Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Brand new 11" - getting 3 hours of battery wtf?
- Thread starter Sean Dempsey
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
When I first received my MBP I was getting about 4 hours of charge; after cycling the MBP over the course of a month (full drain + full charge) I was getting 5.5hours of use with almost full brightness, web browsing, office, normal everyday use. Two years later I still get 5-5.5 hours of use. What I'm trying to say is relax and do some cycles as other people have said
5% for 15 minutes means 5 hours for 100%. That's for idle.
As others have mentioned, it could be the indexing, it could be the brightness, it also could be the flash (if you're browsing flash sites or videos).
As everyone else said do the battery calibration and run a few cycles through your battery. You will see if increase guaranteed. Did that to my wife's MBA 2011 11" and she is showing around 5.5 hours normal use now. Just remember like the great Douglas Adam says: Don't Panic!
One other thing to consider, depending on your browser of choice, would be some form of script and/or flash blocking extension. In Firefox I use NoScript & FlashBlock to prevent sites from loading memory hogging add-ons and flash components. This will dramatically increase your battery life as well.
One other thing to consider, depending on your browser of choice, would be some form of script and/or flash blocking extension. In Firefox I use NoScript & FlashBlock to prevent sites from loading memory hogging add-ons and flash components. This will dramatically increase your battery life as well.
The timer is running. Started it at 10:04am MST. Put a postit over the battery on the menu bar.
This will be the 6th complete battery drain. I have it reloading apple.com every 2 minutes. There is no flash loading, but any javascript on the page I am going to let run, since that's pretty ubiquitous with web browsing.
The CPU is bottomed out barely hitting 2-3%, nothing is running, other than the webpage loading every 2 minutes there's no network activity and no bluetooth.
Screen is at 50% brightness, keyboard backlight is off. Seems like a pretty fair test based on the test apple has advertised on their macbook air page.
This will be the 6th complete battery drain. I have it reloading apple.com every 2 minutes. There is no flash loading, but any javascript on the page I am going to let run, since that's pretty ubiquitous with web browsing.
The CPU is bottomed out barely hitting 2-3%, nothing is running, other than the webpage loading every 2 minutes there's no network activity and no bluetooth.
Screen is at 50% brightness, keyboard backlight is off. Seems like a pretty fair test based on the test apple has advertised on their macbook air page.
Honestly, this is ridiculous. You're never going to be happy unless you get a full 5 hours, which is probably not going to happen. Just bring it back and save yourself the trouble.
How do you figure 2.5-3 hours of use is not ridiculous?
Are you telling me that if you bought a Macbook Air 11" "ultimate" for $2000 (including applecare), you wouldn't expect maybe a little more battery life?
I'm not asking for 5 hours. I am asking for at least more than 2.5-3 hours.
Maybe using it for a week will make the battery more efficient, which shouldn't even be needed with a Lithium Ion battery.
Please don't **** up this thread unless you have insights into batteries and macbook airs.
You should get about 3.5-4 hours of battery life assuming nothing is soaking up battery in the background. Unfortunately, the Sandy Bridge processor does draw on average more power than the Core 2 Duo. The next generation with Ivy Bridge should see a nice bump in battery life, and it will get better still with the Haswell chips in 2013/2014.
Alright, sitting there doing nothing but refreshing Apple.com every 2 minutes, the computer lasted 5 hours, 30 minutes before hibernation. At least I know if I need the computer on but doing nothing, it lives up to the advertised battery life.
I need to come up with some sort of way now to simulate real world usage and do it again. Any ideas how to script something that would be more like someone visiting various sites, typing a bit, opening and closing programs.. anything like that?
I need to come up with some sort of way now to simulate real world usage and do it again. Any ideas how to script something that would be more like someone visiting various sites, typing a bit, opening and closing programs.. anything like that?
Your results aren't far off from AnandTech's
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4554/apples-11inch-macbook-air-core-i7-18ghz-review-update/5
Somehow he manages to get 6 hours 20 minutes in his "light usage" test, but that's updating pages every 20 seconds. With three open Safari windows, each browsing a set of web pages with between 1—4 flash ads per page, at the same time, and playing an XviD video in a window all while downloading files from a server at 500KB/s, he gets 2 hours and 57 minutes on the 11" i7.
I've got a 13" and 17" MBP between my wife and I, I am more interested in the length/width of the 11" than the weight/height. A 13" Air just doesn't interest me.
The 11" is great, I guess I was expecting it to be more like my ipad, a device that's ready to go all day.
So it's this, or the huge, heavy 17". Maybe I just need to excange the 11" incase bag for a little bigger one, so that the power cord extension will fit in it (since I'm going to need it).
The 11" is great, I guess I was expecting it to be more like my ipad, a device that's ready to go all day.
So it's this, or the huge, heavy 17". Maybe I just need to excange the 11" incase bag for a little bigger one, so that the power cord extension will fit in it (since I'm going to need it).
Well, since the 13" has more battery life it's more a "ready to go" device
That's a little off topic though.
On topic, about the real world usage test, just use it how you would in a normal day, simple. Just remember, the advertised battery is almost never reached in normal usage. Especially with brightness.
