Battery life on maxed 13" MBA 10.6.6

[jim.ryan]

Hey,

I've had my MBA for two weeks now, and I haven't been thrilled with the battery life. I read lots of reviews that said they were getting 5 - 8 hours of battery life. I discovered that Flash consumed lots of CPU, and hurt battery life, so I've disabled Flash everywhere (I click to enable it, and never do). I'm still not getting great battery life. I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and use it until the battery was dead since disabling Flash to get a good indication of battery life, but it looks like I'm only getting around 4-5 hours. This is with minimal CPU usage, basic web browsing, LCD brightness three bars from the highest setting.

Is this consistent with what everyone else is getting? I just want to make sure my battery isn't defective before it's too late.

Again, this is a maxed out 13" MBA with 10.6.6 (haven't done the 10.6.7 update yet, been seeing mixed reviews).

Thanks,
Jim

 

[GGJstudios]

Your screen brightness is a big factor. Try lowering it to half and see what you get. This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions:

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[impulse462]

What GGJstudios said. The 13" MBA has a rated battery life at 7 hours with half the screen brightness. With the brightness 3 bars from the highest, 4-5 hours seems like an accurate result.

Try using the screen at half brightness with basic web-browsing tasks, you should get around that 7 hour mark.

 

[damnyooneek]

i'm about the same with 5-6 hours of battery life.

 

[Windowsrefugee]

In addition to disabling Flash and turning your brightness down, your battery life may be shorter if using WiFi. If I turn off Flash and WiFi and turn brightness down to less than 50% then I can get more than 8 hours. If you are not surfing the Web while unplugged (say while on a plane), then you may be able to afford to turn WiFi off. Just a thought. Overall, I have been very pleased with the battery life since I got my 13" MBA ultimate ~4 months ago.

 

[UmbraClaw]

I've actually been very impressed with my 13"Air-Ulti with regards to the battery life. I mostly get 7-8 hours from mine, and that's with ~70 tabs open in safari, as well as word, pages, stickies, xcode, mail and preview open at all times. Screen brightness is at 3 from min mostly, and wifi is always on.