How has your battery life been?

[t4cgirl]

Ok, ok, no one was seriously expecting five hours of usable time. I'm clocking in around three, barely.

I'd be interested to see what kind of time people get out of their unplugged Airs, and what programs they're running while on battery.


So at 10 cycles, my two week old 1.6/80 Air gives me 2h40m. (from 99% to 7%.)

My screen was at 2/3 brightness and wifi was on.

I'm running Adium, Firefox, CSSEdit, Snak, Pages, TextMate, Process Monitor, Little Snitch, MiniBatteryMon and some light Flash and Photoshop. (Web stuff, so I'm not unsharp masking 600dpi images here.)

Disappointed that I'm getting so little time, and I keep an eye on Process Monitor to make sure nothing's inhaling CPU.

Let's put aside all these reviews' simulated benchmarks and find out how our Airs are really performing.

Update: Thanks to everyone for responding -- the real-world anecdotes of your usage help prospective buyers gauge the product, and they showed that I was within the normal range. (Was a bit worried for a minute!) I'd still pick up an external batt in a second, if there were ones with MBA magsafes!

 

[NC MacGuy]

I can get a real 3h45m to 4h20m on mine. I too run w. wifi on but usually use Safari, Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Mail, iCal. Are you making sure Bluetooth is off? Any Flash or Photoshop will eat time up too. You may want to try running w. only app's needed and see if that improves times.

I run screen to 1/2 brightness. 42 cycles and my battery actually seems to be getting better. First couple of weeks it was at 94-96% health, now a steady 98. Me happy.

I'll be flying to the other coast next week and will try and see how long she'll last using Word, Excel w. brightness low and no wifi. I can see getting close to 5hr being miserly but still productive.

 

[teek]

3-4 hours or so, not sure.

Im running a ******** of stuff.. VMWare, Notes, FireFox, Excel, Adium, whatnot. Battery was at 94% but is now up to 96% health. Weird, but cool.

 

[BWhaler]

Pretty good overall, actually. 3.5 - 4.5 hours on average.

 

[ayeying]

8:20am till 11:25am... put to sleep... then 1:35pm till 2:45pm... left w/ 9% battery.

Thats my usual day to day use from work and school. I have 10 charges so far, 97% health. Automatic brightness/backlight. Don't do intensive stuff though, mostly dreamweaer, mail, itunes.

 

[Sesshi]

Averaging 3.5 on minimum brightness, wireless/bt on and relatively light Office-type stuff with about 4 cumulative hours of sleeping - that is, if Finder didn't crash on sleep and the Air stay on in my bag

Par for the course. I remember countering an Apple-deluded (Do you guys never learn? It's marketing, not a religion) on here shortly after the launch that there was no way you were going to get the claimed 5 hours and the the relative real vs claimed will be exactly the same for Sony, Apple, etc.

 

[NC MacGuy]

Averaging 3.5 on minimum brightness, wireless/bt on and relatively light Office-type stuff with about 4 cumulative hours of sleeping - that is, if Finder didn't crash on sleep and the Air stay on in my bag

Par for the course. I remember countering an Apple-deluded (Do you guys never learn? It's marketing, not a religion) on here shortly after the launch that there was no way you were going to get the claimed 5 hours and the the relative real vs claimed will be exactly the same for Sony, Apple, etc.

You are brutal with a capital BRUT. Enjoy your posts nonetheless

I can get very close to five hours but without BT or Wifi. Can do over 4 now with wifi if carefully monitoring where I go w. browser and using Office apps. -and not having four other apps running in bckgrnd. iWork seems to be a bit more power hungry so I stick w. '04 Office Word/PPoint/Excel.

Five hours is a bit optimistic running wifi and not really trying to conserve. My Air is still better than my MB or MBP for real time usage but it is new and they're not. We'll see where it's at in 8-12 months.

 

[bjdraw]

I've been very impressed with the battery life.

I come home from work and unplug it and don't plug it back in again until I go to bed. Of course I don't use it the entire 6 hours, but for me as long as I don't have to worry about charging it for the night, I'm good.

