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How long can I realistically expect the battery to last?

M

macdudesir

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 16, 2011
363
84
Blacksburg, VA
How many hours can I get out of an 11" air, realistically? I know apple says 5 hours but I'm seeing like 3 :(...how many hours do you think I could get with light web browsing with some YouTube videos (all flash besides YouTube will be blocked with "ClickToFlash")and i will have bluetooth turned off...also, I'm not a high brightness kind of guy (iMac is on 2 notches...sometimes none and my iPhone is on 1/8 brightness) so the brightness will probably be 1/4or less.

Thanks in advance!
 
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The worst I've gotten is about 2.5 hours but I often get 3.5-4.5 hours of routine use. If I'm miserly and start turning bits off, turning brightness down, etc getting 5 hours isn't hard but it's not as good a user experience so I usually don't bother.

But I very rarely watch any video and don't often use any flash either. I notice whenever I'm doing these things by battery life indicatation goes from around 4 hours to closer to 2.
 
normal usage, not turning things off, screen at about 40%, wifi and bluetooth on (use the mouse wireless moose a lot). backlight on lowest cause i like the keyboard effect.

I can typically sit through one hockey game on TV, so 7pm to 10pm. and often can get through the first period of the following game. 3 to 4 hours under these loads isn't unquestionable.

Usually i don't pick the websites i go to either. they'll range from a flash based page fullscreened showing my hockey pool stats, (yahoo). Xchat irc program, and browsing sites such as this one, or local newspaper sites like Toronto Star and Sun.
 
I have a 13" and it says 7 hours

I get the full 7 hours, maybe more every single day.

I take it to work and don't take the charger. I use it all day and come back with 20%, 30%, 40%, 45% battery left.

I use 40-50% brightness, light browsing all day long. I set up a hot corner to sleep the display and use it extensively throughout the day. As soon as I take my eye away from the screen to do something I sleep the screen.

When I get up from my desk I close the lid (sleep the machine).

Stuff like that gives me my full day's worth.

On the 11.6" I'm sure you can get the 5 hours or maybe 6 for VERY light usage and being very careful with everything.

What I'm saying is: if I had the 11, it would last me a full work day, almost every single day.
 
LordVic said:
normal usage, not turning things off, screen at about 40%, wifi and bluetooth on (use the mouse wireless moose a lot). backlight on lowest cause i like the keyboard effect.

I can typically sit through one hockey game on TV, so 7pm to 10pm. and often can get through the first period of the following game. 3 to 4 hours under these loads isn't unquestionable.

Usually i don't pick the websites i go to either. they'll range from a flash based page fullscreened showing my hockey pool stats, (yahoo). Xchat irc program, and browsing sites such as this one, or local newspaper sites like Toronto Star and Sun.
Click to expand...

Yes! Another hockey fan on the forums :D
 
eowl said:
My 13" gives me about 3 and a half hours unplugged
Click to expand...

Heavy usage I hope?

I typically get about 5hrs out of my 13", enough for my usage. Just a shame CoolBook doesn't work with iX cpus, used to get about 30-45 minutes extra out of my 11" C2D with no detriment to the experience.
 
MBA 11 gives me about 4-5 hours of pure word processing (on low screen brightness), but only about 3 hours with web browsing, particularly if I scroll through quickly - I suspect this exercises the graphics capabilities and drains battery.
 
yegon said:
Heavy usage I hope?

I typically get about 5hrs out of my 13", enough for my usage. Just a shame CoolBook doesn't work with iX cpus, used to get about 30-45 minutes extra out of my 11" C2D with no detriment to the experience.
Click to expand...

Yeah, reasonably heavy usage
 
Roughly around 4 hours of web browsing whit brightness set bellow half power on my 13" i5. Im pretty heavy on multitasking while browsing. My 11" C2D air lasts a little longer.
 
I usually get 3 hours when browsing with the occasional youtube video.

It's the only thing I don't like about this computer. If the battery lasted longer it would be almost perfect. Maybe I've gotten used to my Pro and expect every computer to last as long. My brand new Vaio only lasted 3 hours so the Air is still pretty good I guess.
 
My 13" mid 2011 gives me about 5+ hours with mild to heavy usage. Coconut battery says that I have 98% of the original battery capacity left.

Anyone who doesn't have coconut battery, get it!
 
I get about 3 hours on my 11" ... but I use it at full brightness and am downloading a lot of data over wifi.
 
So you guys say it is possible to watch a complete movie in Netflix with a full charge?
Because I can't in my 2009 MBP, C2D. Although the battery normally is rated at about 4 hrs or so,cwhen I start to watch a movie it normally decreasesctoa mere 1 -1.2 hrs. In general, that's almost enough for a movie, although frequently as yesterday night I had to connect the charger to watch the last 15 minutes.
I'm thinking to a MBA now, but I want to be surethe battery lasts more than my current MBP.
 
Netflix is not what we are talking about. Netflix is going to eat battery at a high rate due to Silverlight usage. Silverlight and Flash are the silver bullets when it comes to battery life.
 
Yes, I know that. However, my question remains: will I see difference? Or the 2011 MBA won'allow me, say, 2 hours of video playing with Netflix or similar?
 
About 6 hours on a 2011 MBA 11.6" 1.6/4/128 with 3 bars brightness only typing into Xcode and very light, non-Flash web browsing.
 
This might be relevant to your uses: I get a MINIMUM of 3 hours watching YouTube videos pretty continuously on my late 2011 15" MBP.
 
I usually have it plugged in these days but I used to get 3-4 hours when I used to run on battery. Longer if I turned wifi off
 
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