2013 11" Battery Life Thread (real world)

[DavidBlack]

Great Battery Life On 2011 Macbook Air

I know this may not be the thread for this but I have a Macbook Air 11" Mid 2011 and I would normally get 4 hours max on battery life. So I install OS X Mavericks my battery life has been fascistic. So these are the test I did:

Macbook Air Battery Specs

• Current Capcity: 3904 mah
• Design capacity: 4680 mah
• Battery loadcycles: 547
• Age of Mac: 16 Months

Application opened during the test:

• Mail
• Notes
• Contacts
• Safari with 8 tabs
• iTunes playing Bach
• Activity Monitor
• App Store
• iMessage light messging
• CoconutBattery
• Final Cut Pro to render a small 4 min clip HD 720p

Test Results:
At 8:30 p.m I plugged it out of the charger. I then used it for 1 hour reading a book online, browsing Mac-rumors and looking up prices for the new Macbook Air on apple. Then I placed it to sleep at around 9:30/9:45 p.m, the charge was 89% when I went to bed. I awoke up around 7:00 a.m and I took it up to check the news and read something the current charge is now 88 percent when I woke up. I used all the applications that I listed above expect final cut pro until around 12:00 p.m. The current charge around 11:00 a.m is 45%. I left it sleeping until 2:00 p.m current charge is 44% when It woke up. Then I exported a 4 min clip with final cut pro after at around 2:10 p.m that drained the battery by 10 percent and the fans kicked in for a few minutes. Then I used all the applications I listed above up until the time of writing which is 4:42 p.m and my current charge is 11%. So that about 7.5 hours for my battery which is a huge improvement from 4 hours on OS X Mountain Lion. Tell me what you guys think.

P.S Bluetooth off and Wifi on. All setting default, also no keyboard backlight and brightness at 45%.

 

[falconeight]

I know this may not be the thread for this but I have a Macbook Air 11" Mid 2011 and I would normally get 4 hours max on battery life. So I install OS X Mavericks my battery life has been fascistic. So these are the test I did:

Macbook Air Battery Specs

• Current Capcity: 3904 mah
• Design capacity: 4680 mah
• Battery loadcycles: 547
• Age of Mac: 16 Months

Application opened during the test:

• Mail
• Notes
• Contacts
• Safari with 8 tabs
• iTunes playing Bach
• Activity Monitor
• App Store
• Message light messging
• CoconutBattery
• Final Cut Pro to render a small 4 min clip HD 720p

Test Results:
At 8:30 p.m I plugged it out of the charger. I then used it for 1 hour reading a book online, browsing Mac-rumors and looking up prices for the new Macbook Air on apple. Then I placed it to sleep at around 9:30/9:45 p.m, the charge was 89% when I went to bed. I awoke up around 7:00 a.m and I took it up to check the news and read something the current charge is now 88 percent when I woke up. I used all the applications that I listed above expect final cut pro until around 12:00 p.m. The current charge around 11:00 a.m is 45%. I left it sleeping until 2:00 p.m current charge is 44% when It woke up. Then I exported a 4 min clip with final cut pro after at around 2:10 p.m that drained the battery by 10 percent and the fans kicked in for a few minutes. Then I used all the applications I listed above up until the time of writing which is 4:42 p.m and my current charge is 11%. So that about 7.5 hours for my battery which is a huge improvement from 4 hours on OS X Mountain Lion. Tell me what you guys think.

That rocks! I am running mavericks on my 2013 11inch haswell and haven't noticed any difference.

 

[DavidBlack]

That rocks! I am running mavericks on my 2013 11inch haswell and haven't noticed any difference.

Thanks btw it depends on your usage. Also a quick way to to estimate how much battery life you will get divide the watts hours divided by the amount of battery life you would like to expect.

Example my Macbook Air has a 35 watt hour battery. To get 5 hours of battery life: 35/5 = 7, to get five hours I would have to have a power usage average of about 7 watts you can get this info from coconut battery. But also remember that the screen and keyboard backlight also have a effect on battery life. If you need any help please reply .

 

[gnasher729]

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 and yeah i have the safari's open and the mozilla's and the Skype, macmail lol..

One new thing in Mavericks is that it shows the user what apps are killing the battery. For example you said you were playing a video - but there is a _massive_ difference in energy use. If it's a h.264 video played by the graphics card, that's quite cheap. The same video in Flash or Silverlight, and it will be a lot lot more expensive.