Also, I watched a 720p HD movie on the plane that was 2 hours long and still had about 30-45 minutes of battery life left when the movie was over. That is much better than my MBP was, which would only make it about 1:45 minutes while watching HD.

 

[fredrickyoon]

MacBook Air

Will post this weekend. Receiving mine tomorrow or Friday.

 

[NC MacGuy]

Will post this weekend. Receiving mine tomorrow or Friday.

It doesn't count yet

The battery takes at least a week to stabilize and get calibrated. The first few charge times you'll be posting how do I reset PMU, it takes too long to charge, why is my time remaining fluctuating....

Hopefully you'll love your purchase as have I.

 

[dahcheet]

It doesn't count yet

The battery takes at least a week to stabilize and get calibrated. The first few charge times you'll be posting how do I reset PMU, it takes too long to charge, why is my time remaining fluctuating....

Hopefully you'll love your purchase as have I.

At least we have a warning! Now we'll know to ignore his posts about charging for the first week

I keed, I keed.

I get pretty good usage out of my MBA. I don't have very heavy usage though. I unplug mine about 7:15 while it's sleeping. Take it to work and use it over lunch/randomly through the day. Get home around 5 or 6 and am good to about 8 or 9 then plug it in for the night to charge for the next day. My usage is pretty low though. Internet and Adium with WiFi. Brightest on full auto same with keyboard light. No blue tooth. So I should be expecting a longer up time with my battery than you guys running all your fancy apps

 

[Sesshi]

You are brutal with a capital BRUT. Enjoy your posts nonetheless

I can get very close to five hours but without BT or Wifi. Can do over 4 now with wifi if carefully monitoring where I go w. browser and using Office apps. -and not having four other apps running in bckgrnd. iWork seems to be a bit more power hungry so I stick w. '04 Office Word/PPoint/Excel.

Five hours is a bit optimistic running wifi and not really trying to conserve. My Air is still better than my MB or MBP for real time usage but it is new and they're not. We'll see where it's at in 8-12 months.

No I'm not brutal, I actually do stuff of consequence, that's all - which means I can't watch the battery meter like a hawk all the time. Who knows, perhaps that is 'brutal' as far as the majority of Apple users are concerned.

As I may have alluded, I think Apple's claimed life vs real life is pretty normal in a 'making an effort to save power but keeping essential stuff on / keeping display viewable' way.

I know that 13 claimed hours on my Sony TZ's with the extended battery (the total weight of which still puts it within 50 grams of the Air) means ~10 for example in 'saving but not obsessing', that 7 hours on the UX with extended battery means 5 in regular use, although the G11's claimed life of 9 hours turned out to be ~8. While the claimed life that the Air is starting out with is pretty pathetic compared to the Sony's, the claimed/real ratio seems to be consistent.

The real problem for me at the moment which hampers the somewhat cruddy battery life (for an ultraportable) of the Air further is the glacial recharge time. It means I can't top up a charge when I'm somewhere for a brief time, and it's actually now cramping my working style - so much so I have to carry a TZ or UX with the Air in order to get usable computer time during the whole day. And if I could actually get my Air to talk to any of my phones, it would mean an even bigger impact on battery life.

 

[joefrank64k]

I'm getting 3.5 to 4 hours with my 1.6/80 in mixed use. 4 hours for sure if it's just web browsing.

I usually run Safari / Firefox, Pages, Keynote, and when needed, Fusion/XP Pro with dual core support enabled. I have wi-fi and bluetooth on (I use a wireless Mighty Mouse when at the desk) and screen set to one-tick below full brightness, brightness control to "auto", and the keyboard backlight on.

As a recent Mac OS convert, I have a habit of quitting any application when I'm done with it (bad memories of XP and Vista not handling memory so well!) so that may be helping my battery life somewhat.

My battery health seemed stuck at 94% but after a couple of weeks it has moved to 96% and it charges much more quickly now then when it was new.

The MBA simply blows my "old" (July, 2007) HP Vista 14.1" laptop out of the water! Much lighter, better screen, a sleep mode that really works, and the battery life for me is perfect and seemingly getting better. And what can I say that most of you don't already know about OS X...simply the best OS available.