MacBook Air 2020 Battery Life Question

[SincerelyHeroic]

I'm just curious, for anyone who bought the 2020 MBA i3 base version what's your true battery life like? I've just had mine for a week now and I'm finding the battery on my laptop draining considerably fast.

The battery life on the 2015 MBA was leagues better than what I'm getting right now on the 2020 one. This morning I lost 10% of charge in 45 minutes while doing light browsing and watching YouTube videos on 75% - 85 % brightness on Safari.

I've turned Bluetooth, Location services and notifications off as well.

Is anyone else having similar experiences?

 

[twintin]

Have not done any exact measure, but usually mine last from morning to evening with some juice left when I plug it in. Typically I do few MSTeams video calls + chat, Slack VSCode remote coding little Safari browsing, listen to radio in the background and occasionally few YouTube clips. Not that much and I have not turned anything off.

So it is a capable machine, but as always, not everyone gets a good battery life.

Have you checked the activity monitor what consumes most energy ?

 

[SincerelyHeroic]

Thats interesting. Can I ask what brightness you usually have it around?

I checked the activity monitor and nothing seems out of the ordinary. I always quit the apps after I'm done using them.

 

[twintin]

I use auto bright setting and usually I don’t quit my apps (maybe some, but not all). It can be a bad battery as well if nothing sticks out. What kind of YouTube clips are you watching (4K, low res) ?

 

[deeddawg]

Look for what’s using the power rather than guess - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464#energy

 

[Dhonk]

speaking of the screen brightness question, that's something that can affect battery life. I always run my 2014 MBP 13" at bar 5-7 of 16. I'm guessing the Air will be similar when I get this.

 

[SincerelyHeroic]

I use auto bright setting and usually I don’t quit my apps (maybe some, but not all). It can be a bad battery as well if nothing sticks out. What kind of YouTube clips are you watching (4K, low res) ?

Just regular 720 - 1080p videos. The more I use the laptop, the more I find that battery is draining even faster.
For instance, just normal browsing and downloading with brightness at 100% resulted in the battery losing 15% in a half hour.

I'm planning on taking the laptop to a service professional to see if there's something wrong with it.

 

[twintin]

Does it consume any power in standby mode as well ? Mine has stayed at 100% for almost 11h with all my app (ms teams, slack etc.) open.

You can always exchange it for another one and see if it works better.

 

[SincerelyHeroic]

Yeah I checked today and it lost 4% from when it was in sleep mode overnight with only Safari and Music open. Does this mean there's something wrong with the battery?

 

[twintin]

Nothing dramatic I guess, but my has now only lost 2% in 24h with all of my apps open in standby mode, so something is eating your battery faster than mine. You can try closing all your apps and see what happens.

My guess is you have a background process that for instance fails to sync or login that causes your issue.
If activity monitor does not give you a lead, you can always check the message log and see if some error messages looks suspicious.

 

[Loog]

I'm just curious, for anyone who bought the 2020 MBA i3 base version what's your true battery life like? I've just had mine for a week now and I'm finding the battery on my laptop draining considerably fast.

The battery life on the 2015 MBA was leagues better than what I'm getting right now on the 2020 one. This morning I lost 10% of charge in 45 minutes while doing light browsing and watching YouTube videos on 75% - 85 % brightness on Safari.

I've turned Bluetooth, Location services and notifications off as well.

Is anyone else having similar experiences?

More powerful CPU and same capacity means there will be less battery time than the outgoing model. Apple do hi-light this and quote -1hr (7w CPU vs 10w). You can disable turbo boost if you are traveling and need to keep the battery life at the max. I appreciate this isn't ideal but it will help when needs must. I retained my 2018 retina so have reverted to this as power off mains is a key factor for me.

 

[deeddawg]

More powerful CPU and same capacity means there will be less battery time than the outgoing model. Apple do hi-light this and quote -1hr (7w CPU vs 10w). You can disable turbo boost if you are traveling and need to keep the battery life at the max. I appreciate this isn't ideal but it will help when needs must. I retained my 2018 retina so have reverted to this as power off mains is a key factor for me.

Good to remember though that this difference is moot with an inexpensive small USB-PD power bank. I’m already carrying a powerbank when traveling.

 

[Loog]

Good to remember though that this difference is moot with an inexpensive small USB-PD power bank. I’m already carrying a powerbank when traveling.

Good life hack ... or plug in where power is possible, available on most trains here in the UK and certainly at most service stations. Pity Apple didn't add some extra MHA to the battery to compensate for the additional power

 

[SincerelyHeroic]

Good life hack ... or plug in where power is possible, available on most trains here in the UK and certainly at most service stations. Pity Apple didn't add some extra MHA to the battery to compensate for the additional power

It really is a shame Apple haven't made the battery more powerful. I've added Turbo Boost Switcher and will see if it makes any difference to the battery life.

 

[usernametakenforever]

Battery seems to be very good for medium-heavy load and its better than my surface laptop 3. In the picture below you will see duration of 19:46 on battery and approx. 9:30 it was in sleep with lid shut down. That gives me approx. 10 hours of usage. What you don't see in picture below is python log scraping application which did lot of I/O on a 50gb file and drained 10% battery in 30 minutes.

EDIT: This is on i5/16gb/256gb/SG config.

 

[Maxinegp]

I'm just curious, for anyone who bought the 2020 MBA i3 base version what's your true battery life like? I've just had mine for a week now and I'm finding the battery on my laptop draining considerably fast.

The battery life on the 2015 MBA was leagues better than what I'm getting right now on the 2020 one. This morning I lost 10% of charge in 45 minutes while doing light browsing and watching YouTube videos on 75% - 85 % brightness on Safari.

I've turned Bluetooth, Location services and notifications off as well.

Is anyone else having similar experiences?

I've just got one and am returning it after 2 weeks - average battery life was 5 hours, took 3 hours to charge and yes, lost lots of % battery life in sleep mode. Even Apple support agreed this can't be right...

 

[ctjack]

Maybe you have to try to turn off "Power Nap" function. That thing can eat a lot while your laptop is sleeping.

 

[26139]

I'm just curious, for anyone who bought the 2020 MBA i3 base version what's your true battery life like? I've just had mine for a week now and I'm finding the battery on my laptop draining considerably fast.

The battery life on the 2015 MBA was leagues better than what I'm getting right now on the 2020 one. This morning I lost 10% of charge in 45 minutes while doing light browsing and watching YouTube videos on 75% - 85 % brightness on Safari.

I've turned Bluetooth, Location services and notifications off as well.

Is anyone else having similar experiences?

10% charge in 45 minutes while streaming video doesn't seem that odd to me. Laptop is doing a lot.