 

[johnjey]

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

i would say play some HD video 1 hour long and see how it behaves as i have done restarts before.

 

[musika]

This is our answer

Looks like we finally have our answer. Macworld has posted an article on the BTO 11-inch MacBook Air, showing basically what we've known for a while. With light tasks, the difference is negligible (in minutes at most). For heavier tasks, where you may want to be plugged in in any case, the difference is in about 30 minutes to an hour.



Macworld seems to do some pretty intensive tests, so I'd expect battery life better than what is shown in the chart no matter what machine you choose.

So I think we can finally put all of this to rest. Light tasks show just about the same battery life, even on the 11-inch model. There is about an hour difference when doing crazy things, but you'll get more done because of the speed increase.

Both are great computers. Enjoy what you have. And if you'd like to read MacWorld's post, I'd suggest you do. http://www.macworld.com/article/204..._source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#tk.rss_all

 

[johnjey]

One new thing in Mavericks is that it shows the user what apps are killing the battery. For example you said you were playing a video - but there is a _massive_ difference in energy use. If it's a h.264 video played by the graphics card, that's quite cheap. The same video in Flash or Silverlight, and it will be a lot lot more expensive.

I would NOT call that a new thing, as you can look at that clearly in Activity monitor...if it's just another stupid way of showing it through an application on menu bar...i wouldn't call mavericks an innovation....will just be a piss off

 

[entatlrg]

I would NOT call that a new thing, as you can look at that clearly in Activity monitor...if it's just another stupid way of showing it through an application on menu bar...i wouldn't call mavericks an innovation....will just be a piss off

Interesting, how do you know so much about unreleased software?

 

[Jedi Master]

How long does the battery last

Thanks

 

[nariza7]

For those who are getting 8+ hours on their 11inch i7/8, what tasks do you guys run and at what brightness settings for keyboard and screen? Assuming wifi is on the whole time.

Mine is draining about 1% every 3-4 minutes just from having 1 notepad out (to keep track of % drain) and from keeping 2 tabs open for macrumors(only using one tab to read this thread. The other tab is the mac air general forum). My keyboard brightness is on 0 and my screen brightness is 5 clicks away from max. Is this % drain normal? I've closed unused dock apps shown by "shift+tab", and my activity monitor shows chrome at 1.7% as the highest % task. everything under is like 0.x%. Mine is connected to 5g wifi though so I'm not sure if that makes any difference.

From this thread, it seems that some are getting over 8+ hours of use even though they are installing a few apps and streaming music/vids.

 

[maclover2013]

Is it a good move ?

Hi ,

I've been doing tons of research whether to get 11' or 13' mba 2013. In my thought, it would be portability first.

I travel often to work and outstation every week.
I like taking photos so I don't mind paying for an extra card reader to load sd card from my camera and an external hdd 1/2tb

My regular use is web surf (max 4 hours) , watch stream video(youtube), listening to music, read pdf files, light photo editing....

This will be my first time ever to move from window to mac. I'll be ordering online this weekend so I want to ask should I get 4gb or 8gb ram for 11'mba i5/128 ?

I intend to invest money for external monitor (when i'm at home),wireless mouse and keyboard. A year after, I may consider to get either a new rmbp or imac in 2014. I'm not sure whether ipad is worth to go for it in future after I got this 11' mba 2013

Do share your thoughts/opinion/recommendation.

Thanks

 

[Ifti]

Keyboard brightness is at 0
Screen brightness is just under half way.

I charged the machine to 100% before even switching it on.
Spec is in sig.

Used for initial setting up and installing a few apps from USB external drive, and for general web surfing and emals etc, as well as a little image resizing in Pixelmator and using Kompozer to create a few eBay listings etc.

Im still on my first charge! Ive used it 2 evenings, probably about 4 hours total. Its at 51% at the mo and still showing 5.38 hrs remaining.

System runs cool - not noticed it warming up at all - fans never heard whatsoever - always coldish to the touch (used on my lap). Will try some more intensive stuff soon.

Glad I stuck with my gut instinct and went for the i7. It will be my secondary machine once I get my main rMBP 15" but I like to know I have the extra oomph when I need it! I intend to keep this unit for as long as possible!

 

[dr34mc4st3r]

Keyboard brightness is at 0
Screen brightness is just under half way.

I charged the machine to 100% before even switching it on.
Spec is in sig.

Used for initial setting up and installing a few apps from USB external drive, and for general web surfing and emals etc, as well as a little image resizing in Pixelmator and using Kompozer to create a few eBay listings etc.

