Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Pinkstiletto66

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 12, 2010
501
1
New York City.
Well I narrowed down my selection to an 11 inch MBA or a 13 inch MBP (if fixing my comp is too much) and I want to know how many hours are you getting on your older airs. As far as I can remember the battery wont hold as much power as time goes on so I want to know how many hours do you get on your MBA's now that are a year or two old? I believe it's suppose to be 5 hours fully. Btw my question is for people with "light" usage, meaning just emails, web browsing. I watch videos on youtube occasionally, but I concentrate more on making my on, and editing them for youtube.
 
I have a 2010 13'' MBA and suppose to get 7hrs. All I can see Apple's advertised hours is complete bull. Unless you leave the machine literally idol you might be able to get those hours. As of now, almost a year from when I bought the MBA, I perhaps get 3hours if I'm lucky.
 
In my 2010 11" MBA, using mainly Safari (with Click2Flash), and screen at about 40-50%, I am getting around 5.5 hours, sometimes 6. Battery is at 43 cycles.
 
The battery in my mid-2009 Air is at 271 cycles and 90% health. Under normal usage (web browsing, some coding in Xcode with an occasional compile, e-mail constantly checking, etc.) I get anywhere from 3-4 hours out of it. Granted, it was only from 4-5 when new, so there hasn't really been much of a drop over the last two-and-a-half years.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2011-11-06 at 3.01.08 PM.png
    Screen Shot 2011-11-06 at 3.01.08 PM.png
    115.4 KB · Views: 107
The battery in my mid-2009 Air is at 271 cycles and 90% health. Under normal usage (web browsing, some coding in Xcode with an occasional compile, e-mail constantly checking, etc.) I get anywhere from 3-4 hours out of it. Granted, it was only from 4-5 when new, so there hasn't really been much of a drop over the last two-and-a-half years.

Thats cool that it can tell you all of that. I really dont know if my original Macbook could have done that. 3-4 hours isn't bad. I checked the link above and its so crazy how some people get 2 hours then some get 5, supposedly doing the same things. I'm so afraid of being the one that wont get much time. Hahaha. I think I'm that bad lucky when it comes to getting defective things.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

2010 11" MBA, usually around 4-5 hrs using a variety of programs.
 
I have a 2010 13'' MBA and suppose to get 7hrs. All I can see Apple's advertised hours is complete bull. Unless you leave the machine literally idol you might be able to get those hours. As of now, almost a year from when I bought the MBA, I perhaps get 3hours if I'm lucky.

I have a 2010 13" that goes on battery for a good 8 hours (have never tried to see how long it would go beyond 8 hours). Keep in mind that that 8 hours isn't constant use...I get up to go to the washroom, let it sleep when I'm reading physical textbooks, etc...

Mostly I'm using it for word processing and internet browsing, and even get some youtube action via html5. I'm quite happy with the battery life on mine.

I'm at 96% health and 52 cycles. The health fluctuates a lot though....the other day it went back up to 100%.
 
I have a 2010 13" that goes on battery for a good 8 hours (have never tried to see how long it would go beyond 8 hours). Keep in mind that that 8 hours isn't constant use...I get up to go to the washroom, let it sleep when I'm reading physical textbooks, etc...

Mostly I'm using it for word processing and internet browsing, and even get some youtube action via html5. I'm quite happy with the battery life on mine.

I'm at 96% health and 52 cycles. The health fluctuates a lot though....the other day it went back up to 100%.

Question, about flash. So when a person goes on youtube normally from a notebook is it flash or html? As I have read, less flash equals more battery.
 
Question, about flash. So when a person goes on youtube normally from a notebook is it flash or html? As I have read, less flash equals more battery.

Normally it's flash, but if you go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 you can change your default setting (for your youtube account) to html5. That's what I've done.

When/if you absolutely need flash I just use chrome since it has a built-in flash player.
 
Well I narrowed down my selection to an 11 inch MBA or a 13 inch MBP (if fixing my comp is too much) and I want to know how many hours are you getting on your older airs. As far as I can remember the battery wont hold as much power as time goes on so I want to know how many hours do you get on your MBA's now that are a year or two old? I believe it's suppose to be 5 hours fully. Btw my question is for people with "light" usage, meaning just emails, web browsing. I watch videos on youtube occasionally, but I concentrate more on making my on, and editing them for youtube.

You are leaving out an important variable: How many charges do you use? The limiting factor is not the "one year", it is whether you used 10 charges, 100 charges, or 1000 charges. From Apple's website: "The built-in battery of your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is designed to deliver up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity. ".

And the 13" has longer battery time; probably because it has more space for batteries. Which obviously means more size and more weight.
 
You are leaving out an important variable: How many charges do you use? The limiting factor is not the "one year", it is whether you used 10 charges, 100 charges, or 1000 charges. From Apple's website: "The built-in battery of your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is designed to deliver up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity. ".

And the 13" has longer battery time; probably because it has more space for batteries. Which obviously means more size and more weight.

Actually, the more practical consideration is how long each charge will last (i.e. how many hours of battery you can get before having to plug it in).

It'll take years before reaching 1000 cycles or 80% of battery, so it's not really an important or practical issue.
 
I consistently get 15+ hours on my 2010 13" MBA, sometimes more, right now I have 18:43 left...
 
On my 2010 13" MBA, I get around 7 hours of life if I'm just casually reading webpages and word processing (my usual load).
 
2010 13" MBA, I get about two days, or roughly 9-10 hours of usage if I'm just reading stuffs, typing documents, and surfing the web.

7-8 hours on average while surfing the web with occasionally checking out video.

4-5 hours of doing CAD or graphics works.

2-3 hours playing video games like StarCraft II and the likes.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.