Battery time remaining 2:00 hours @ 79%

[BreakGuy]

Just upgraded to Lion (again), and yet again the battery issue remains.

With just WiFi on and 2 tabs in Safari open I'm only getting 2 hours of battery at 79%.

Fix needed. I heavily rely on a decent battery life.

 

[ABernardoJr]

Can you check your Activity Monitor (All Processes) for the CPU and see if anything's taking up a high %?

 

[GGJstudios]

Just upgraded to Lion (again), and yet again the battery issue remains.

With just WiFi on and 2 tabs in Safari open I'm only getting 2 hours of battery at 79%.

Fix needed. I heavily rely on a decent battery life.

Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top). Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[GuitarG20]

Just upgraded to Lion (again), and yet again the battery issue remains.

With just WiFi on and 2 tabs in Safari open I'm only getting 2 hours of battery at 79%.

Fix needed. I heavily rely on a decent battery life.

have you reset your SMC after upgrading to Lion? That is what improved battery life significantly for me.

 

[BreakGuy]

Nothing seems to be using the CPU up. The most the being used by a single process is nothing more than 1% of the CPU.

Also like to note that screen brightness is at 50%, keyboard backlight is at 0% and bluetooth, time machine and everything else (other than WiFi) is off.

 

[BreakGuy]

have you reset your SMC after upgrading to Lion? That is what improved battery life significantly for me.

Yes I did. It was one of the first things I did.

 

[ABernardoJr]

If you go to System Profiler maybe you can check if the condition of your battery isn't "Normal" or something, or maybe Coconut Battery could help with showing the percentages of the battery capacity compared to the original capacity. It's one thing to have numbers lower than the advertised/marketed times for battery life but this does seem unusual.

You said you upgraded to Lion and the battery problems persist, did they persist prior without Lion or do you mean they came back from when you used Lion in the past?

 

[throAU]

You may have something running which uses core animation. e.g.... flash, twitter client, VLC, etc.

Now, its a bit of a pain in the butt, but currently core animation using apps forces the MBP to turn on the discrete GPU, which KILLS battery life.

Download gfxcardstatus, and set it to use integrated graphics unless you're running something that NEEDS fast 3d.

I've had battery estimates of 9 hrs on my 15" pro before doing general basic web stuff. However, turn the discrete GPU on, and it drops to 2.5hrs pretty quick, even if its sitting there mostly idle.

Its a bit of a bug that apple really need to fix, but in the meantime... gfxcardstatus is your friend.





edit:
bah... didn't realise you had a 13" with integrated only GPU. ignore..... but in case anyone with a 15 or 17 has similar issues... see above

 

[BreakGuy]

You said you upgraded to Lion and the battery problems persist, did they persist prior without Lion or do you mean they came back from when you used Lion in the past?

I was originally on Snow Leopard without any problems. I upgraded to Lion and noticed the battery issues that others were experiencing with it. I downgraded back to Snow Leopard and experienced a normal battery life again. This time I reupgraded to Lion and the battery issues are back.

 

[GGJstudios]

I was originally on Snow Leopard without any problems. I upgraded to Lion and noticed the battery issues that others were experiencing with it. I downgraded back to Snow Leopard and experienced a normal battery life again. This time I reupgraded to Lion and the battery issues are back.

As it says in the Battery FAQ I posted, under BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE:

Which Mac model you have and which version of Mac OS X may be factors in determining battery life. According to the test results posted here, battery life may improve by running Lion on a newer MBP, but may be worse on older models. Your results may vary.

 

[thundersteele]

I was originally on Snow Leopard without any problems. I upgraded to Lion and noticed the battery issues that others were experiencing with it. I downgraded back to Snow Leopard and experienced a normal battery life again. This time I reupgraded to Lion and the battery issues are back.

Either:
- downgrade again, or
- make a clean Lion install and check if the issue persists