Im still on my first charge! Ive used it 2 evenings, probably about 4 hours total. Its at 51% at the mo and still showing 5.38 hrs remaining.

System runs cool - not noticed it warming up at all - fans never heard whatsoever - always coldish to the touch (used on my lap). Will try some more intensive stuff soon.

Glad I stuck with my gut instinct and went for the i7. It will be my secondary machine once I get my main rMBP 15" but I like to know I have the extra oomph when I need it! I intend to keep this unit for as long as possible!

high five. I went with i7 as well and found for light workload (surfing Web, some word processing) the battery life is close to the rated 9 hours.

 

[anichaa]

Dissappointed

I wanted to share my experience with the MBA 2013 11'' i7/8/128. I hope I can help add clarity for those trying to make an informed decision re: i5 v. i7 and not make things more confusing.

On the 2nd charge cycle, I ran a test over two days (yesterday and today). While I was using the unit, the display brightness was at 50%, keyboard dimmer at 3 from the bottom. I made sure that the display remained on while the timer was running. There were several times where I closed the unit, stopped the timer and did other things for several hours.

While I was running the computer, I ran chrome and safari with a total of between 6-12 tabs at any given time, word, notepad, and activity monitor also open. At some points I listened to audiobooks. For an hour or so during the day I watched some youtube vids.

The estimated battery time fluctuated a ton so it seems pretty worthless as a way to gauge capacity and performance. That is why I timed it based on the amount of time I actually used the unit.

Breakdown of Elapsed Time vs. Battery Remaining

@40 mins of use = 97% remaining
@1 hour of use = 88% remaining
powered down for a few hours
@2 hours and 40 mins of use = 71% remaining
@4 hours and 20 mins of use = 40% remaining
@5 hours 30 mins of use = 25% remaining
powered down for 7 hours
@6 hours and 40 mins of use = 2% remaining

Died at 6 hours and 50 mins

All in all I'm kinda disappointed with the results. But I'm pretty sure I'll run with this one and not opt for the i5. I'm into music production and I want to ensure I can get max performance out of the unit, even at the expense of some battery time. I have a few days to see how it performs. BTW, I called apple and they said they don't extend the return time beyond the 14 days.

At least I never felt any heat or heard the fan at any point during the day or any time since i have been using it.

I wish the unit could have reliably delivered 8 hours doing the kind of work I described above, but it seems I'll have to settle for this. I guess if I really limit brightness and other aps running, I may get closer to the advertised battery capacity but unlikely.

I'm just surprised at some of the battery run times I have seen from other people on this forum upwards of 10 hours and sometimes even 12. A little bit jealous, a little confused.

I will probably run another test on the next cycle, including some time using garageband to see how dramatically it will drain the battery.

 

[Lakailb87]

Just finished my first run down of my 2013 11" i5/8/256. Charged it up to full yesterday and closed it and brought it home. Averaged brightness around 60%, installed about 10 applications including parallels and then Windows 8 install as a VM. Streamed a little video, ran messages the entire time. A lot of web browsing, some itunes use and watched a short video in VLC. A little terminal SSH connection. Did a little VPN + RDP connection. Laptop was also in sleep while I was at work and sleeping so about 21 hours total during the same battery cycle.

After all of this my battery finally died after 9 hours and 25 minutes of use with the 21 hours of sleep as well. Very impressed especially considering the Windows 8 install was pretty taxing and this was the first drain of the battery.

 

[nStyle]

Hi ,

I've been doing tons of research whether to get 11' or 13' mba 2013. In my thought, it would be portability first.

I travel often to work and outstation every week.
I like taking photos so I don't mind paying for an extra card reader to load sd card from my camera and an external hdd 1/2tb

My regular use is web surf (max 4 hours) , watch stream video(youtube), listening to music, read pdf files, light photo editing....

This will be my first time ever to move from window to mac. I'll be ordering online this weekend so I want to ask should I get 4gb or 8gb ram for 11'mba i5/128 ?

I intend to invest money for external monitor (when i'm at home),wireless mouse and keyboard. A year after, I may consider to get either a new rmbp or imac in 2014. I'm not sure whether ipad is worth to go for it in future after I got this 11' mba 2013

Do share your thoughts/opinion/recommendation.

Thanks

I don't really this is the thread for this but -

You should get a rMBP now or at least the 13 Air if its your primary computer. Then again, if you get a monitor for home use, the 11" may be feasible.

