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2013 11" Battery Life Thread (real world)

wermy said:
Started using my 11" i7/8GB/256GB about 3 hours ago on a full charge. Brightness at about 50%, running Chrome with 6 tabs open, Messages, Xcode and the iphone simulator. I've been using Xcode almost continuously, and an app running in the iPhone simulator the whole time. Battery is at 80% now and shows ~9 hours left, and the laptop is cool to the touch with no audible fans (not sure if they are even running). I do not regret getting the i7 at all, the battery life is amazing! :D
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Install istat and you will be able to report more details...guess what MY i5 DOES NOT have any fan at all either :) :)...i mean ZERO NOISE ....no fan at all....!! :) May be because i am not gaming on it ....i have seen HD videos and NO fan at all....!!

Will be doing some heavy photo-shop editing and report back results, i am positive it will be cool and zero fan...!! if i would have seen your review before....i think i would have simply taken the ULTIMATE machine..because i7 is the only feature i didn't pick, rest i have = 8GB RAM and 512 SSD :)

Still not bad :)

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entatlrg said:
Seems odd ... 475 posts almost 30,000 views and there's no consistency to peoples feedback even when doing what seems like similar tasks.
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Lol, to top that off, all these ******* up companies --- the so called review giants are all SLEEPING ...literally...no concrete review...its pretty pathetic and lame at the same time that they are not able to do an extensive nerve wrecking 11 inch review for i5 and i7..since haswell is brand new..industry seems to be pretty badly sleeping about testing them...i mean seriously.....WTF !

Anyways, get the i5 and you will enjoy it...but definitely get a minimum 8GB (lol thats d max though) and 512 SSD - u wont regret it ! I have it :) and if you are a video-encoder or a developer i7 is your best friend !
 
wermy said:
Started using my 11" i7/8GB/256GB about 3 hours ago on a full charge. Brightness at about 50%, running Chrome with 6 tabs open, Messages, Xcode and the iphone simulator. I've been using Xcode almost continuously, and an app running in the iPhone simulator the whole time. Battery is at 80% now and shows ~9 hours left, and the laptop is cool to the touch with no audible fans (not sure if they are even running). I do not regret getting the i7 at all, the battery life is amazing! :D
Click to expand...

that's really great to hear. I'm eagerly waiting for my MBA with the same configuration as yours, coming next week. well, anything's an improvement over my 2008 uMBP which runs like a turbine engine
 
http://www.macg.co/labo/voir/128103/test-du-macbook-air-13-core-i7-1-7-ghz-haswell-mi-2013

Here it is for the 13 finally! :D

you can translate the test via google to summerize the test it shows that the i7 got better performance for application in a range of 20% and the battery last one hour less than the i5. It shows also that the i7 use to launch the fan more often than the i5.

So considering all this and after 3 weeks of crazy minding I will go with the i5 with 8gb ram and 512 ssd. what a waste of time :-D
 
In basic terms, there is hardly ANY difference in battery life between the i5 and the i7 when performing standard, low performance tasks. Fan usage should also be the same, and heat should not be an issue.

Although the i7 will heat up and hence have more fan noise during high performance tasks, the job will complete faster, which is what you would expect from a higher performing system.

Will refer back to my previous post which explains.
I'll be ordering my i7 tomorrow as I like to know I have the extra grunt when I need it.


Ifti said:
The i7 doesn't run much faster by default than the i5, but it can turbo a higher clock speed than the Core i5.
If you're running a high CPU workload that never lets up in a continuous loop, the i7 is going to die quicker than the i5. Active power is greater at higher frequencies (assuming everything else remains the same) and with no chance to get to sleep the i7 will eat through the battery faster than the i5.

Where the i7 stands a chance however is in workloads where you aren't running the CPU at full tilt all of the time. The i7 needs tiny, tiny, tiny fractions of a second of idle time to throttle down and go to sleep. It's in these sleep states that it'll draw very little power and avoid being a major consumer of the battery. From the CPU's perspective, it wants to finish its work as quickly as possible so it can get back into its really low power idle states.

For workloads with balanced periods of load and idle time, the i7 should be able to at least equal the battery life of the i5. Short bursts of instructions can execute up to 25% faster on the i7, allowing it to go back to sleep that much quicker. Any energy expended from running at higher clock could be saved by spending more time at idle.

