AirPods Max Severe Battery Drain

[Tulani]

It doesn’t bother me. I don’t think 10% per day is unusable.
I think anything more drastic that some people experience will get corrected with a software update.

No problem. Enjoy your headphones

 

[abley22]

It cant be normal, mine also drain 7% over night in the case, since they can ONLY be used with Battery this is definitly not how they should work, the case does not make any difference at all, they drain the same inside the case like outside.

 

[kylestrodamus]

Perhaps the metal cools down the battery and causes excess drain.. I also experience 7-10% battery drain even when they are in the smart case over night.

 

[Bazooka-joe]

Mine don't arrive until mid-march and i am thankful as hopefully by then Apple will have applied a firmware fix to address this

 

[F23]

i think the drain is normal bc of the size of the battery. since it's only 600 mAh right? compared to phones and tablets which are above 3000. add bluetooth being active for 18 hours and i think thats the reason. has anyone tested the drain after 18 hours? would they drain further past 10%?

 

[vulcanite]

I faced the same issue with severe battery drain, ~30% in the case overnight. It also appeared to drain much faster during active use compared to my regular Airpods. A factory reset solved the issue temporarily, but I hit the issue once again within a day.
Going through this and all other threads on this topic, the issue seems to point to active bluetooth. I had a suspicion on head detection. I have disabled this feature from bluetooth settings. Since then the battery drain issue seems to be fixed. Now it drains ~2-3% overnight in the case. Still monitoring...

 

[Bazooka-joe]

All Apple have to do is change the firmware to switch to ultra low power mode five minutes after you take it off your head. That’s the simplest remedy

 

[JasonHB]

****UPDATE****

After my factory reset on Thursday night, as I posted, all is working well.

When I went to bed last night, the headphones were on 99% which was a drain of 1% over about 13 hours.

I used them last night for around an hour and a half and they were at 93% when I took them off.

They have been left alone all day and evening today, it is nearly midnight here and I have just taken them out of the smart case and they are at 87%. So not a massive drain in the last 22.5 hours, I can live with 6% like that. I will continue to monitor this and see if they go into another massive drain mode.

Jason

 

[oric1sg]

This is my usage for the pass 3 days and I didn't notice any massive battery drain issue. The headphones is in the Geekria Smart Case when not in use.

 

[mpetrides]

Which is absurd. None losses at 550usd device and doesn’t notice it right away. Especially for a device that is going to be most of the time in you house oR hangin from your neck when using it. And if someone stole it or find it , it’s most likely that that person would keep it , cause you can’t protect by password this device, nor block it nor send a message like the iPhone, which means anyone can use it.
That should be optional feature. Cause it’s a waste of battery.

Agree completely. I have no intention of taking headphones this expensive out of the house to anywhere that I could ei lose them or get them stolen, except perhaps if I take them along on a trip in my car.

And as francoc02o pointed out, FindMy is zero help if they are stolen anyway. How do I know? I dropped my original pair of (non-Max) AirPods, used FindMy to locate where I dropped them, didn’t find them and never have; someone else likely still has them, engraved case and all. Hence, my plan to use a cheaper headset, like my Beats, whenever I’m out of the house. Make this “feature” optional please!

BTW, has anyone tried turning FindMy off to see if doing so has any impact on battery drain?

 

[mpetrides]

Where do you turn off auto switching on the Mac - I’m not finding that option on Big Sur. But, I’m dumb too, so probably just overlooking it. I just use my APMs with my iPad and phone.

EDIT: Nevermind - found it!

I‘d love to know where you found it. Don’t have my APM yet but would gladly do this to avoid battery drain.

 

[F23]

Auto switching is the most annoying thing ever. My mac mini connected to 2 displays is sleep. Im in bed, with my iphone unlocked, wearing my apple watch, i pop open my airpods and my mac wakes up and logs in with my apple watch. i have to get up and put it back to sleep.

I‘d love to know where you found it. Don’t have my APM yet but would gladly do this to avoid battery drain.

sys pref, bluetooth, airpods, options

 

[Bazooka-joe]

Interesting findings just posted on 9to5Mac

AirPods Max battery life meets Apple's claims, show tests - 9to5Mac

A set of independent tests shows that the AirPods Max battery life lives up to Apple's claims. Apple makes two key claims about battery life.

