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How's your battery?

J

joewillmott

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 22, 2012
170
0
England
I just returned my rMBP and got a MBA (13"/i5/8GB/128) and have been pleasantly surprised by my battery life, after being let down by the rMBp.

Currently running many Safari tabs, Mail and Word, brightness is halfway, still got 6:59 left at 63% charged - absolute madness!

How are other people's? Not the most exciting conversation, I know.
 
joewillmott said:
I just returned my rMBP and got a MBA (13"/i5/8GB/128) and have been pleasantly surprised by my battery life, after being let down by the rMBp.

Currently running many Safari tabs, Mail and Word, brightness is halfway, still got 6:59 left at 63% charged - absolute madness!

How are other people's? Not the most exciting conversation, I know.
Click to expand...
There are many factors that impact your battery life, so comparing with other people isn't very revealing. They could have a completely different mix of apps and settings which could make their battery life significantly different than yours. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions:
 
I wasn't complaining... quite the opposite. I still have almost 7 hours left at 63% charge. Just wanted to know if everyone's is this good or if I got lucky.

Edit: 12 and a half hours =D
 
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joewillmott said:
I wasn't complaining... quite the opposite. I still have almost 7 hours left at 63% charge. Just wanted to know if everyone's is this good or if I got lucky.

Edit: 12 and a half hours =D
Click to expand...

That doesn't seem accurate. The 7 hour estimate is usually pretty reasonable from full.

The Airs are very sensitive to CPU load. If you have the brightness turned all the way down, and don't do much of anything, you could probably get 10-12 hours. But if you crank up the brightness, light up the keyboard, and crank both cores to max, you may only get a little over 2hrs. Completely depends on what you're doing.
 
joewillmott said:
I just returned my rMBP and got a MBA (13"/i5/8GB/128) and have been pleasantly surprised by my battery life, after being let down by the rMBp.

Currently running many Safari tabs, Mail and Word, brightness is halfway, still got 6:59 left at 63% charged - absolute madness!

How are other people's? Not the most exciting conversation, I know.
Click to expand...

that is probably b.c you have absolutely nothing running and are not doing a single thing. I have seen 15 hours completely idle which is obviously not the case. As soon as you open one tab in safari you will see the real numbers start to reflect
 
Wow, it looks like quite a few people didn't even try to read your post. lol...

I can get 12 hours on my Macbook Air doing light reading/note taking (with brightness down). I get 7 hours with heavy browsing, youtube videos, brightness up. About 10 hours with my typical brightness at 20% usage.

Then, I've seen other people I know with Macbook Airs blowing through their battery in less than 5 hours. Usually with their CPU fans blairing, tons of stuff up, heavy CPU games running minimized, and several youtube videos going on at once. I'm not surprised that they look at me with pure disbelief when I say I can easily get 10+ hours of battery life.
 
im not really sure how long i get. i use 50% brightness and turn bluetooth off. it was at least 8 hours. i had the day off and was sitting on the couch surfing the web pretty much all day.

my macbook pro was like this when i first got it too. surfing the web and such was easily 9+ hours but it was a core 2 duo. my battery is really good for a core i5 on this air.
 
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