Feels like the battery is underperforming

[Laes]

Hey guys,

Got my Macbook Air 13 Ultimate about 3 weeks ago - Loving it so far, it just feels that the battery could be underperforming

Now obviously people say this all the time and it all depends on your usage etc, and I realise that generally in most cases it's just a case where it's you running something that is using the battery a lot faster.

Pretty much I'm trying to look for the best way to benchmark the battery, like some sort of test I can run and leave it going to see if it's performing as it should.

It feels that the browsing time I get out of it is about 4-5 hours - 50% brightness, using Safari with nothing else at all running in the background - I even did a fresh install of OS X.

Once again I haven't really confirmed the battery life, it just doesn't seem that it would last 7 hours though...

Know any good way to check, or anything else to check?

Cheers

 

[2IS]

Time your actual usage? Also, shutting the lid does not turn the laptop off, it still uses power. It's minimal but can add up.

 

[Thiol]

Flash, found on many many websites, drains the battery very quickly. The "7 hour" estimate was obtained with no flash running on any webpages.

 

[Laes]

Yeah cheers guys, I guess I'll monitor it and see how it goes.

I do have click to flash enabled in Safari but like I said before, I haven't really sat down and truly monitored the battery life properly - The speed that it has been draining has just given me the impression that it is underperforming

Just a question as well, how often does it turn out that an underperforming battery turns out to be because it is faulty? Not necessarily saying it is at this stage, just curious. Would I also be correct in saying that if it was a faulty battery it would instantly be noticable - As in maybe only hold 1-2 hours of charge?

Cheers

 

[johannnn]

Hard to say as all faulty batteries varies in their faultiness.

From my experience though, almost all times when someone claims their battery is faulty, it's not. People are unaware of how promised battery time is measured, and they run cpu hungry processes such as flash or connection hungry processes such as skype or torrents on their computers.

 

[Thiol]

From my experience though, almost all times when someone claims their battery is faulty, it's not. People are unaware of how promised battery time is measured, and they run cpu hungry processes such as flash or connection hungry processes such as skype or torrents on their computers.

+1.

When batteries are bad, the consequences are noticeably extreme. For example, they won't charge at all, or die after 30 minutes, etc. Finding an underperforming battery is not common.

 

[GGJstudios]

Just a question as well, how often does it turn out that an underperforming battery turns out to be because it is faulty? Not necessarily saying it is at this stage, just curious. Would I also be correct in saying that if it was a faulty battery it would instantly be noticable - As in maybe only hold 1-2 hours of charge?

Apple is specific about what constitutes a defective battery. It has nothing to do with how long a battery holds a charge, since that is greatly dependent on the power demands your system places on the battery at any given time.

This should answer most, if not all, of your battery questions: Apple Notebook Battery FAQ