2013 Macbook Air Mavericks Battery Life thread

[Jefe's MacAir]

Been playing Dr. Meth for over a week. This means my Air has been running non stop.

Took it to work yesterday and opened it immediately. Left open and running from 10:00am until 8:30 pm. Still had in excess of 20% battery showing almost 3 hours left.

The game ran in a window the entire time while I did some web browsing and checking mail. The game itself uses a fair amount of power compared to just a static browser window like MacRumors running.

I've seen estimates as high as 15:30 w/ 99% battery.

 

[scottecs]

Test completed

I've updated my usage time post. https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18234789/

The result was: total time on battery 48:50 hours, around 7:30 hours of use, the rest of it sleeping with the lid closed, half of the actual use was with USB devices connected.

Not super happy, but it seems like it's getting better. I'll try again today.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

I've updated my usage time post. https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18234789/

The result was: total time on battery 48:50 hours, around 7:30 hours of use, the rest of it sleeping with the lid closed, half of the actual use was with USB devices connected.

Not super happy, but it seems like it's getting better. I'll try again today.

Was 'Power Nap while on battery' on or off?

Bluetooth on or off?

Wifi on or off?

What type of USB devices are you using? I charge my iPhone via USB at times while running just on battery.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

From Apple's MacAir page.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/features.html

Thanks to compact all-flash storage in MacBook Air, there’s plenty of room for a big battery. Working together with the new power-efficient Intel Core architecture, this battery can post some impressive numbers. Now the 11-inch model gets up to 9 hours of battery life on a single charge and the 13-inch model gets up to 12 hours. That gives you all-day power for word processing, presentations, email, and more. And if you’re watching iTunes movies, you get up to 8 hours of playback time on the 11-inch model and up to 10 hours on the 13-inch. Put MacBook Air to sleep for more than 3 hours, and it enters standby mode to conserve battery life for up to 30 days.1 And if you enable Power Nap, you’ll continue to receive new email and calendar invitations while your computer is asleep.

You're just 1.5 hours shy of the advertised estimated max. Key words being 'up to'. You should see an increase with Mavericks. It appears that your battery life is increasing over time. Hopefully it was just the new OS organizing Finder and such.

 

[scottecs]

Was 'Power Nap while on battery' on or off?

Bluetooth on or off?

Wifi on or off?

What type of USB devices are you using? I charge my iPhone via USB at times while running just on battery.

Power Nap on battery off.
Bluetooth off.
Wifi on, except for the last 3 hours (music session).

USB Devices used:
Korg USB MIDI Keyboard (100 mA)
Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch Receiver (98 mA)

I know 7:30 hours is around the advertised time (especially using USB devices), but with Mavericks promising an extra hour or so, and lots of people reporting the battery life bump, I felt strange that I'm the only one that has slightly less battery life than Mountain Lion. I used to get a little more than 8 hours.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

How long ago did you do the upgrade?

 

[scottecs]

How long ago did you do the upgrade?

I upgraded the morning it became available, right away.

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Just wanted to give some more data: I've been using it intensely for a few hours (animating with Wacom Bamboo Tablet and Flash pro CC + browsing and youtube, wifi on) and I got 4:15 hours until it was at 9%, and I had to plug it in. I could've squeezed 20/30 more minutes probably, but didn't want to stress the battery.

Does it seem reasonable?

 

[RightMACatU]

You have to see it to believe it

13" Mid-2013 Ultimate.
I booted from a fully charged battery and saw 20h

 

[Chicane-UK]

I fully charged my 11" Air yesterday and had an evening sitting on the sofa - web browsing, watching stuff on YouTube and listening to music pretty much non-stop. I even turned off the backlighting on the keyboard to see if it'd help.

After 2.5 hours battery life was down to 60% and it estimated approximately 5 hours remaining. Not exactly earth shattering, but not terrible either

 

[Dr. McKay]

Using Mavericks now and battery life has improved slightly, but I'm not getting anywhere near the claimed 12 hours.
However, I use Dropbox all the time and just found this :
http://www.neowin.net/news/cut-your-13-macbook-air-battery-life-from-12-hours-to-3-by-using-dropbox

Has this bug been fixed yet ? If not, then that's the culprit. If it has, then I'll have to look elsewhere.
Only have 4 battery cycles for the moment, may it'll level out (as I've read on some forums)...

 

[88888888]

I have the 13 inch mba 2013 but i feel like battery gotten worse..

 

[kevingill]

Anyone tried to monitor CPU load?

I suggest people monitor CPU with something like iStatMenus to see how hard the CPU /network/SSD is working. Without this, you haven't got a clue what the Mac is doing.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

13" Mid-2013 Ultimate.
I booted from a fully charged battery and saw 20h

View attachment 443811

And I thought I was special when mine read 17hrs.

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I upgraded the morning it became available, right away.

----------

Just wanted to give some more data: I've been using it intensely for a few hours (animating with Wacom Bamboo Tablet and Flash pro CC + browsing and youtube, wifi on) and I got 4:15 hours until it was at 9%, and I had to plug it in. I could've squeezed 20/30 more minutes probably, but didn't want to stress the battery.

