Love new 13" MBA - Hate battery life

[2IS]

What? You're saying Lion causes a 24% drop in battery life in light browsing and not for the "flash web browsing" test in the next table? That's a whole lot of imagination with nothing to back it up.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4528/the-2011-macbook-air-11-13inch-review/13

I'm not saying anything except how do you know that isn't the cause? I'm not making any claims, I'm questioning yours.

If that link was suppose to back you up then you must have pasted the wrong one as the one I clicked on made no mention of HD3000 and turbo being the cause of lower battery life under browsing conditions.

 

[calvol]

I'm not saying anything except how do you know that isn't the cause? I'm not making any claims, I'm questioning yours.

21S, you're not following. Here's the logic negating your statement "how do you know it's not Lion causing the battery drop".

Look again at Anand's battery life charts
1) 2010 has 24% better battery life in light browsing
2) 2011 has slightly better browsing in flash web browsing

If Lion (as you suggest), caused 24% worse battery life in light browsing, why wouldn't it also cause 24% less battery life in flash web browsing?

 

[jackyyeow]

Sorry I don't believe 2010 13" with coolbook can run up to 10+ hours. It can, unless you switch the AirPort off and doing just offline productivity and listening to itunes, at maybe 40% brightness, which is the experiment I did on mine and it sure able to sustain for 10 hours, not claiming by posting a review.

However, as long as the Airport is switched on, and start browsing, even a site like MR which is light on the data transfer and with clicktoflash, I can probably achieve max 8 hours without controlled browsing experiment. As soon as you add a little flash content like 360p youtube into the browsing test like 30mins+ in the whole browsing session, 7 hours is still achievable but that's about it. Watching 720p movie with quicktime is going to make the battery life much less.

Get a refurb/used 2010 if you use it for surfing and offline productivity works 90% of the time, it's still a better choice. Anything else, I see no differences from my 2010 13" coolbook'ed battery life compared to what other 2011 owners reported.

PS: Mine is 2010 13" ultimate 2.13/4/256.

 

[tecknik1]

Ive been getting good battery life with my 13 I5 with Adobe Flash installed, been using it at work this morning since 7am doing emails, web browsing and word documents and I have 48% battery left after 4.5 hr,s.
On another note i have not experienced any of the issues posted such has freezing, or taking long time to come out of sleep mode. My MacAir has been flawless and I have Samsung SSD and Screen, Just got lucky I guess.

 

[2IS]

If Lion (as you suggest), caused 24% worse battery life in light browsing, why wouldn't it also cause 24% less battery life in flash web browsing?

If the Sandy Bridge turbo was what was causing the worse battery life in light browsing (when it would be going to turbo very infrequently), why did it get bettery battery life in everything else that's actually more demanding and would ramp up to turbo frequencies more often?

Yeah, see what I did there? I can throw that same logic right back at you. My initial reply to you didn't suggest Lion was the culprit. My second reply to you I said straight out, I'm not saying Lion IS the cause, and now my third reply to you I'm going to say the same thing. I'm not saying it's lion. Hopefully I won't have to say it a 4th time.

I threw Lion into the mix to make a very simple point, which is that you have no idea why the battery life is what it is under light browsing. Pretending like you do is ignorant. You're guessing, nothing more nothing less. Worse yet, your guesswork is based on nothing more than you dislike of Intel's IGP.

 

[haruhiko]

I was the OP in this thread and just wanted to follow up for posterity here...

First, I am absolutely 100% keeping this gem of a machine.

Following the advice of so many on here, I have set up chrome with the "Click to Play" content setting. What a major difference this has made - I'm pretty consistently at 5-7 hours of usable battery life now.

Every time I scroll by a puzzle piece I just smile knowing I'm getting bettery battery life and missing out on crap ad at the same time. Talk about a win-win.

Just wanted to thank you all for the good advice, common observations, and feedback.

Thanks for your feedback, I didn't know Chrome supports Click to Play without the need to install extensions before reading your post.

