Battery life

Maybe take a read here, especially the section called "Battery life from a charge":

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This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:
Apple Notebook Battery FAQ by GGJstudios
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That sounds about right - the brightness of the screen has a big effect.

 

I would assume that Apple would have put a new battery in the MBA. You can check the # of battery cycles. IIRC, the MBA battery is good for ~1000 cycles.

 

People average different life reports because of different usage.

User 1: With news.yahoo.com opened, a text document, and Google Chat up will probably get 8+ hours of usage.

User 2: With youtube running, iTunes playing music, Skype video chat, and a game minimized will probably get a lot less, 3-4 depending on how intense the game is.

I can even get 12 hours showing with minimum brightness and a text pad opened . lol. But my average use is 7 hours with RDP and light web usage.

Also, is it an Air 11 inch or 13 inch?

 

Advertised battery life is under ideal conditions, in reality it varies depending on what each user is using it for, whether it is very CPU/GPU intensive and certainly screen brightness is a big factor as well.

For simple web browsing, at 50% brightness I ususally get sligthly over 4hrs.

 

2010 13" MBAir here and I use mine while at work. I have even left my charger at home a couple times. Even if I start at ~98% battery charge once I first open it up at work, I can run iMessage, Mail and iTunes all day. Now on the couple days that I didn't have my charger, when I closed the Air to leave work it was at like 7-12% but it does in fact last me all day(8hrs).

 

There is a free application in the Mac App Store called Battery Health.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-health/id490192174?mt=12

 

I've been having huge battery issues with Mountain Lion, damn. I went from 6-7 on my normal use to around 3. I keep it on 25-35% ish brightness, light browsing, with music in the background and occasional TV shows in VLC. I really hope Apple does something about this since I don't appear to be the only one having battery issues.

 

Mine is less than a week old and 96% after 7 cycles.

 

It's perfectly normal. I have a MacBook Air, and after listening to iTunes in just a few minutes, I already drained 7% of my battery life. Editing in FCP X takes 1 hour, Intense games 1 hour, surfing the web is 4 hours.

This MacBook Air is just 2 Months old. And it's perfectly normal in health.

 

I'm pretty sure Mountain Lion has something to do with this. Hopefully 10.8.1 will fix the battery issues.

 

One thing that is somewhat overlooked or underestimated is tweaking your screen brightness. The brightness affects battery life just as much as the tasks you do on it.

Whenever you are running on the battery, you should lower the brightness completely down, than raise it till you find the brightness acceptable, and leave it there.

And if you are using it outdoors and must have the brightness cranked, dont be surprised when the battery life is cut in half.

 

I keep telling myself, unless it's broken don't upgrade but I don't listen.

Battery & Network is affected. Patiently waiting for an update.

 

The battery health does not start at 100% and gradually drop - it will go up and down over time.

 

I knew it. Apple wouldn't release a MacBook with such horrible battery life. It must be related to Mountain Lion. Notification Center, probably.

 

I was getting around 2-3 hours of my MBA 11 2012 to start with and i wasnt very impressed, until i realised i had dropbox & wunderlist running in the background, so i closed them down when i didnt need them and reduced the brightness a little bit (checking the battery life estimate everytime to see what it said) now im getting around 6-7 hours which i consider very good.

 

Same here

Mine is 2 weeks old actually with 6 cycles at 96%. Started at 97% from when i bought it.

 

Is it an 11" or 13"? If it's an 11", then 4 hours sounds about right.

 

I'm going to try quitting dropbox when I don't need to update my files and see how my battery life is.