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MacBook Air 2013 i7 Battery Life

k3ith

k3ith

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 1, 2007
180
149
New York, NY
Is absolutely terrible! If you're buying this new MacBook Air refresh for the awesome claimed battery life, then definitely for the i5 because I have been doing MINIMAL web browsing and absolutely NO intensive computing and will be lucky if I get 8 hours today... far from the 12 apple claims for the i5.

Wish I would have known how badly this chip effected battery life.

What a waste!
 
k3ith said:
Is absolutely terrible! If you're buying this new MacBook Air refresh for the awesome claimed battery life, then definitely for the i5 because I have been doing MINIMAL web browsing and absolutely NO intensive computing and will be lucky if I get 8 hours today... far from the 12 apple claims for the i5.

Wish I would have known how badly this chip effected battery life.

What a waste!
Click to expand...

Umm there may be something working in the background or the computer may still be indexing. I got 11 hours and 30 minutes yesterday and I have the ultimate model.
 
Im getting over 8hrs. I dont know how much more because I have not gone below 30%. i7 with 8gb ram. Thats with wed browsing, some videos and some airplay videos.

I went 3 hours airplaying a HD video from my nas and lost 30%. That is pretty processor intensive and I still should have been able to go over 8hrs.

Are you playing games? Parallels? The ratings are based on average usage. Its like getting upset your not getting the rated mpg when you drive 85mph on the highway.
 
My i7 is showing 10.5 hours left while doing web browsing on AC wifi and screen brightness set 2 clicks below max.

FWIW the first couple hours my estimated hours were incorrect and showing like 5 hours time on 100% charge. I let it go down to 95 or so then charged up again - did that 2 times and the estimated time indicator is now over 10 hours - fyi.
 
techn0lady said:
My i7 is showing 10.5 hours left while doing web browsing on AC wifi and screen brightness set 2 clicks below max.

FWIW the first couple hours my estimated hours were incorrect and showing like 5 hours time on 100% charge. I let it go down to 95 or so then charged up again - did that 2 times and the estimated time indicator is now over 10 hours - fyi.
Click to expand...

11" or 13"?
 
k3ith said:
Is absolutely terrible! If you're buying this new MacBook Air refresh for the awesome claimed battery life, then definitely for the i5 because I have been doing MINIMAL web browsing and absolutely NO intensive computing and will be lucky if I get 8 hours today... far from the 12 apple claims for the i5.
Click to expand...
IMO, the two things that Apple does on its battery tests that most folks don't replicate is setting the screen brightness 12 clicks from the bottom, and not installing Adobe Flash.
 
FWIW I'm finding that estimates of battery life via the menubar icon can vary widely depending on how much I am typing or using the machine. An hour ago the estimate was 10.5 ... the it went down to 9.5 and it's back up to 10.5 again after an hour. I've used 6% in an hour so far. All in all batterry life appears to be a lot longer - if I can get a decent 8 hours out of it I'll be a happy camper.
 
Like, right now I'm sitting down and with spotify, messages, word, and chrome open with a few tabs and the computer is super warm...

I definitely just have went for the i5.

and yes, I have the 13 inch. I really don't need the extra comp power, but thought it would be good to future proof my computer, but in hindsight that was pretty silly as now I have a super hot, battery intensive mac :( when all I wanted was something to shoot off emails with and do some light browsing...

might do a swap at the apple store tomorrow
 
musika said:
Probably. But hey, you're the lucky one with both machines to play with!
Click to expand...

I know, it is difficult with 8gb and the other 4gb, I wish they are both 4 or 8gb to really know the difference as the i7 opens apps immediately after clicking on the icon, the i5 will bounce 2-3 times before showing the app.
 
k3ith said:
and yes, I have the 13 inch. I really don't need the extra comp power, but thought it would be good to future proof my computer, but in hindsight that was pretty silly as now I have a super hot, battery intensive mac :( when all I wanted was something to shoot off emails with and do some light browsing...

might do a swap at the apple store tomorrow
Click to expand...

You've got 14 days. Basing your opinion on just the first day isn't really the way to do it. the battery needs to calibrate, and Spotlight needs to finish indexing. the first use is always going to be the shortest as a result. If your battery life is still bad and the casing is still hot after two days, then take it back.

FWIW, my 13 inch i7 is very cool to the touch, and it's been installing software and encrypting for filevault. I've been running it for nearly 8 hours now, and the battery says I have 3 hours, 18 minutes to go. Initially on first boot, it told me I only had 5 hours of battery life. So, the first estimate was clearly off.
 
I picked up a 13" MBA i7 / 8GB RAM / 512GB SSD yesterday.

I wasn't too impressed with the battery life as I used it yesterday and earlier today as I didn't seem to be getting any more than about 3.5 hours of use on a full charge. I checked Activity Monitor, and all appeared to be ok... until I switched the filter to "All Processes" and then discovered that my Carbonite back-up software was continuously consuming 100-150% of CPU usage! :eek:

I removed this software, gave the MBA a good charge and now the machine is showing 16:29 remaining at 100% :) I'm not doing anything intensive on the MBA as yet, but it looks like battery life is going to be just fine...
 
Sounds similar to the other report of an initial Dropbox sync taking up 139% of CPU and triggering the fan to spin up.
 
DoctorK4 said:
Sounds similar to the other report of an initial Dropbox sync taking up 139% of CPU and triggering the fan to spin up.
Click to expand...

Yes, fan came only on Dropbox setup and it just went crazy for about one hour and very hot bottom while re-installing Mountain Lion
 
curtoise said:
Yes, fan came only on Dropbox setup and it just went crazy for about one hour and very hot bottom while re-installing Mountain Lion
Click to expand...

But that's reinstalling the OS, not really day to day use stuff. Dropbox has always needed to get their **** together, CPU-wise.
 
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