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Thunderbolt consumes 2013 MBA Battery

J

jgbr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 14, 2007
965
1,191
Hello

An intresting one today, I was watching my Watts and mA being consumed from my battery.

As an experiment I plugged in the thunderbolt to ethernet adapter.

My mA increased from about 500-600 to 1130mA. Knocking my Battery lifetime in half.

I switched to Wifi and I ended up back at the 600mA mark and 8-9 Hours of life.

Although I am not going to get into the mA watching crowd it does seem driving thunderbold is more power consuming then the intergrated Wifi.

I've been watching battery debate closely, such as dropbox killing battery life for instance and so on.

Thoughts and comments?
 
There's a microcontroller and other circuitry in the thunderbolt to ethernet adapter that requires bus power to operate. It's basically a full fledged PCIe ethernet card, just shrunken down and using thunderbolt as its interface. It needs to provide all the hardware required to make ethernet connections possible (not being built in to the logic board, this hardware doesn't exist on the MBA itself). And that requires power.

I'd also speculate that the designers of this adapter probably expected that if you'd be on a wired connection, you wouldn't be moving around a whole lot and so, you might also be plugged in to AC power.

If the extra power draw is a real problem, and you're connecting via ethernet to one fixed spot, you should probably just get another AC adapter and leave it plugged in to the same area you're hooking up via ethernet. It's what I do, though I also went ahead and just got a belkin express dock, which adds ethernet, plus additional USB ports, plus audio in/out and another thunderbolt port to daisy chain (I use it for an external display).
 
jgbr said:
Thoughts and comments?
Click to expand...

It's interesting but personally doesn't bother me. If I have anything plugged into my MBA, then I'm obviously in a stationary spot so it wouldn't be a hardship to plug into power.
 
jgbr said:
Thoughts and comments?
Click to expand...

Sure. Why don't you plug the MBA into a power outlet when you are cabled up anyway?

----------
FreakinEurekan said:
It's interesting but personally doesn't bother me. If I have anything plugged into my MBA, then I'm obviously in a stationary spot so it wouldn't be a hardship to plug into power.
Click to expand...

There have been posters who measured battery time while connected to two external monitors :confused:
 
Well i think its more about the netflix silverlight battery killer that looks like is the culprit here as well or let's say a combination of the worst: Netflix HD + thunderbolt HDMI to TV = Fried battery within 3 hours :mad:
 
paulrbeers said:
Sooo what you are saying is using an external device (even something as "simple" as a thunderbolt to ethernet dongle) uses power? You don't say!?!?!
Click to expand...

According to his measurements nearly double the power, for just an ethernet controller - thats a lot more than id expect.
 
jgbr said:
Hello

An intresting one today, I was watching my Watts and mA being consumed from my battery.

As an experiment I plugged in the thunderbolt to ethernet adapter.

My mA increased from about 500-600 to 1130mA. Knocking my Battery lifetime in half.

I switched to Wifi and I ended up back at the 600mA mark and 8-9 Hours of life.

Although I am not going to get into the mA watching crowd it does seem driving thunderbold is more power consuming then the intergrated Wifi.

I've been watching battery debate closely, such as dropbox killing battery life for instance and so on.

Thoughts and comments?
Click to expand...

I just bought the same adapter and observed the same regarding reduced battery life. it was slightly disappointing as I did not expect the adapter to use so much power. thankfully, everything else worked well.
 
I just got me a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter as well today for my rMBP. For some insane reason I bought it for the same reason, thinking (aka hoping) it would consume less power than WiFi. I had about 63% battery power when I plugged it in. I was surfing the net maybe for about 10-15 minutes. Other than that I was just reading a PDF document using Reader. No other apps were open, no other 3rd party installed plugins in the BG (my rMBP is just under 2 weeks old so not much is on it.)

Anyhow. Just under 2 hours, my battery percentage went from 63% to 42% with basically doing nothing. The adapter was just a tad warm to the touch so it does takes some power, but I did not expect it to be this much.

I will be returning it and go back using WiFi.
 
using it on my rMBP late 2013 and it uses way more (twices!) power than wifi, that's really awkward... i'd like to know how it compares to the regular macbook pro that has an integrated ethernet out.
 
pentool said:
I just got me a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter as well today for my rMBP. For some insane reason I bought it for the same reason, thinking (aka hoping) it would consume less power than WiFi. I had about 63% battery power when I plugged it in. I was surfing the net maybe for about 10-15 minutes. Other than that I was just reading a PDF document using Reader. No other apps were open, no other 3rd party installed plugins in the BG (my rMBP is just under 2 weeks old so not much is on it.)

Anyhow. Just under 2 hours, my battery percentage went from 63% to 42% with basically doing nothing. The adapter was just a tad warm to the touch so it does takes some power, but I did not expect it to be this much.

I will be returning it and go back using WiFi.
Click to expand...

Just listing the stuff you THINK the computer was doing during that time is fairly worthless.

You really have no idea what it might have been doing in the background--Spotlight indexing, downloading a huge OS update, etc.

Check Activity Monitor, that's the only reliable way to determine what's using power, and how much.
 
Huh?

pentool said:
I just got me a Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter as well today for my rMBP. For some insane reason I bought it for the same reason, thinking (aka hoping) it would consume less power than WiFi. I had about 63% battery power when I plugged it in. I was surfing the net maybe for about 10-15 minutes. Other than that I was just reading a PDF document using Reader. No other apps were open, no other 3rd party installed plugins in the BG (my rMBP is just under 2 weeks old so not much is on it.)

Anyhow. Just under 2 hours, my battery percentage went from 63% to 42% with basically doing nothing. The adapter was just a tad warm to the touch so it does takes some power, but I did not expect it to be this much.

I will be returning it and go back using WiFi.
Click to expand...

Why? How is battery life an issue when you're stationary, which makes plugging into power super simple?
 
old-wiz said:
I am picturing someone somehow managing to carry around an MBA plus two external monitors. Must be someone very strong! (and crazy)
Click to expand...

this generation is a bunch of sissies

boombox.jpg


:p;)
 
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