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Poor Battery Life on new air?

F

furam90

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 15, 2010
251
230
Hi,

I received my MacBook Air about 3 days ago and so far its been a pleasure to use, but one of the main issues I'm seeing is the battery life is no where near what is advertised.

I'm getting about 4-5 hours of battery life so far while just using Safari and Microsoft Word, while the advertised is around 10-11 hours. Anyone else have an issue? I remember when I got rMBP in 2015 the battery life was way better.

Here's a screenshot of my activity monitor:

Screen Shot 2020-04-07 at 9.14.23 PM.png
 
Wrong screenshot. Pls update us with CPU tab screen. It looks like NEW Mac is indexing files on ssd, so it will take some time to get to idle state of CPU. Now it is working behind the scene and using approximately 17-18% of your CPU, which is really big issue to handle, since working in FCPX with 1080P also consumes 20% of your CPU.
Just turn on your Mac, turn off display sleep, turn off Mac sleep when unused and let it sit on the table for the whole night, when you go to sleep. It will finish its' own jobs and will be ready to serve you faster this way.
 
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Here's the CPU tab. I just turned on the computer after charging over night and its at 100% battery with 6 hours expected battery life.
 

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furam90 said:
Here's the CPU tab. I just turned on the computer after charging over night and its at 100% battery with 6 hours expected battery life.
Click to expand...
'Just turned on...' and with Spotify, Slack, IMessage, 1Password, a VPN all running, and thats just from page 1 of the screengrab. These things all use battery life.
 
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mick2 said:
'Just turned on...' sure, and with Spotify, Slack, IMessage, 1Password, a VPN all running, and thats just from a partial screen shot you've included. These things all use battery life.
Click to expand...

It was just turned on. 1password and VPN are automatic starts/in the background. Slack and iMessage were opened to start the day at work and Spotify I think was just residual from yesterday.

My battery life has been a bit better today though, so that's good.
 
furam90 said:
It was just turned on. 1password and VPN are automatic starts/in the background. Slack and iMessage were opened to start the day at work and Spotify I think was just residual from yesterday.

My battery life has been a bit better today though, so that's good.
Click to expand...
Sure, it's just that the 6 hour estimate will be in light of all this stuff that's running. That seem like a reasonable estimate, no?
 
My 2018 MBA battery life is rated at 11-12 hours but gets 7-8 in real world usage.

The 2020 MBA is rated at 1 hour less than the 2018 and 2019 models, so I think 6-7 hours is probably all we can expect.

(The usual disclaimers apply, battery life can be higher or lower depending on screen beightness
 
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Any ideas why my new MBA is taking so long to charge?!

Really hoping 'photoanalysisd' and 'photolibraryd' are going to chill out soon...
 

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hector said:
Any ideas why my new MBA is taking so long to charge?!

Really hoping 'photoanalysisd' and 'photolibraryd' are going to chill out soon...
Click to expand...


It’s taking a long time to charge because those two processes are using a significant amount of energy.


Plug your computer in, leave it open and don’t let it sleep overnight. Give it that time to process your photos. Depending on how large your library is, it can take a while. Mines only 5gb and it took a solid 2-3 hours to finish.
 
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what brightness do you use? On my 2014 MBP 13", I only use brightness at 4-5 bars of the 16 possible. I would think that could be a factor
 
I can't figure out why my MBA i5 is using battery overnight, when it is supposed to be off. If I shut down mine, then plug power in, it is turning itself on. Why? I want it to stay off but charge. My MacBook Pro manages this but not my new Air. Maybe that explains why it is using power when it is supposed to be shut down.
 
marcel500 said:
I actually have the same problem with the new MBA i7. Battery is around 6 hours.
Click to expand...
Using Chrome and such I'm pretty sure that's as good as it gets. With Safari you can maybe squeeze out a bit more. Or you can use the "disable turbo boost" app, but you'll sacrifice some performance of course
 
geesus said:
I can't figure out why my MBA i5 is using battery overnight, when it is supposed to be off. If I shut down mine, then plug power in, it is turning itself on. Why? I want it to stay off but charge. My MacBook Pro manages this but not my new Air. Maybe that explains why it is using power when it is supposed to be shut down.
Click to expand...

It's a "feature" since the 2016 MacBook Pros.. plugging in, opening the lid or pressing a key all turns on the device now. To keep it off you need to plug it in then shutdown.
 
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I've found closing as many tabs as you can, only leaving the apps open that you are using, and cutting brightness significantly helps with battery life. Recently I installed turbo boost switcher (https://www.rugarciap.com/turbo-boost-switcher-for-os-x/ ) and this has had a dramatically positive effect on battery life. It tells you the cpu temp and fan speed which is really helpful.
 
One other thing that may be impacting my better than perhaps expected battery life is that I run 1blocker in safari. So a lot of garbage web ads and stuff aren't running in the background, too.

But other than that, no special software on mine...
 
Leaving apps open seems to be having a negligible effect here - contacts, messages, mail etc all use up barely any processes when you check. As mentioned above, I get no better battery life than my 2013 MacBook Pro which is disappointing. Especially when you see how much improvements are being made with iPhone battery life now. Oranges and apples but still the only slight disappointment I have with my Air.

Music seems to be a massive energy draw too.
 
geesus said:
Especially when you see how much improvements are being made with iPhone battery life now.
Click to expand...
We hit battery performance ceiling long time ago. The way it works on Iphones is easy: They just started making iPhones bigger and bigger, so it can accommodate larger battery. While laptops are made smaller and smaller.
 
geesus said:
Leaving apps open seems to be having a negligible effect here - contacts, messages, mail etc all use up barely any processes when you check. As mentioned above, I get no better battery life than my 2013 MacBook Pro which is disappointing. Especially when you see how much improvements are being made with iPhone battery life now. Oranges and apples but still the only slight disappointment I have with my Air.

Music seems to be a massive energy draw too.
Click to expand...

Try 1blocker + safari for your web browsing. Basically the only time I use something else is Brave (use Brave browser instead of Chrome too - its basically Chrome but blocks most garbage running in the background spying on you) for some sites that don't quite work with Windows authentication on our corporate network.

I'm usually between 50-60% screen brightness to get the sort of performance I am getting above.
 
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