I just bought the 2013 13" MBA base model (128 sad and 4GB ram) today. It came with Mountain Lion so the first thing I did was install office and upgrade to mavericks. I've now been using it for an hour to type a document and lightly browse safari. It was showing 100% battery and 20 hours remaining after an hour of use. I just did a disk permissions repair and reset SMC as mentioned above and it's now showing 99% and 15 hours remaining. Does anyone know if what I did should fix the problem or is there anything else I need to reset? I'm assuming using it for an hour and still being at 99% can't be possible so something must be off with the battery reader. Thanks for your help!
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2013 Macbook Air Mavericks Battery Life thread
- Thread starter catalyst07
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Look at the previous posts. Chrome uses a lot of battery life. That's probably why your time was cut down a bit.
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My battery life on my 2013 Air went to hell after upgrading to Mavericks. And I don't use Chrome. I'm really pissed off.
As said in previous posts, delete chrome and use safari, that's draining your battery and watching youtube videos also drains you battery fairly quickly.
13.3" base 2013 model. 10.9 installed.
I'm getting 12+ hours easily if all I do is 4-5 tabs in Safari. I bring this laptop to work and I've never had a need for a charger.
Yesterday I installed VMWare Fusion, Windows 7, did the updates on W7 and everything. Heavy usage. I still managed to end the day with 16% left, estimating the times I stepped away briefly and for lunch, I got 8 hours with heavy usage.
Brightness set around 40%, never more than 50%. No backlight keyboard. No bluetooth. Safari opened with corp email, gmail, gDocs, FB, mr. 12 hours easily.
I always disconnect devices or quit apps if I'm not using them. Also set to require password after 15 mins from sleep instead of immediately.
I'm getting 12+ hours easily if all I do is 4-5 tabs in Safari. I bring this laptop to work and I've never had a need for a charger.
Yesterday I installed VMWare Fusion, Windows 7, did the updates on W7 and everything. Heavy usage. I still managed to end the day with 16% left, estimating the times I stepped away briefly and for lunch, I got 8 hours with heavy usage.
Brightness set around 40%, never more than 50%. No backlight keyboard. No bluetooth. Safari opened with corp email, gmail, gDocs, FB, mr. 12 hours easily.
I always disconnect devices or quit apps if I'm not using them. Also set to require password after 15 mins from sleep instead of immediately.
Baseline battery life
I was curious how long my new MBA 13" i7/8/512 10.9 could possibly last on battery with a semblance of activity.
So I shut down all applications except Finder, turned off Wifi and BT, set keyboard backlight to 5 sec, screen brightness to just one notch above zero, and stopped the screen from shutting off on its own.
With these settings and 100% charge, the Apple battery gauge started off at 16:30 and gradually climbed up to a plateau of 20:00 at 97%, which, I believe, corresponds to the minimal average power usage. It stayed on at 20:00 even after I launched Safari to give MBA a little more real life experience.
The Battery Health app at this point peaked to a whooping 1 day 5 hours and 22 minutes (29:22), which is of course more like a snapshot of the power usage and battery life rather than an accurate average level.
I was curious how long my new MBA 13" i7/8/512 10.9 could possibly last on battery with a semblance of activity.
So I shut down all applications except Finder, turned off Wifi and BT, set keyboard backlight to 5 sec, screen brightness to just one notch above zero, and stopped the screen from shutting off on its own.
With these settings and 100% charge, the Apple battery gauge started off at 16:30 and gradually climbed up to a plateau of 20:00 at 97%, which, I believe, corresponds to the minimal average power usage. It stayed on at 20:00 even after I launched Safari to give MBA a little more real life experience.
The Battery Health app at this point peaked to a whooping 1 day 5 hours and 22 minutes (29:22), which is of course more like a snapshot of the power usage and battery life rather than an accurate average level.
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Well, I know the standby time is correct. My Air was in standby for 35 days before it died.
That was with light usage a few times during those 345 days.
If I have 50% brightness, backlit keyboard off, bluetooth off, and connected to a 2.4 Ghz wifi band; my system reports almost 18 hrs battery life on a full charge.
Before I shut off the keyboard backlight, and had it connecting to a 5Ghz band, battery life was about 10 hrs on a full charge.
That was with light usage a few times during those 345 days.
If I have 50% brightness, backlit keyboard off, bluetooth off, and connected to a 2.4 Ghz wifi band; my system reports almost 18 hrs battery life on a full charge.
