Have I got a bad one?

[slight32]

I've had my 13" early 2014 Air (4gb/128gb) for one week.

The battery is on 100%, but says I have 8.55 remaining (no external drives plugged in).

The blackmagic speed test gives results: 205 read / 450 write.

I upgraded to Yosemite, before which the battery life seemed normal.

Software loaded;
Office
Onedrive
VLC
Acrobat Pro trial
Unrar

Is it worth doing a clean install or might there be a more serious problem?

 

[ABC5S]

Look at the remaining time again to see if it improves after Spotlight Search does it thing, which could be a while. Any changes. Even with a clean install, you have to wait a little bit and the time remaining will improve. It does with mine

 

[Carlos840]

The battery could be a lot of things, spotlight, screen luminosity, a certain app not going in app nap mode, you name it.

The disk speed is definitely on the slow side of things, like i mentioned in the other thread.

Now, will it really make a difference in real life use?
I don't know, but i know it would bother me to have an inferior SSD knowing i paid the same price as someone with a superior one!

Considering what i pay for an apple product i always expect it to be pretty much perfect, but that's me...

 

[Dweez]

Regarding the disk performance, the smaller storage devices are slower than larger devices.

What's your display brightness set to? The battery "time remaining" will fluctuate quite a bit, I'd not be concerned about it. Use the machine and enjoy it. If you're still unhappy with it in another week or 2, return it for another as you'll be within the 30 day grace period.

 

[motrek]

I've had my 13" early 2014 Air (4gb/128gb) for one week.

The battery is on 100%, but says I have 8.55 remaining (no external drives plugged in).

The blackmagic speed test gives results: 205 read / 450 write.
...

Battery life depends on what you do with the computer. You might have a web page open that's running some Flash advertisement that's taking up a non-trivial amount of CPU time, and thus at your current rate of battery drain, it will run out in 9 hours instead of what you expected.

(BTW -- it was only a few years ago that laptops had 3 to 5 hours of battery life, and now we're at the point where people are complaining that they're "only" going to get 9 hours. Amazing.)

As for the speed test, it's odd that your write speed is higher than "normal" whereas your read speed is lower, but do you care? Are you trying to search for things that are wrong with your machine or is there an actual use case that you can't accomplish because your read speed is only twice as fast as a hard drive?

 

[slight32]

So, I jumped too quickly.

I've had the Air on for 4 hours today, running Office, Outlook and Safari with 4 or 5 tabs, and the indicator suggests a further 9:55 remaining. Jesus. 14 hours if no change in use.

 

[motrek]

So, I jumped too quickly.

I've had the Air on for 4 hours today, running Office, Outlook and Safari with 4 or 5 tabs, and the indicator suggests a further 9:55 remaining. Jesus. 14 hours if no change in use.

Yes, the estimate will change frequently depending on power consumption in the last minute or two. But it is definitely impressive these days.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Yes, the estimate will change frequently depending on power consumption in the last minute or two. But it is definitely impressive these days.

^^^THIS^^^

The amount of battery remaining indicator is dynamic and changes depending on the current load. Decrease the load and time will increase while more demand will make the time decrease.

 

[Agent47]

The 128GB SSD is known to be much slower than the 256 or 512.

 

[Dominus Mortem]

The 128GB SSD is known to be much slower than the 256 or 512.

Yes, true. But my 11" Air with a 128gb SSD gets 350/650. His figure is just low enough that it would bug me too—if I knew. He should take it back and take another stab at the SSD lottery. If he's past the 15 day return window he should delete Blackmagic and purge those figures from his mind. Heck, that's still ridiculously faster than any mechanical drive.