The other advantage is the larger cache. A larger cache means a higher likelihood of finding data in that cache, which saves trips to main memory. Anytime you go off-chip for data the power penalty is tremendous. You have to fire up a powerful memory interface, drive requests back and forth over a high speed bus and actually pull the data from DRAM. The entire process is far more power intensive than just grabbing data from the CPU's on-die cache.

Personally, I'll be going for the i7/8/256 varient of the MBA11". Battery life varies depending on how the CPU is used. Asking others how the battery life fares for them will not give any indication of what you will receive yourself. The i7, although using more power, should, in theory, finish the task quicker, and hence go back into its low power idle state quicker then the i5, thus saving power. The battery life for both models should, in theory, be more or less equal unless you throttle the i7 at its high clock speed for long periods of time.
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Is this normal? :p

Probably not, but i have to admit i loved seeing this for the 5 mins it was there

Screen Shot 2013-06-30 at 11.01.17 PM.png
 
Just wanted to share my experience with the difference in battery life on my base 11" when going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.

I have until today been using Mountain Lion and have been getting between 7-9 hours of battery life with screen brightness on half and doing pretty basic stuff, like Safari open with 3 tabs, Mail, and Twitter.

Today I decided to try the Developer Preview for Mavericks as I have been hearing good things on the stability of it and so on. I got finished installing it a couple of hours ago and have been playing around with it since then (I love it).
The system seems to have settled and now I'm getting some pretty ridiculous battery estimates. With 94% battery left the estimation says 13:35 hours left! Insane. If it comes close to that I'm incredibly happy I upgraded. :)
 
eriklinder said:
Just wanted to share my experience with the difference in battery life on my base 11" when going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks.

I have until today been using Mountain Lion and have been getting between 7-9 hours of battery life with screen brightness on half and doing pretty basic stuff, like Safari open with 3 tabs, Mail, and Twitter.

Today I decided to try the Developer Preview for Mavericks as I have been hearing good things on the stability of it and so on. I got finished installing it a couple of hours ago and have been playing around with it since then (I love it).
The system seems to have settled and now I'm getting some pretty ridiculous battery estimates. With 94% battery left the estimation says 13:35 hours left! Insane. If it comes close to that I'm incredibly happy I upgraded. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! I've been pretty excited to see how Mavericks affects battery life on these things. Just goes to show, efficient software is just as important as high-capacity batteries and power-sipping CPUs . :)
 
wermy said:
Thanks for sharing! I've been pretty excited to see how Mavericks affects battery life on these things. Just goes to show, efficient software is just as important as high-capacity batteries and power-sipping CPUs . :)
Click to expand...

Well guys, before i jump on the bandwagon of how to get the developer version of Mavericks ? How long does it take to set-up like you have to add your 17 different email accounts back into it or what ?
 
I-5 Battery NIGHTMARE :(

Guys, i am at 60% after 6th recycle of battery and currently have 3 different browsers open (safari/chrome/mozilla) and excel, word documents and a netflix HD video ==> pretty normal usage if you are me...and the battery life remaining shows a pathetic 2 hours only....!

I know that it all depends on the usage but come-on 2 hours for gulping in 60% of battery with my current usage...this is :( :( :( beyond crap

Istat is also reporting same numbers :(
 
johnjey said:
Guys, i am at 60% after 6th recycle of battery and currently have 3 different browsers open (safari/chrome/mozilla) and excel, word documents and a netflix HD video ==> pretty normal usage if you are me...and the battery life remaining shows a pathetic 2 hours only....!

I know that it all depends on the usage but come-on 2 hours for gulping in 60% of battery with my current usage...this is :( :( :( beyond crap

Istat is also reporting same numbers :(
Click to expand...

Oh my!

How many actual hours per charge are you getting?

This thread is about actual battery life.

You may want to try Apple support forums.
 
Reality check = bitter :( (after 6 recharge cycles)

My story is pretty heart-breaking as this mac is crying at 4% battery now since i last reported at 60% and 4 hours remaining, overall i would say it barely managed to last till 5.5 hours only and thats a PATHETIC battery life ---> and i don't know what my options now should be ?