 

[sjinsjca]

So you're having Flash problems. It's an inefficient piece of crap software. My suggestion is to follow the instructions here: http://daringfireball.net/2010/11/flash_free_and_cheating_with_google_chrome

...Basically, you remove Flash from your system but keep Google Chrome around for those occasions when you need Flash. It's embedded and sandboxed within Chrome, so it doesn't bog down your system.

Recommended. It's done wonders for my aging Macbook Pro. Runs cool and quiet and stably, and the battery lasts longer.

 

[calvol]

That's a whole lot of speculation there with nothing to back it up besides more speculation. How do you know the difference isn't SL vs Lion?

Yeah, see what I did there? I can throw that same logic right back at you. My initial reply to you didn't suggest Lion was the culprit. My second reply to you I said straight out, I'm not saying Lion IS the cause, and now my third reply to you I'm going to say the same thing. I'm not saying it's lion. Hopefully I won't have to say it a 4th time

Please don't say anything 4x, because you're not making sense. You're first comment suggested the 24% loss in light browsing is due to SL vs Lion. You're second statement says its not. Now tell me what is causing the 24% loss if it's not SL vs Lion? It couldn't be the processor and it's weak IGP could it? LOL. That's the major change in the 2011 relative to power consumption, not SL vs Lion. Ridiculous.

 

[2IS]

Please don't say anything 4x, because you're not making sense. You're first comment suggested the 24% loss in light browsing is due to SL vs Lion. You're second statement says its not. Now tell me what is causing the 24% loss if it's not SL vs Lion? It couldn't be the processor and it's weak IGP could it? LOL. That's the major change in the 2011 relative to power consumption, not SL vs Lion. Ridiculous.

I already told you why I brought up Lion, it was to ask you "how do you know" and the answer is you don't. I'm not sure why you're asking me where the loss is coming from because I'm not pretending to have the answer.

The bottom line is that you haven't a clue as to why the battery life for light browsing is what it is. Your "turbo boost" theory falls flat when you look at battery life in other tasks. In-fact, anand did 3 battery life tests and the 2011 did better in 2/3 of them and both those tasks would engage turbo more so than the light browsing would. Your own "evidence" (if you want to call it that) does a lot more to disprove than to support you.

You're essentially saying a weaker GPU (which typically use less power) using a smaller manufacturing process (which typically also use less power) have come together to use more power? Right, that makes perfect sense there...

Like I said, you have nothing to backup your claim. You don't like HD3000 and you're trying to pin it there. Let me know when you come across some hard evidence that actually backups up instead of debunks your hypothesis.

 

[seong]

Man, I don't know why people on Macrumors Forums rage about the bad battery life on the MBP 13". Let me ask you one thing. I know you've been looking at the battery meter every single time you are off from power supply, but do you ACTUALLY use it until in completely drains? I highly doubt it. If you hate the battery life that much, go get a desktop. If you think Lion kills the battery life, go back to Snow Leopard. No need to start complaining on here.

Man..... the number of threads full of complaint/debate is increasing day by day.....

 

[ws07]

Man, I don't know why people on Macrumors Forums rage about the bad battery life on the MBP 13". Let me ask you one thing. I know you've been looking at the battery meter every single time you are off from power supply, but do you ACTUALLY use it until in completely drains? I highly doubt it.

Yes, I did.

If you hate the battery life that much, go get a desktop.

No, I need a laptop. And the Air is the perfect laptop for my use case - frequent travel.

If you think Lion kills the battery life, go back to Snow Leopard. No need to start complaining on here.

I wasn't complaining, I was posting that I was seeing a significant inconsistency in my actual observed battery life vs. expectations. Those expectations were based on both Apple marketing and many online benchmarks.

As a result of my post, a number of very thoughtful responses were posted that gave me suggestions that, for me, made a significant difference.

Man..... the number of threads full of complaint/debate is increasing day by day.....

As a matter of course, when there are flare-ups of threads there is a tendency for there to be a grain of reality behind them.