Before I shut off the keyboard backlight, and had it connecting to a 5Ghz band, battery life was about 10 hrs on a full charge.
Checking in with a 13" ultimate. I generally get 5-7 hours, which is a far cry less than the 10-12 I was getting before. Reset SMC and pram and repaired disk permissions. Dropbox is on, and i don't use Chrome unless it's specifically to watch a youtube video (Safari for 99% of my browsing) and Time Machine only backs up when plugged in. I would love to know what's using my battery, but my menu's been stuck at "Collecting Power Usage Information" for as long as I can remember (a month or so.) Not happy, but dealing with it for now.
I bought a new MB Air 11" and it was showing 9 hrs remaining off the bat with Mavericks. I cloned my work MB Pro Mountain Lion image to the Air and the Air was only getting about 3-4 hours per charge. I just reset SMC and it seems to have helped. The calculated time keeps changing, so we'll see what the average is once it settles down, but for now it's showing 8hrs with 96% remaining.
I, too get about 6:30 h from the mba 13" i5 4/256.
With no usage, just the screen on at almost the highest brightness?
With even minor usage like webbrowsing i can see the percentages counting down.
How do you guys get so much battery life and me so little?
With no usage, just the screen on at almost the highest brightness?
With even minor usage like webbrowsing i can see the percentages counting down.
How do you guys get so much battery life and me so little?
Use "Battery Logger" available in mac app store
For better status of battery usage, use "Battery Logger" available in mac app store
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-logger/id473673114?mt=12
For better status of battery usage, use "Battery Logger" available in mac app store
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-logger/id473673114?mt=12
Because your screen brightness is extremely high. I usually have mine on 6-7 tics (maybe 8).
I usually get anywhere from 7-9 hours on my MBA 13" (2012).
According to apple we should get 12 hours on 4 clicks lower than max brightness.
I don't see this happening so far.
And that's only web browsing? And is that using Safari? What kind of web browsing are you doing?
How long would a new 13-inch MBA last if the screen brightness was set to 1 block from a full charge?
They have 16 blocks for screen brightness. 1 block would be 6.125% brightness.
Assuming I'm only surfing-the-web with Safari and playing music with VLC.
They have 16 blocks for screen brightness. 1 block would be 6.125% brightness.
Assuming I'm only surfing-the-web with Safari and playing music with VLC.
So as an addendum, I started this thread and I never updated to Mavericks based upon the information here- I'm still getting the same battery life as before but wish Apple would get their crap together and release a version of Mavericks that doesn't kill the battery life of the 2013 Airs...
mavericks 10.9 is not the problem...it's 10.9.1
i loved mavericks when i first installed it...10.9 gave the 6-8 hours that 10.8.5 did on my 2013 11" mba i5/8/256, a huge improvement over 2 hours on my 2010 11" mba.
but 10.9.1 dropped battery life down to 2-3 hours again.
i didn't even notice it at first until i was using the laptop at work and was suddenly out of juice midway through a meeting. shocked because that hadn't happened since i bought the 2013. one of the reasons i bought the 2013 11" mba was for battery life and bigger SSD.
so instead of waiting 2-4 more weeks for apple to officially release 10.9.2, i went ahead and google searched 10.9.2 beta and downloaded the beta c59 last night. backed up, and installed 10.9.2 this morning and now my battery life is back to normal... showing 7:15 left after using 1 hour.
love my mba again!
i loved mavericks when i first installed it...10.9 gave the 6-8 hours that 10.8.5 did on my 2013 11" mba i5/8/256, a huge improvement over 2 hours on my 2010 11" mba.
but 10.9.1 dropped battery life down to 2-3 hours again.
i didn't even notice it at first until i was using the laptop at work and was suddenly out of juice midway through a meeting. shocked because that hadn't happened since i bought the 2013. one of the reasons i bought the 2013 11" mba was for battery life and bigger SSD.
so instead of waiting 2-4 more weeks for apple to officially release 10.9.2, i went ahead and google searched 10.9.2 beta and downloaded the beta c59 last night. backed up, and installed 10.9.2 this morning and now my battery life is back to normal... showing 7:15 left after using 1 hour.
love my mba again!
MacBook Air '2013 with 4GB and 256GB here. Was very pleased with ML, noticed a slight increase in battery time with Mavericks. Now I'm like about 20-30% down, noticeably worse battery. Chrome for sure drains a lot, but even in Safari I can't get above +/- 8 hours on 50% battery. And I'm not watching video