9to5mac.com

 

[F23]

Interesting findings just posted on 9to5Mac

AirPods Max battery life meets Apple's claims, show tests - 9to5Mac

A set of independent tests shows that the AirPods Max battery life lives up to Apple's claims. Apple makes two key claims about battery life.

9to5mac.com

this is accurate. the drain while use is correct, as well as the 5% per 12 hours. so i guess 10% per 24 hours is normal. that means over 1 week you lose 70% battery to standby...lol. that max stand product needs to hurry up and launch it looks great

 

[kirk.vino]

this is accurate. the drain while use is correct, as well as the 5% per 12 hours. so i guess 10% per 24 hours is normal. that means over 1 week you lose 70% battery to standby...lol. that max stand product needs to hurry up and launch it looks great

I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, as they go into ultra low-power mode after 18 hours. In that state they should preserve the charge better.

 

[jterp7]

problem is i suspect a lot of people like me use it every 8-12 hrs, which means even in bra case the apm won't go into the ultra low power at that point

 

[ZacKaffeine]

I saw a post in this thread noticing that the issue seemed to be connected to the APM connecting to multiple devices. This exactly explains the issue for me. If I do a factory reset and only connect it to my phone, idle battery drain is incredibly minimal. I recently went a week without using them and only lost 7%. However, once the APM connects to another device, the idle drain is drastic. Last night for example, I lost nearly 20%. Has anyone else also noticed that they do not like to charge with a MacBook Pro charger? I had them plugged in for 10 minutes and didn’t gain a single percent. I then plugged them into a 2.4 usb a charger and gained 5 percent in just a few minutes.

Edit: Another thing that I’ve noticed, sometimes when I put the APM into the case, they stay connected to my phone. In order to fix it, I need to slide them back out and press them in with more force. Then they’ll disconnect from my phone. So now, I check it every time I put them back in the case.

 

[F23]

I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, as they go into ultra low-power mode after 18 hours. In that state they should preserve the charge better.

it's accurate in the sense of that's the drain everyone is reporting. of course ultra low power mode should be less than 5% for over 24 hours, instead we see double. the 18 hours should be shortened to single digits in the case. out of the case i understand the reason for find my.

 

[kirk.vino]

it's accurate in the sense of that's the drain everyone is reporting. of course ultra low power mode should be less than 5% for over 24 hours, instead we see double. the 18 hours should be shortened to single digits in the case. out of the case i understand the reason for find my.

My point is they wouldn’t lose 70% in a week if you’re not using them. Someone above actually reported that they had lost only 7% in a week.
Apple might still shorten the time requirement for ultra-low power mode via software updates down the road.

 

[Shadowbech]

Last night, used it and was 79% when I set it down and in the smart case. 24 hours later was still at 79%.

 

[F23]

Last night, used it and was 79% when I set it down and in the smart case. 24 hours later was still at 79%.

wow that has not happened for me once. only time i see ZERO drain is at 100%. how is the drain so random with everyone. makes no damn sense

 

[Shadowbech]

wow that has not happened for me once. only time i see ZERO drain is at 100%. how is the drain so random with everyone. makes no damn sense

Same as last night, used it till 65% and put it in the case, and it's still at 65% as I just checked. I have bluetooth off on my mbp and on my iPad so it's only my phone that has the Bluetooth on.

 

[F23]

Same as last night, used it till 65% and put it in the case, and it's still at 65% as I just checked. I have bluetooth off on my mbp and on my iPad so it's only my phone that has the Bluetooth on.

oh wow, is the software version still the same?

 

[Shadowbech]

oh wow, is the software version still the same?

Yes software version is still the same as before. I think the issue was that all of my devices has bluetooth on so it was looking to connect to something when not in use. But I now that I turned off bluetooth on my iPad (I really don't need bluetooth ON for my iPad, I will only turn it on when I actually do need it). I noticed a huge improvement. But not that you should have to turn off BT though.

 

[F23]

Yes software version is still the same as before. I think the issue was that all of my devices has bluetooth on so it was looking to connect to something when not in use. But I now that I turned off bluetooth on my iPad (I really don't need bluetooth ON for my iPad, I will only turn it on when I actually do need it). I noticed a huge improvement. But not that you should have to turn off BT though.

yeah i cant really do that. my mac mini needs bluetooth for keyboard and tracpack. iphone needs bluetooth for apple watch and airpods pro. but thats very interesting and weird. its been over a month and no bug fix