Does it seem reasonable?

5 hours does seem a bit short. Even with some 'heavyish' usage.
Should be done organizing. The battery estimator takes time to adjust. Otherwise try a clean install. You do run the screen at lower than full brightness? I'm assuming you've covered this prior in this thread.

 

[RightMACatU]

13" Mid-2013 Ultimate.
I booted from a fully charged battery and saw 20h

View attachment 443811

UPDATE: That 20h is not accurate. As I used my MBA that number melted pretty fast with average use (copying files around, rebooting a VMWare image a few times and Safari surfing).

The % value seemed more in line with reality than the Hour value. The Hour value quickly went down to around 6h with an 80% -ish value.

 

[massi88]

I have a mid13 MBA i5 8Go 256Go, I used to get around 11h/12h of web browsing, airmail open and some tex writing, now I get around 10h with Mavericks...a bit disappointed, I hope something will get improved, battery life was the main reason I updated to Mavericks...

 

[mynameis321]

Damn, this thread is not encouraging. Just placed an order for a MBA 13" and obviously it will come with Mavericks, but this has me worried now

 

[n1tut]

Not sure how often it needs repeated, the power icon often means nothing, if you want to know how long your battery is lasting, charge up to 100%, unplug power lead, then time on a clock how long it takes to get to zero using your Macbook as you normally would.

Not exactly rocket science.

tut

 

[Oivalf]

I was not happy with Mavericks in my MBA 2013 for the first three or four days. I used to have 12 hours of battery with the previous OS. But now, possibly after Spotlight finished updating and with all the updates, I'm getting around 14 hours of battery.

Yesterday I started working at 9am with battery. Just made a small stop at noon to have lunch, and then another one at 5pm. After dinner I saw two tv shows on my Air, and I still had 2 hours of battery.

All in all, I think I got 12 hours of battery (but two of them were watching Castle and Once Upon a Time!).

Incredible battery, man!

Cheers.

 

[halledise]

Why does it work for everybody but me?

For me, Battery life has been worse so far... check this out

Image

Been using for like half an hour and have 82% left. Only safari browsing. Nothing else. Turned off dropbox, bitcasa, creative cloud, just safari.

A bit strange.

same here … and this after an erase and install of Mavericks. odd …

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

I'm at 7 hrs. right now and show 42% 4:09 remaining.

Email & web surfing with some flash content only. Brightness varied from 35%-50%. 50% is nearly as bright as my 10s 75% brightness. 35% is usable.

When I started the time remaining went as high as 17:50.

If my flash content, Dr. Meth game running 24/7, is in full view on the screen the estimate drops. If it's partially hidden but exposed enough to run the game but not all the graphics it climbs back up quickly.

Mavericks is all about shutting down hidden windows/apps while not in use. The game I'm playing needs to be partially exposed otherwise it stops running. Partially exposed allows it to continue to run but hiding the flash intense graphics keeps battery life up.

During the time it took me to write this my estimate jumped to 5:19 @ 41%

 

[Windowsrefugee]

I was not happy with Mavericks in my MBA 2013 for the first three or four days. I used to have 12 hours of battery with the previous OS. But now, possibly after Spotlight finished updating and with all the updates, I'm getting around 14 hours of battery....

Thanks for the detailed information.... It would be helpful if you and others would post the model (11 or 13 inch) and CPU (i5 or i7) to provide context on battery life.

As pointed out by others, the actual use unplugged (as described later in your post) is what really matters as the timer really only provided a snapshot estimate. It does seem that you are confirming that you really do get better battery life with Mavericks once Spotlight has finished indexing. That is reassuring.

I am thinking about the 2013 13 inch i7 (vs the i5) and would love to know what the real world battery life is on the i7 with Mavericks vs ML. Can others provide their experience?

 

[Middleman-77]

same here … and this after an erase and install of Mavericks. odd …

You need to do a permissions repair with Disk Utility, and an SMC reset. Once done it will revert to a better figure eventually.....I had got up to 18 hours on mine, before it dropped down to a realistic 12.

 

[mark29]

Air 2013 i5, 4gb, 256gb here. Ever since the "silent" mavericks GM update my battery life has gone from 12h to 7h, use safari, no dropbox, 40% brightness.

Tried a fresh install of Mavericks and no change.

I used to get those temporary 20h at full charge but haven't seen it show over 10h since the problem.

Consistently see safari in apps using significant energy when I'd never seen it there before the problem and I've been on Mavericks since DP1.

Update: Now preview is showing up as using significant energy! wth? This is with just one pdf open.

Also tried smc and pram resets but no change, 81%, 6 hours left with just safari, mail and preview open.

 

[fedecape]

External display and chrome with 2 YouTube tabs.

Is this ok? Seems pretty poor to me

I don't wanna reinstall the OS

 

[julianxdm]

Has anyone of the folks having battery issues, tried repairing disks permissions and doing and SMC reset, I did that and after that I got this.