Only you know. Go see all of them in person first. Personally though, I see all of the Airs as secondary computers.

 

[nariza7]

Just finished my first run down of my 2013 11" i5/8/256. Charged it up to full yesterday and closed it and brought it home. Averaged brightness around 60%, installed about 10 applications including parallels and then Windows 8 install as a VM. Streamed a little video, ran messages the entire time. A lot of web browsing, some itunes use and watched a short video in VLC. A little terminal SSH connection. Did a little VPN + RDP connection. Laptop was also in sleep while I was at work and sleeping so about 21 hours total during the same battery cycle.

After all of this my battery finally died after 9 hours and 25 minutes of use with the 21 hours of sleep as well. Very impressed especially considering the Windows 8 install was pretty taxing and this was the first drain of the battery.

That is some amazing battery life. My 11 inch i7/8 has never lasted over 6 hours with screen brightness at 5-6 clicks under max and keyboard brightness at 0. I would start off at like 79% and listen to songs while sorting them into folders for 2-3 hours when it drops to 24%. I would keep macrumors, gmail, and facebook out on my safari tabs. would this be considered heavy work to listen to songs and sort them into folders on the same internal hard drive? My wifi would be on for the whole time, and I also have a plug in mouse which may also drain battery.

So far, I don't see how its battery life is that amazing. I think owning an ipad that can watch movies and play games with slow % drop in battery per hour gave me a wrong mentality to view the battery life of a mac air. Still, i get jealous when I hear people get over 8 hours on an 11 inch mac air and wonder if there is something faulty with mine. My mac air seems to drop battery % really fast. it feels like it drops % every 1-3 min. I dropped like 3-4% just from writing this comment.

 

[Lakailb87]

That is some amazing battery life. My 11 inch i7/8 has never lasted over 6 hours with screen brightness at 5-6 clicks under max and keyboard brightness at 0. I would start off at like 79% and listen to songs while sorting them into folders for 2-3 hours when it drops to 24%. I would keep macrumors, gmail, and facebook out on my safari tabs. would this be considered heavy work to listen to songs and sort them into folders on the same internal hard drive? My wifi would be on for the whole time, and I also have a plug in mouse which may also drain battery.

So far, I don't see how its battery life is that amazing. I think owning an ipad that can watch movies and play games with slow % drop in battery per hour gave me a wrong mentality to view the battery life of a mac air. Still, i get jealous when I hear people get over 8 hours on an 11 inch mac air and wonder if there is something faulty with mine. My mac air seems to drop battery % really fast. it feels like it drops % every 1-3 min. I dropped like 3-4% just from writing this comment.

That does sound rather quick to be dropping. I have been on my MBA for the last 25 minutes just web browsing and now reply to you post and have only dropped 2%. I am extremely impress especially after coming from a 13" MBA.

You cannot really compare the 2, the MBA is an actual computer running an x86 processor. The iPad runs an ARM processor which is great for battery life but is not even in the same league in terms of power. If all you would need to do is web browsing an iPad is great but you couldn't do all the others things you listed or can do on one.

 

[catalyst07]

Hi, I started this thread and thanks to all you guys I purchased an 11" i7 8gb 256gb ssd machine and you can read about my battery life experiences here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1611552/

 

[jpalharini]

I've ordered my Air last week (configuration on signature), got the base model with the 8 GB upgrade because I use an Ubuntu VM a lot. Got 128 GB of SSD because a lot of my stuff is on the cloud, so...
I'm really excited to see the battery life that appears to be amazing on this little thing. I'm leaving a 13" MacBook Pro from late 2011 (with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB SSD from Samsung), which had a good battery life too (and improved under Mavericks, about 5 hours under medium usage). Also, it's my first time using a smaller computer, I hope I can adapt my workflow to it, considering that at home I have a 21.5" 1080p display.
I'm very anxious to get my hands on this impressive machine, I hope I did a good choice! The expected arrival is between Aug 7-13. Surely, I will post my results in battery life, considering that I will update to Mavericks as soon as it arrives.

 

[tdream]

I wanted to share my experience with the MBA 2013 11'' i7/8/128. I hope I can help add clarity for those trying to make an informed decision re: i5 v. i7 and not make things more confusing.

On the 2nd charge cycle, I ran a test over two days (yesterday and today). While I was using the unit, the display brightness was at 50%, keyboard dimmer at 3 from the bottom. I made sure that the display remained on while the timer was running. There were several times where I closed the unit, stopped the timer and did other things for several hours.