Just use it normally and see how much it lasts, but with brightness to 3-4 boxes.
I think a real world test could be constructed with this: http://seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/
And then various people could use the same test on various models.
And then various people could use the same test on various models.
Thats a part of the reason I opted for the 13" as well after trying the 11" (2010 model).
My 11" was also getting around 3 hours on a full charge doing nothing more than browsing, Skype chat (not even video/audio, just text), mail, etc.
The big thing here is the screen brightness. Put it at 40% brightness and you will probably get around 4-4.5 hours.
I guess the annoying thing about today's computers is that as soon as you do ANYTHING on them the battery life gets cut in half or more (that includes putting up the brightness).
I am sorry to tell you that what you are experiencing in perfectly normal and Apple probably won't exchange it (unless they do it just to be nice). And it really is normal.
If battery life is very important you should return it and get the 13". The battery life is much better (around 5-6 hours of normal use like word processing, surfing the net, e-mail, etc. nothing intense).
My 11" was also getting around 3 hours on a full charge doing nothing more than browsing, Skype chat (not even video/audio, just text), mail, etc.
The big thing here is the screen brightness. Put it at 40% brightness and you will probably get around 4-4.5 hours.
I guess the annoying thing about today's computers is that as soon as you do ANYTHING on them the battery life gets cut in half or more (that includes putting up the brightness).
I am sorry to tell you that what you are experiencing in perfectly normal and Apple probably won't exchange it (unless they do it just to be nice). And it really is normal.
If battery life is very important you should return it and get the 13". The battery life is much better (around 5-6 hours of normal use like word processing, surfing the net, e-mail, etc. nothing intense).
Screen Shot 2011-09-26 at 1.46.16 PM
What is up with my battery listing? Its saying my mba 7 months old when they only came out in July. Also, compared to the OP's post, my wattage is much much much higher.
I've been having unsatisfactory battery usage as well, but I'm on an 11" i5. I'm getting maybe 3 hours max with the display on the lowest and backlit/bluetooth off.
any ideas?
Last edited:
Coconut Battery hasn't been updated in a while, and its formula for estimating the age of the notebook isn't accurate anymore.
I have no idea. I was getting results closer to the OPs. Did you have anything intensive running in the background (like Handbrake)?
I guess that explains your poor battery life if you are consuming 434.4 watts!
I suspect it gets a little warm too?
You could heat the room with that!Obviously, the Coconut isn't working properly in your computer with those readings. You might want to re-download the program again and run the new copy and compare results. Otherwise ... as someone said earlier, that program hasn't been updated recently and is probably not reading the battery data correctly.
I ran CoconutBattery 2.7 on my 2011 11" i7 Air and it was running about 10-15 watts while doing a TM backup over the WiFi. All other readings were similar, and mine showed a erroneous 7 month age as well.
-howard
Last edited:
A real world result for 2011 13" i7 ultimate from my friend, battery dropping average about 12%~15% per hour, and that average out to about slightly over 7 hours of usage. 5 bars brightness, WiFi on, BT off, clicktoflash+clicktoplugin (safari extension), no keyboard backlight, 3~4 tabs opened in safari, surf normally like macrumors front page news or similar, as well as various forums.
With WiFi off, it'll last about 8~9 hours doing offline light tasks with WiFi off, like iTunes mp3 and document typings.
I've also included an interesting test, similar to the browsing test above, this time with BT/WiFi off but sticking in a 3G USB modem. It's running consistently about 9.5%~10% per 30mins, and after 3 hours there still about 41%~42% of battery left.
I've not tested 11" in anyway, but I expect it to perform similarly with the above test (re-calculate according to the 11" battery capacity, obviously).
Note that, me and my friend have come to a conclusion that putting the battery indicator to % only will make life much easier than looking at the forever fluctuating time left meter. Just like how we use the iPad/iPhone, or even your car fuel tank meter.
With WiFi off, it'll last about 8~9 hours doing offline light tasks with WiFi off, like iTunes mp3 and document typings.
I've also included an interesting test, similar to the browsing test above, this time with BT/WiFi off but sticking in a 3G USB modem. It's running consistently about 9.5%~10% per 30mins, and after 3 hours there still about 41%~42% of battery left.
I've not tested 11" in anyway, but I expect it to perform similarly with the above test (re-calculate according to the 11" battery capacity, obviously).
Note that, me and my friend have come to a conclusion that putting the battery indicator to % only will make life much easier than looking at the forever fluctuating time left meter. Just like how we use the iPad/iPhone, or even your car fuel tank meter.
I do understand that the 13" MBA gets alot better battery life, but I wanted the x-y size.
If I wanted a 13", I'd do a regular MBP with a SSD and then another SSD in the dvd bay.
I am fine with the 11" Ultimate as long as it is functioning as normal. The battery is short, the screen view angles are terrible... but' it's so small!
Just need a buyer for the 17" now.
If I wanted a 13", I'd do a regular MBP with a SSD and then another SSD in the dvd bay.
I am fine with the 11" Ultimate as long as it is functioning as normal. The battery is short, the screen view angles are terrible... but' it's so small!
Just need a buyer for the 17" now.