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Disappointed - 2013 MBA

R

rochow

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 20, 2013
64
17
Not sure what is wrong...

Battery life is 2:30 remaining! I took it off charge less than an hour ago. My 2011 with hundreds of cycles is better then this. I have Chrome running and that's all.

I tried Geekbench (when I was powered on): http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/18113

Score seems to suck? Nowhere even close to what reviews said. (comparing 32bit, of course if I bought and could 64bit score it'd be higher)

SSD is almost 700mb/s, that's nice ;)

Monitor, wow. Maybe I'll adjust, it's like there's blue foil over the screen. It's so "cool". I downloaded an ICC from the forums here but couldn't "set" it (I changed under settings->display to it, but couldn't figure out how to apply). I have a samsung panel from the look of things, which AFAIK was a good thing. I use thunderbolt display 90% of the time, going from that to laptop monitor on it's own is a noticeable "coolness" difference.

Not sure how to debug, even from a fresh reboot, it's drawing -1500 amps out of 8000 possible (iStats menu).

Are there background tasks running that could be chewing it up? I'm not overly experienced with Mac - I've used it for a few years now, not intricately - unlike Windows I can't just open task manager and know what processes are required and what are superflous; and unfortunately most mac help is ridiculous "unneeded processes you say? Why that's ridiculous sir. Mac NEVER runs a process that isn't needed" (ha). So, hard to debug because there's a ton of misinformation from what I've seen.

Any help would be great!

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For example, here's an identical (from what I can tell) system to mine that flogs it: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/8389
 
Try Activity Monitor, in your /Applications/Utilities folder. Set the process filter menu to "All Processes". You can sort by %CPU, but I find it easier to sort by name, and peruse the list (otherwise, the process order is constantly changing).
 
None really stand out. I have ~125, with 725 threads, if that's notmal (6 chrome tabs at the moment + skype)
 
How long have you had the Air? I found that after a couple of days my battery life was 10-12hrs, but it was significantly lower than that when I first started using the computer...
 
Arrived about 8 hours ago. Only been using it last 1-2 hours, it was migrating across at first.

Hopefully! I have been waiting this whole time for the MBP, nothing happening until October (apparently), and I'm going away soon and need the better battery life so bit the bullet - hence my disappointment at the lack of improvement so far (maybe if I worked for 3 hours it'd be "all day battery"!).

This is my 2011 i5 with 4GB, only 10% worse at geekbench. The CPU is 2 years older, plus is a lower end model :(
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/18232

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http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/18245

Now I'm just confused... maybe non turbo vs turbo mode? :)
 
Dude, first of all you should chill a bit. RELAX.

From what I read, there is nothing wrong with your Air, but rather you have failed to follow normal instructions.

-Not knowing how to apply custom profile for display doesn't make your air suck.
-Not initially charging your Air as recommended and then wondering why battery is only 3 hours... that's on you too.
-You are not using the optimum geekbench testing software. You need to use the 64bit.

First, just charge your laptop for about 8 hours... if you haven't done that already.
Good luck.
 
I get well over 8+ hours running Chrome while on youtube with no keyboard backlight and screen brightness adjusted to whatever it needs to be.

I am no expert on laptops or macbooks but Mine is less than 3 days old and it's battery life is pretty consistent with first day use. And I only charge it once everyday before sleeping and still using it to about 60% and that will last me all day till I need to charge it again, lol :)

Good luck man. I think you just need to give it sometime!
 
rochow said:
Arrived about 8 hours ago.
Click to expand...

There's going to be a ton of activity right now, because Spotlight is busy indexing your drive for searching. It's going to be like this for at least a few hours of processing, at which point a lot of CPU, drive activity, and power will be consumed. Once it's done, things should improve dramatically.

So, give it a day or two, stop obsessively benchmarking, and just use it. If through normal use it's just not up to your needs, return it.
 
Yes it was fully charged. If you read it, it was on power for the 5 hrs migration took, and it already came 90% charged.

Possible, because I migrated not much seemed to be happening. That's why I thought background processes that have carried over and are chewing away (nothing has high CPU or RAM and stands out).

Maybe there's some weird "run in" period like mxidis88, I'll connect it to the monitor rot day but it's out power and see how it goes.

Hopefully comes good, last thing I need is the miss's to be right :D (why are you spending two grand on that, it's the same as you already have!) haha.
 
rochow said:
I tried Geekbench (when I was powered on): http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/18113

Score seems to suck? Nowhere even close to what reviews said. (comparing 32bit, of course if I bought and could 64bit score it'd be higher)

Any help would be great!

----------

For example, here's an identical (from what I can tell) system to mine that flogs it: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/8389
Click to expand...

Also, keep in mind everyone was talking about the MBA's Geekbench 2 scores as Geekbench 3 only came out last week. My i5 2013 MBA with 8 GB of RAM scores 6800 on the 64 bit Geekbench 2 but scores about the same or slightly higher than your Geekbench 3 32 bit score. You have nothing to worry about.
 
Mine only lasts like 4-5 hours(from 100 - 20%) with 0 keyb brightness, about 50% display brightness, clicktoflash installed, and with finder and safari opened in the background.

I normally just web surf with under 5 tabs or watch movies. This is with 11"/8/i7. Since it is my first mac, I think it has okay battery life. Nothing too crazy. Youtube drains mine even faster.

If I have a movie thats like 4 gb with 1080p running through mxplayer, I can probably finish one whole movie with more than 20% more battery left. I think the last time I checked, it drained about 30% from 1 hour of playing a movie like that.

I don't think I can expect too much from the battery. Of course the remaining battery estimates will show satisfying numbers like 6-9 at 100% charge, but mine normally doesn't last that long. Varies with use. I am on week 5-6

I love my mac air though. It is very compact and portable. Also very snappy. I am satisfied with it. In a few years, I can just replace the battery
 
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Same thing with my 2012 i5 model. Battery barley last 3hrs with not much stuff running in the background. Apple refused to swap my battery as after "their" 10 min testing they could find any problem with it. Not sure what the problem is..
 
The 2nd GeekBench was ok. Maybe the CPU was busy the first time with something else and wasn't 100% focussed on the tests (which it was the 2nd time as I shut absolutely everything). Or it was at 1.7Ghz stock vs jumping into the turbo mode. Who knows. In the end it's going about 30% faster, which is good enough when combined with the faster SSD + 4GB of extra RAM.

Thanks will give SMC reset a go.

Battery seems fine (no physical problem), and the testing I linked to earlier showed 4 hrs usage while running geekbench non stop! So 4 hours would be an absolute minimum. I was hoping for about 10 hours, would settle/be ok with 8 hrs, knowing in a year or so that'll drop to more like 6-7. I essentially paid $1800 for the same laptop which is a bit faster - so it *needs* the battery life, hence why I was so frustrated last night. I'll have to wait until the weekend to use the laptop and see how it goes, seems soon as I disconnect the power, can't use thunderbolt display.

Yeah they sure hate flash, I avoid it where I can, CPU usage spikes and the fan goes insane!
 
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