Is my battery life bad? Or I'm just going crazy for nothing?

[aespana]

Hello guys,

I need your help to identify if my MacBook Air M1 is having a good battery life and I'm just going crazy for nothing, or there are something wrong.

About a 2 weeks ago, I got a M1 MacBook Air from eBay with 93% of battery health. It have been working amazingly for this time but I just feeling that the battery life could be better. Since all those 18h of use per day that you see in the web, I'm thinking if my Mac is fine because I just get around 10 hours. You can see my snippet:

Be aware that the last bar it was with a 100% battery charge from last night. All those other bars are with the same charge through the week.

I'm currently in MacOS Sequoia and the use was mostly watching videos in Youtube and light stuff in the web. Usually I use the bright no more than a 60%. I also only use Safari.

Is my Macbook fine? Is Sequoia a battery friendly OS? Am I going crazy for nothing? It's my first time experiencing a M processor.

Thank you guys!

 

[JPack]

Unless you perform a standardized test, nobody can say if your battery is ok.

93% means it's moderately degraded with at least a couple years of usage.

 

[ignatius345]

Nah, 10h of actual real work usage is pretty much what I was getting on my my M1 Air. Totally normal. "Just doing stuff on the web" is actually kind of intensive use because you're constantly loading and rendering things. To get 18h per charge you'd have to have the brightness way down and be doing some really low impact type stuff like writing or light document creation, etc.

 

[aespana]

Unless you perform a standardized test, nobody can say if your battery is ok.

93% means it's moderately degraded with at least a couple years of usage.

Didn’t know that 93% is a moderately degraded status for a battery. It make sense since checking the serial in Apple website, it says that the MacBook was bought in 2022 (iifc).

Nah, 10h of actual real work usage is pretty much what I was getting on my my M1 Air. Totally normal. "Just doing stuff on the web" is actually kind of intensive use because you're constantly loading and rendering things. To get 18h per charge you'd have to have the brightness way down and be doing some really low impact type stuff like writing or light document creation, etc.

Well that makes me more calm about this and yeah, usually just surfing the web.

Yeah, I also think that a 18h is just to much for a normal use (50% or more bright or using YouTube o doing another things).

Thank you guys for your comments. I’ll just leave the MacBook be a MacBook and that’s all

 

[chabig]

Since all those 18h of use per day that you see in the web...

I haven't seen anyone claim they're getting 18 hours of use. I see a lot of comments on other sites claiming less. If you get 10 hours during normal use I would say you're doing well.

Apple mentions battery life of 18 hours in the tech specs, but that's in the limited case of watching AppleTV or playing movies, which is probably one of the lowest power activities you can do.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

 

[MacCheetah3]

Thank you guys for your comments. I’ll just leave the MacBook be a MacBook and that’s all

🙂👍

Since all those 18h of use per day that you see in the web [..]

I haven't seen anyone claim they're getting 18 hours of use. I see a lot of comments on other sites claiming less. If you get 10 hours during normal use I would say you're doing well.

Apple mentions battery life of 18 hours in the tech specs, but that's in the limited case of watching AppleTV or playing movies, which is probably one of the lowest power activities you can do.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020) - Technical Specifications - Apple Support

support.apple.com

The following is FYI purposes, to elaborate:

Unfortunately, compared to their iPhone battery test information breakdown, the Mac testing footnote (via the link @chabig posted) is vague:

1. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, configured with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.

Furthermore, Apple doesn’t mention "hours [of] video streaming” for the MBA with M1. However, from the current MBA tech specs (i.e., M4-based):

Battery and Power

• Up to 18 hours video streaming
• Up to 15 hours wireless web
• Built-in 53.8‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer batter

1. Testing conducted by Apple in January 2025 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, and 8-core GPU, and preproduction 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, and 10-core GPU, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. Wireless web battery life tested by browsing 25 popular websites while connected to Wi-Fi. Video streaming battery life tested with 1080p content in Safari while connected to Wi-Fi. All systems tested with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom and keyboard backlight off. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.

My guess is that “content" is not YouTube, rather probably a simple/basic embedded MPEG-4 video, which is not much more tasking than downloading a file. In contrast, to put it somewhat simply, YouTube serves videos in tiny chunks on-demand. It’s part of an adaptive system to adjust quality on-the-fly and also part of content protection (e.g., unauthorized downloading). As such, the YouTube playback system is constantly requesting and sending data.
And there’s also overall Web bloat.

Lastly, an important specification to note is the M4 MBA has a nearly 8% larger capacity battery than the M1 MBA, 53.8-watt-hour vs 49.9-watt-hour. In addition to the M4 including expanded and improved support for video codecs, it being a generally more efficient processor, and so on, of course, runtimes will be at least a little better.

 

[ignatius345]

Didn’t know that 93% is a moderately degraded status for a battery. It make sense since checking the serial in Apple website, it says that the MacBook was bought in 2022 (iifc).

That's a pretty silly term. I guess you could also call any used car "moderately degraded"

I would absolutely ignore the percentage number, it's mostly a stat for battery hobbyists, and normal users need not pay attention to it at all. Use the Mac as you see fit, and when the day comes when it doesn't hold enough charge to do what you need, get the battery replaced.

 

[aespana]

🙂👍


The following is FYI purposes, to elaborate:

Unfortunately, compared to their iPhone battery test information breakdown, the Mac testing footnote (via the link @chabig posted) is vague:

Furthermore, Apple doesn’t mention "hours [of] video streaming” for the MBA with M1. However, from the current MBA tech specs (i.e., M4-based):


My guess is that “content" is not YouTube, rather probably a simple/basic embedded MPEG-4 video, which is not much more tasking than downloading a file. In contrast, to put it somewhat simply, YouTube serves videos in tiny chunks on-demand. It’s part of an adaptive system to adjust quality on-the-fly and also part of content protection (e.g., unauthorized downloading). As such, the YouTube playback system is constantly requesting and sending data.
And there’s also overall Web bloat.

Lastly, an important specification to note is the M4 MBA has a nearly 8% larger capacity battery than the M1 MBA, 53.8-watt-hour vs 49.9-watt-hour. In addition to the M4 including expanded and improved support for video codecs, it being a generally more efficient processor, and so on, of course, runtimes will be at least a little better.

It looks like a lot of things to be aware about the battery life.

I thought that just watching a Youtube shouldn't create that battery impact but it looks the other side and also, wow that video about the websites bloat. I also only have Wipr 2 and Bitwarden as Safari extensions.

And you are right about the battery size of the M4. Maybe, the comments I read about those 18h was for a M4 Pro or something like that.

That's a pretty silly term. I guess you could also call any used car "moderately degraded"

I would absolutely ignore the percentage number, it's mostly a stat for battery hobbyists, and normal users need not pay attention to it at all. Use the Mac as you see fit, and when the day comes when it doesn't hold enough charge to do what you need, get the battery replaced.

Yeah, I will do that. I actually do that with my 13 Mini since his battery life is just garbage and I know it, so I have a portable battery to charge it and also I usually charge the phone in the night and also, before leaving the workplace.

Again, thank you for your comments guys!

 

[Ruggy]

Something else to consider is how many apps you have installed and what they are doing in the background.
You are right that brightness has the biggest influence but if you have apps who are constantly phoning home, checking for push notifications, then they can use a lot of battery life
Icloud synch, calender, messages, cloud storage apps....
But things like weather apps and particularly free apps are sending back data on you constantly.
10 hours doesn't sound at all bad though.