While I was running the computer, I ran chrome and safari with a total of between 6-12 tabs at any given time, word, notepad, and activity monitor also open. At some points I listened to audiobooks. For an hour or so during the day I watched some youtube vids.

The estimated battery time fluctuated a ton so it seems pretty worthless as a way to gauge capacity and performance. That is why I timed it based on the amount of time I actually used the unit.

Breakdown of Elapsed Time vs. Battery Remaining

@40 mins of use = 97% remaining
@1 hour of use = 88% remaining
powered down for a few hours
@2 hours and 40 mins of use = 71% remaining
@4 hours and 20 mins of use = 40% remaining
@5 hours 30 mins of use = 25% remaining
powered down for 7 hours
@6 hours and 40 mins of use = 2% remaining

Died at 6 hours and 50 mins

All in all I'm kinda disappointed with the results. But I'm pretty sure I'll run with this one and not opt for the i5. I'm into music production and I want to ensure I can get max performance out of the unit, even at the expense of some battery time. I have a few days to see how it performs. BTW, I called apple and they said they don't extend the return time beyond the 14 days.

At least I never felt any heat or heard the fan at any point during the day or any time since i have been using it.

I wish the unit could have reliably delivered 8 hours doing the kind of work I described above, but it seems I'll have to settle for this. I guess if I really limit brightness and other aps running, I may get closer to the advertised battery capacity but unlikely.

I'm just surprised at some of the battery run times I have seen from other people on this forum upwards of 10 hours and sometimes even 12. A little bit jealous, a little confused.

I will probably run another test on the next cycle, including some time using garageband to see how dramatically it will drain the battery.

Most people are BSing and just looking at the time remaining number without doing anything as extensive as you have done. They don't run any taxing apps at all, because CPU cycles kills battery life hardcore. Most are using their air @ 0%-10% for 8 to 10 hours which is completely unrealistic imo.

Also i7 battery life is 7-8 hours vs i5 9-11 hours

 

[catalyst07]

Most people are BSing and just looking at the time remaining number without doing anything as extensive as you have done. They don't run any taxing apps at all, because CPU cycles kills battery life hardcore. Most are using their air @ 0%-10% for 8 to 10 hours which is completely unrealistic imo.

Also i7 battery life is 7-8 hours vs i5 9-11 hours

Did you read my thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1611552/

I used a stopwatch and used my macbook as I would normally use it on any given day.

 

[johnjey]

Most people are BSing and just looking at the time remaining number without doing anything as extensive as you have done. They don't run any taxing apps at all, because CPU cycles kills battery life hardcore. Most are using their air @ 0%-10% for 8 to 10 hours which is completely unrealistic imo.

Also i7 battery life is 7-8 hours vs i5 9-11 hours

If you are me and have an i-5 11' 2013, there's no way in hell that you can have the Air last for more than 6.5 hours max because of all the apps i use:

1. Safari tabs (10-12) open
2. Chrome (Netflix : 1.5-2 hours)
3. Flash videos
4. Snitch, Evernote,postbox, adium, vmware (win 7 occasionally: 20 mins)
5. Brightness (4 dots), keyboard lights (OFF)
6. Word processing, excel processing, PDF documents (30-40 mins)
7. Total finder, launchbar, xtrafinder, image viewing etc

 

[AXs]

Did you read my thread here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1611552/

I used a stopwatch and used my macbook as I would normally use it on any given day.

Yea we saw your thread.

But my mba13" is far superior with 15hours and 12 minutes on i5. I used my casio stopwatch!

I used excel, safari, had parralels running... played minecraft for couple hours and also answered plenty of emails. All this at about 80% brightness and max keyboard light.


Next week I'm going to get 17hours!

 

[hockeyfanatic]

I too would be really interested in the difference in battery life, if any, between the i5 & i7 processors.

I read some articles that the i7 may give an extra 40-50 minutes battery. Of course, what is used for will have effect on that.

I7 can increase performance about %20. I5 & I7 battery performance will probably be closely rated for light use. I7 will finish more intensive tasks slightly faster. Sum of faster tasks will add up if continued.

I7 will be close to price of rmbp 13, that has more performance. Since lacking haswell, not a best buy currently.


I read the article after purchasing the i5. Considered sending back. Now that I have it, I will keep the i5. Not worth trouble of upgrading.
Using laptop now, on day 3 of use after charging it, says 4:45 battery left.

I thinks it's basically a coin toss on which processor to choose. The harder the decision, the more negligible the difference.