 90% to 80% in a span of about 20 to 30 minutes of usage. the fan(s) kicked in as well during that time. i was merely doing linux installs, updates and configurations at that time. this could be considering more intensive tasks than most people would do but glad it could withstand that acceptably and comparably well to my other machines. plus, the i7 is great to me with the speed of the installations and overall performance.
i also installed geek tools on mountain lion desktop, which was an awesome addition.
for everyday light usage of merely exploring the web the battery is truly awesome. after i charged it last night - and just at the time of this writing at 40 minutes of light, browser-only usage + geek tools running on the desktop background, it's still showing up at 100%.
overall, at the moment i'm happy/content with it - fast, light & great battery life.
the first time i let it charge up to 100% then drained it down to around 2%. i charge up with the lid closed over night.
the following day i installed virtualbox, downloaded a bunch of live linux iso distros and installed them as vms.
running virtual box vms really takes a noticeable hit on the battery. i wasn't measuring the time exactly but noticed it went down from 90% to 80% in a span of about 20 to 30 minutes of usage. the fan(s) kicked in as well during that time. i was merely doing linux installs, updates and configurations at that time. this could be considering more intensive tasks than most people would do but glad it could withstand that acceptably and comparably well to my other machines. plus, the i7 is great to me with the speed of the installations and overall performance.
i also installed geek tools on mountain lion desktop, which was an awesome addition.
for everyday light usage of merely exploring the web the battery is truly awesome. after i charged it last night - and just at the time of this writing at 40 minutes of light, browser-only usage + geek tools running on the desktop background, it's still showing up at 100%.
overall, at the moment i'm happy/content with it - fast, light & great battery life.
Thank you so much, it indeed rose considerably after that (5-6 hours with 85-95% left), but still not very convincing, I left the Macbook with the screen on and safari opened since after, and 6 hours later it is 20% left with 1:40 hours remaining.
same problem
I am having still same problems with my battery on 13inch, i7/512/8gb, 6 cycles in and still can't get above 7 hours, and all I use is chrome and constantly checking the activity monitor. i'm seeing ppl with 13 hours time remaining, i'm real jealous.
I am having still same problems with my battery on 13inch, i7/512/8gb, 6 cycles in and still can't get above 7 hours, and all I use is chrome and constantly checking the activity monitor. i'm seeing ppl with 13 hours time remaining, i'm real jealous.