I am in the 14 day window but i need to see some other people like me 1st:

1. Who watched a 1 hour Netflix HD video (90% volume) and 60% brightness
2. Who had 3 different browsers (mozilla/safari/chrome): an average of 7 windows per browser open
3. Word and excel files open - editing and emailing
4. Skype (not talking just online) and Mac Mail running
5. Downloading and installing applications like: PDF converter, Divvy, etc
6. have Mint/Cleaner/Dropbox/Evernote always running in background

This is my typical normal usage and some may term it as a heavy user but guys i did NOT spend 1600+$ to send 1 email or surf 3-4 pages on the web at a time.

Please advise as i have to take some quick action pretty soon and as i am typing this battery is dying at 2% now:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Is I-7 my best bet? Or is it a classified too much usage of this machine and i don't deserve a 8 hour minimum battery life with this usage?

I stat reported exhaust at 2100 once but i never heard a fan noise, it did become more than WARM when HD netflix was ON...after that became all cold and normal...so does it mean that we can forget about watching videos on this machine...huh ? No porn = epic fail lol..!

Thanks for helping out !

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& before anyone suggest me to look at activity monitor ..here are the numbers and my machine specs are : 11 inches/i5/8GB RAM/512 SSD

safari web content 955MB
Safari 340 MB
Mail 264 MB
MS WORD 264MB --> 3 word files
Firefox Plugin (Silver light --> the netflix) = 225MB
Firefox - 213MB
Finder 164MB
Excel 107MB (Shame on the machine --> it's just 1 excel file)
Skype 102MB
evernote 97mb
google chrome worker 92mb
dropbox 66mb
dock 56mb
systemuiserver 46mb
workflow service 43mb
mint 41mb

and more...irrelevant lesser mb things

total processes: 131
 
johnjey said:
My story is pretty heart-breaking as this mac is crying at 4% battery now since i last reported at 60% and 4 hours remaining, overall i would say it barely managed to last till 5.5 hours only and thats a PATHETIC battery life ---> and i don't know what my options now should be ?

I am in the 14 day window but i need to see some other people like me 1st:

1. Who watched a 1 hour Netflix HD video (90% volume) and 60% brightness
2. Who had 3 different browsers (mozilla/safari/chrome): an average of 7 windows per browser open
3. Word and excel files open - editing and emailing
4. Skype (not talking just online) and Mac Mail running
5. Downloading and installing applications like: PDF converter, Divvy, etc
6. have Mint/Cleaner/Dropbox/Evernote always running in background

This is my typical normal usage and some may term it as a heavy user but guys i did NOT spend 1600+$ to send 1 email or surf 3-4 pages on the web at a time.

Please advise as i have to take some quick action pretty soon and as i am typing this battery is dying at 2% now:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Is I-7 my best bet? Or is it a classified too much usage of this machine and i don't deserve a 8 hour minimum battery life with this usage?

I stat reported exhaust at 2100 once but i never heard a fan noise, it did become more than WARM when HD netflix was ON...after that became all cold and normal...so does it mean that we can forget about watching videos on this machine...huh ? No porn = epic fail lol..!

Thanks for helping out !

----------

& before anyone suggest me to look at activity monitor ..here are the numbers and my machine specs are : 11 inches/i5/8GB RAM/512 SSD

safari web content 955MB
Safari 340 MB
Mail 264 MB
MS WORD 264MB --> 3 word files
Firefox Plugin (Silver light --> the netflix) = 225MB
Firefox - 213MB
Finder 164MB
Excel 107MB (Shame on the machine --> it's just 1 excel file)
Skype 102MB
evernote 97mb
google chrome worker 92mb
dropbox 66mb
dock 56mb
systemuiserver 46mb
workflow service 43mb
mint 41mb

and more...irrelevant lesser mb things

total processes: 131
Click to expand...
No. Sort by CPU and post a screenshot.
 
& man...if you do nothing on this machine other than opening a safari tab and reading recipes for the next home cooked meal you wanna make --> ofcourse this mac can last for 10 hours ....so screw that talk !
 
lmfao, this whole battery estimate seems like a joke ? May be not --> because since i closed down the silver light (netflix crap) ==> now at 52% battery, my air says 5:22 hours battery remaining :D and yeah i have the safari's open and the mozilla's and the Skype, macmail lol..
 
my advice: restart it

i had disappointing performances too, then i noticed i didn t restart the machine since i ve got it...
I did it and it solved everything :)
I had 10:45 announced at 100%
8:25 at 78% after 2 hours use including 45mn video of SOA
The rest being tchat and browsing
 
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