The internet and forums often blown up significantly beyond their actual impact, BUT if you look hard enough there is most often something at the core...

 

[calvol]

Your "turbo boost" theory falls flat when you look at battery life in other tasks. In-fact, anand did 3 battery life tests and the 2011 did better in 2/3 of them and both those tasks would engage turbo more so than the light browsing would. Your own "evidence" (if you want to call it that) does a lot more to disprove than to support you.

Fail.
The 2011 MBA does better in the 2nd and 3rd Anand battery tests because flash browsing is CPU intensive, and SB beats C2D 2:1 in this scenario, so this argument fails.

You're essentially saying a weaker GPU (which typically use less power) using a smaller manufacturing process (which typically also use less power) have come together to use more power? Right, that makes perfect sense there...

Fail again.
TurboBoost, operating at max 2.9GHz from an idle of 800Mhz is the predominant factor in increased power consumption, which would completely override a slight power savings from the Intel GPU.

Einstein, let's hear your theory why the 2010 is 24% better than the 2011 in Anand's light browsing test before you start debunking any other theories.

 

[2IS]

Fail.
The 2011 MBA does better in the 2nd and 3rd Anand battery tests because flash browsing is CPU intensive, and SB beats C2D 2:1 in this scenario, so this argument fails.




Fail again.
TurboBoost, operating at max 2.9GHz from an idle of 800Mhz is the predominant factor in increased power consumption, which would completely override a slight power savings from the Intel GPU.

Einstein, let's hear your theory why the 2010 is 24% better than the 2011 in Anand's light browsing test before you start debunking any other theories.

I'll repeat myself for the 5th time then. I don't have a theory, I'm telling you yours is baseless. You have showed ZERO evidence to backup your claim, none whatsoever. You don't even know which test is GPU and CPU intensive, you don't even know when and how often turbo boost is being engaged and you don't even know the power consumption when it is. Everything you've said is quite literally, made up by you.

You see, we can go back and forth and say the exact same thing over and over again. The end result is the same. You have no evidence and your theory baseless. Anandtech did not come to the same conclusions, you're pulling **** out of your ass and you know it.

The only failure here is your ability to back yourself up. Repeating yourself doesn't count. Linking a review that doesn't say what you're saying doesn't count either. Like I said, come back when you have something other than your misguided opinion.

In an effort to keep this from turning into a needless flame war, this will be my last reply unless you actually show some real evidence/proof that's wroth discussing. Until then, feel free to have the last word by rehashing your opinion yet again.

 

[calvol]

I'll repeat myself for the 5th time then. I don't have a theory, I'm telling you yours is baseless. You have showed ZERO evidence to backup your claim, none whatsoever. You don't even know which test is GPU and CPU intensive, you don't even know when and how often turbo boost is being engaged and you don't even know the power consumption when it is. Everything you've said is quite literally, made up by you.

You see, we can go back and forth and say the exact same thing over and over again. The end result is the same. You have no evidence and your theory baseless. Anandtech did not come to the same conclusions, you're pulling **** out of your ass and you know it.

The only failure here is your ability to back yourself up. Repeating yourself doesn't count. Linking a review that doesn't say what you're saying doesn't count either. Like I said, come back when you have something other than your misguided opinion.

In an effort to keep this from turning into a needless flame war, this will be my last reply unless you actually show some real evidence/proof that's wroth discussing. Until then, feel free to have the last word by rehashing your opinion yet again.

Ok Einstein, pointless discussion if you have no technical background. If you did, you could at least come up with some proposal why MBA 2010 gets 24% greater battery life in light browsing than 2011, or some basis why TurboBoost with a weaker IGP is not causing. Until you do, you have no credibility, and only wasting bandwidth on this board.

 

[HiRez]

My 13" i7 gets about 4.5-5.5 hours in typical mixed use (Safari, Xcode, Mail, with WiFi). For a fast, light laptop, that is not bad to me. When mostly idling (like reading stuff) I will get around 7-8 hours, when running games it can be under 2. But for most "normal" stuff it generally gets through the day easily.