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MacBook Air 2013 i7 Battery Life
- Thread starter k3ith
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I've got the i5 and my battery's been all over the place in terms of rated time. I've been using it since 3 and it's still got 28% left, so that's about 10 hours... but it was never rated anywhere near that. idk.
Brought the new Air to work today. i7,8,512. I have about a 10 hour day normally. My 2011 i5 base 13" would go all day if I didn't do anything too intensive like watch Netflix. Usually just browse the internets and check email and some iMessage. An occasional movie or two it it's slow. That's when I would need to pull out the charger.
Left the charger at home and started about 10:30 am MST. It's now 4:20 MST
and I'm at 50% w/ 6:45 remaining. Initially I sat at 100% for quite some time. It began to drop about 30-45 minutes into my day. Email and some browsing. Decided to watch Netflix to tax the system a bit and test. 1hr 40 min movie streaming in HD on Comcast internet ate up some %s. Ran a little hot initially but no hotter than my 2011 and likely a bit less than. Noticed last night that some streaming didn't get the fan going at all which normally gets the 2011 going. It did warm up but not much.
Left the charger at home and started about 10:30 am MST. It's now 4:20 MST
and I'm at 50% w/ 6:45 remaining. Initially I sat at 100% for quite some time. It began to drop about 30-45 minutes into my day. Email and some browsing. Decided to watch Netflix to tax the system a bit and test. 1hr 40 min movie streaming in HD on Comcast internet ate up some %s. Ran a little hot initially but no hotter than my 2011 and likely a bit less than. Noticed last night that some streaming didn't get the fan going at all which normally gets the 2011 going. It did warm up but not much.
Hmm.... the Youtube reviewer suggests there may be no difference in battery..
"MobileTechReview
That's right, our Core i7 so far is lasting 12 hours for productivity use."
At the same time The Verge claims 13+ hours on single charge and Pc Magazine 15 hours!
All test performed on the i5 then it looks like the 12 hours of the i7 are a little lower than the slower i5.
I guess we'll know as soon as a review of BOTH models shows up online.
I bought 2 of the 2013 13 inch MBAs with i7 to replace 2010 MBAs in my company. As there is no outward change in appearance, the extra long battery life was the driving factor. However, with one we are getting only 6 hours and the other probably around 8. This is at 75% brightness and this is just responding to e-mails and using MS Word; no video or intensive graphics. This is inconsistent with the early reviews I am seeing on the Internet where reviewers are gushing about 12 to 14 hour battery life. Did we get our computers from a batch of lemons??
I doubt you got lemons. You need to see what applications are running (background tasks) and you also need to compare the brightness you are using with what reviewers are using to get a valid comparison.
No its just plain science.. The i7s won't last as long unless you're babying it. 1.3ghz vs 1.7ghz.. I bet the i7 just runs at a higher base wattage even when idle.
I just bought a 13" i7,8,512.
Lasted me 9 hours yesterday browsing the internet, mail, and watching TWO movies in HD streaming from Netflix. 10:30 am to 7:30pm on broadband internet in use most of that time. I was trying to tax the system to see what I could get out of it. When I got home and told the wife she said that was close to her iPad 2 usage.
Yes, that would normally be my conclusion as well.
Generally, more cpu processing power the higher the power needed to run it.
Except for 1 thing, Intel lists the wattage on both CPU's as 15w.
In the past there has been differences listed by Intel,this is the reason for the confusion on this.
Are they just misreporting?
Or is it accurate?
Valid point.
Just surprised no review sites have done a side by side comparison yet.
Usually these guys are always trying to beat everyone else to get the 1st reviews out.
Some big tech site compared the 2012 MBA i5 to i7.. I expect the same type of review to be done again.. They found the i7s last year to not do as well on battery (by quite a bit from what I remember, too).
Are all you guys using chrome or safari? I've read somewhere that the current iteration of chrome is more power hungry, and safari is I'm sure the browser that apple uses to get its battery life claims. How much of this is related to flash I don't know, since chrome comes with flash built in.
I think it was anandtech. I haven't checked, though. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6063/macbook-air-13inch-mid-2012-review
I have the new i7 13" 8gb memory. I also had a Gmail account that I had never archived anything in. I was wondering why my system was draining so quickly. A big reason was because my new MBA was downloading about 80,000 emails . ooops. Needless to say, now that its finished, my battery life has quadrupled.
. ooops. Needless to say, now that its finished, my battery life has quadrupled.
I'm trying to figure out if my underperforming battery is par for the course or an issue with this particular machine. I haven't gotten more than 6 hours out of it after 10 days of testing. Guess I need to decide quickly before the 14 day window closes, but so far I'm underwhelmed.
I have the 13" ultimate configuration.
I have the 13" ultimate configuration.
I just got my 13" i7/8gb/256 MBA and am impressed! Battery is great, even while installing programs, constantly downloading data and remotely using a disk drive from another mac for imports and installations I got 7 hours and it still had another one to give!
On normal use, with browsing a bit of streaming, photo editing, and face timing I'm using it since nearly 8 hours and still have 50% battery, which is supposed to be good for another 6 hours.
The fan NEVER fired up or at least never spun fast enough to be able to hear and the machine didn't get unnaturally hot either. The bottom was a little more than hand warm while installing Microsoft office but no noticeable fan!
(I'm sorry if this isn't technical enough for some of you, I'm just a average user and hoping to give some of the infos I was looking for when making the decision of what configuration to go for.)
Anyway I can just recommend going for the i7! It really doesn't seem to have a big impact on Battery life or heat or fan noise. The machine is lightning fast and just a joy to work with!
On normal use, with browsing a bit of streaming, photo editing, and face timing I'm using it since nearly 8 hours and still have 50% battery, which is supposed to be good for another 6 hours.
The fan NEVER fired up or at least never spun fast enough to be able to hear and the machine didn't get unnaturally hot either. The bottom was a little more than hand warm while installing Microsoft office but no noticeable fan!
(I'm sorry if this isn't technical enough for some of you, I'm just a average user and hoping to give some of the infos I was looking for when making the decision of what configuration to go for.)
Anyway I can just recommend going for the i7! It really doesn't seem to have a big impact on Battery life or heat or fan noise. The machine is lightning fast and just a joy to work with!
I think this should settle the thread.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7113/2013-macbook-air-core-i5-4250u-vs-core-i7-4650u
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7113/2013-macbook-air-core-i5-4250u-vs-core-i7-4650u
Well, I'm going to post my thoughts after a week of intensive all day use.
My initial battery life was indicated at under 7 hours because of course a new system is doing lots of indexing etc, think the OP is confused about this.
But now I'm getting well over 12 hours. I use Photoshop, Sublime Text, Forklift and Safari all day. I am getting at least 12 hours, the thing is a beast.
i7, 256GB SSD and 8GB Ram. So I don't know what the deal is.
I also have wifi and bluetooth on. Screen is at 80% ish and keyboard light is set to do whatever it wants. Love this machine.
My initial battery life was indicated at under 7 hours because of course a new system is doing lots of indexing etc, think the OP is confused about this.
But now I'm getting well over 12 hours. I use Photoshop, Sublime Text, Forklift and Safari all day. I am getting at least 12 hours, the thing is a beast.
i7, 256GB SSD and 8GB Ram. So I don't know what the deal is.
I also have wifi and bluetooth on. Screen is at 80% ish and keyboard light is set to do whatever it wants. Love this machine.
