Battery life plummetted in a week (2012 Air)

[masands]

Hi guys,

I just got my first Mac. My first reaction (for the first week anyway) was how amazing the battery life was. It could last 8+ hours. Now suddenly (it kinda happened overnight), I cannot get more than 4 hours! I have no idea what happened. I have not installed/deleted any new apps! All the brightness settings etc are the same. Searching on the internet, it seems that Mountain Lion is at fault..? My Air came with Lion and updated to Mountain Lion on the same day. The only thing that has changed is, I am getting more notifications (I added some Email accounts) than before. Could this be the reason?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to show you the process(es) slowing down your Mac or speeding up your fan(s) or causing more heat or lessening battery life.

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

 

[Wowzera]

Hi guys,

I just got my first Mac. My first reaction (for the first week anyway) was how amazing the battery life was. It could last 8+ hours. Now suddenly (it kinda happened overnight), I cannot get more than 4 hours! I have no idea what happened. I have not installed/deleted any new apps! All the brightness settings etc are the same. Searching on the internet, it seems that Mountain Lion is at fault..? My Air came with Lion and updated to Mountain Lion on the same day. The only thing that has changed is, I am getting more notifications (I added some Email accounts) than before. Could this be the reason?

Mountain Lion have problems with the battery performance. Downgrade to Lion or try disabling the Notification Center (option + click the NC icon in the menubar), it actually improved my battery life that is far from the great performance from Lion.

 

[Ksh]

Well, also would point to some process demanding higher resources than expected

At least from my experience ML has considerately improved my battery life in a brand new mba 2012.Now doing the same tasks got around 9-10h of autonomy instead of 8-9 from Lion

Regards

 

[dcorban]

Try uninstalling Adobe Flash for a few days and see how your battery performs.

I have a 2012 Air and Mountain Lion. Battery is as good as day one. It currently claim 8:16 minutes, and I've been unplugged for about 20 minutes already.

 

[Wowzera]

Try uninstalling Adobe Flash for a few days and see how your battery performs.

I have a 2012 Air and Mountain Lion. Battery is as good as day one. It currently claim 8:16 minutes, and I've been unplugged for about 20 minutes already.

You did a clean install or updated?

 

[crazyxzer0]

my battery claims 8:51 but I don't believe it.



edit: after 13 minutes, it's already plummeted to 5:47. Bluetooth, Wifi on. brightness 2 clicks from lowest, keyboard dim is half way 8clicks. Just browsing using Chrome, no videos, music etc.

 

[twintin]

Mine claims anything between 8-13h with around 50% brightness, keyboard backlight at 3 notches, WiFi turned on and using it for browsing, editing documents and other light stuff. Never been able to verify how well those calculations really are in reality (have only had it for around one week). My Air came with ML preinstalled.

 

[masands]

Well, I think I figured out the problem. My university internet is so bad that even though it shows connected, it is not. I think it happens due too many students using WiFi. Anyways, my mail frequency check was set to 5 minutes. Now my poor Mac would try and connect every 5 minutes but fail and I think this was causing a massive drain in battery. Doing a test at home, it is absolutely perfect. Lasted a whole day for me. About 8-12 hours of just light word processing and internet.

 

[Barna Biro]

Well, I think I figured out the problem. My university internet is so bad that even though it shows connected, it is not. I think it happens due too many students using WiFi. Anyways, my mail frequency check was set to 5 minutes. Now my poor Mac would try and connect every 5 minutes but fail and I think this was causing a massive drain in battery. Doing a test at home, it is absolutely perfect. Lasted a whole day for me. About 8-12 hours of just light word processing and internet.

Bad, bad University... you should just look for a different one!

 

[dcorban]

You did a clean install or updated?

I simply performed the update.