5 hours for the 11.6" model, so I'm guessing about 3 hrs, 15 minutes in the real world.
4 hours, 15 minutes for the 13" model.
Is that about right?
4 hours, 15 minutes for the 13" model.
Is that about right?
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I'll be that person: is the battery life anywhere near what it claims to be?
- Thread starter unagimiyagi
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I feel like Jobs made a pretty big note about how they were trying to use a more realistic measure of battery life, so I have to guess they'll be closer to Apple's reported numbers in average daily use(clearly it depends on what you're doing...you could prolly get over the report numbers if you had the screen on lowest brightness and Wi-Fi/BT turned off or you could get less then reported by having the screen brightness at max, watching Hulu through Wi-Fi, having a Magic Mouse/BT keyboard conenct and having a 24'' display hooked up)
Jason Snell was getting around 6 hours on his 11" - not sure - but I think the battery will be iPad like
Apple has been very good lately with battery life accuracy. I actually get more hours on my iPad then what the site says. Hopefully other manufacturers follow suit and do it this way.
They have been stressing that they're testing using a "Better Battery Test" which I'm assuming means they're working to keep figures more realistic, again though, I'm with sparkie7. When I get my hands on one I'll see how the battery life really is.
In Apple's defense, a coworker has pushed his iPad quite rigorously to find that their claims are very close to truth.
In Apple's defense, a coworker has pushed his iPad quite rigorously to find that their claims are very close to truth.
I must agree that Apple's battery life figures are okay.
My IPad's battery time is better than 10.
Even my MacBook is okay at 7 hours something.
Regards
The iPad battery figures make me a believer.
They could have easily advertised it as having 12 to 15 hour battery life, but they went with the very realistic number of 10. Sometimes it is a bit less, but sometimes it is also a couple hours more.
If the MBA13 gets 5-8 hours realistically, I will be extremely happy with it.
They could have easily advertised it as having 12 to 15 hour battery life, but they went with the very realistic number of 10. Sometimes it is a bit less, but sometimes it is also a couple hours more.
If the MBA13 gets 5-8 hours realistically, I will be extremely happy with it.
The rev C MBA battery is 40WH, and the new 13" battery is 50WH, the CPU is the same(for 2.13G) and GPU is better (guess drains a bit more), I see no reason it doubles the battery life when the capacity is only 25% more. We will see, I certainly hope Jobs' claim is true.
4G RAM and better battery life are all I want from this new Air.
4G RAM and better battery life are all I want from this new Air.
Depends on what "real world" means to you. Apple called their test something like "wireless web", right? So if in the real world you are going to be doing some mix of browsing text based and multi media web sites, you'll probably get really close to their advertised numbers. If you play an HD movie, or really try to stress the battery using some kind of benchmark, you'll probably be closer to your guesstimate. PC World has already done a benchmark on the 11" and it came out at 3 hours 44 Minutes - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371199,00.asp
They note in the article that their test is more aggressive than the wireless web test.
The only difference I can find between the old and new tests is that in the old it just said 'wireless website browsing and document editing' and now it says 'wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites'. Both have brightness at 50% and you'd presume everything else optimised for max battery saving i.e. bluetooth off etc. Will be interesting to start to get real world useage figures, the average of those seems about right usually (as some people can write a document for 10 hours on minimum brightness and no wireless etc while others hammer the battery with flash, vids, heavy processing etc and get about 3 hours, for the macbooks, pros, previous airs etc...).
I am the type of person who says that the ipad's 10 hour battery life is actually more like 7.
I found it to be closer to the battery life claims of manufacturers, but in no way would I put it at 10 hours.
I do not find the way that they test to be very realistic, but yes, if you were to replicate their tests exactly, you could get the 5 hours on the 11.6" macbook air. So I'm not saying they're lying; I'm just saying that their premise for the test--that the test measures real world usage--is wrong. And not just Apple, every manufacturer. It's not to the point where I could say oh, the macbook air has a 5 hour battery life. There's a whole classroom full of non-power user folks with the latest macbook pro 13" which is rated at 10 hours. I asked people and not one person said "10 hours". They all said 5, 6 hours? Maybe a 7 hour. But no one in my sample size said 9 or 10 hours.
You should return your iPad for a new one. I abuse the batteries on mine and i get 10 hours.
Only very heavy gaming drains the battery faster for me. I get 10 hours whether I'm browsing the web or playing videos. Playing videos ON the web (ala netflix) drains a little faster. Some games go faster still.
The battery life on iPad has completely blown me away and make me hate my work Dell laptop that much more.
I think it will be pretty close to what Jobs claimed. They had to learn something from the iPad. That battery is amazing and the MBA is their second (not counting iPods and such) flash only based device. And like the iPad, if you aren't doing really intensive tasks like video, etc...it might even be better than claimed? Maybe asking too much there, but I think it will be good.
In the iPad, the only thing that really uses power is the display so it doesn't matter what you are doing with it, as long as the display is on it will drain in 10 hours. You can give or take an hour or two for really intense tasks or if you have it on low brightness.
With this laptop, you have a ton of components using power, so it will vary much more than it does on the ipad, and intensive tasks will deplete it much quicker.
With this laptop, you have a ton of components using power, so it will vary much more than it does on the ipad, and intensive tasks will deplete it much quicker.
While I also have a MBA RevB that claimed 5 hours - and I get 2-3 - meaning I understand your pain.
But... if your MBP claimed 5 hours - it wasn't even a Unibody. Apple's made better batteries and been more accurate in their claims in the last 2 years. You'll find that the new Unibody machines with built-in batteries are more accurate.
As far as I know, the 320M is actually MORE power efficient than the 9400M chipset. So there should be a decent increase.
But I'm with you - 4GB of RAM and better battery are tops on my list too.
The 11" processors are the SU9400 and SU9600 - those are ULV processors.
The 13" processors are unchanged from the last Gen. SL9400 and SL9600.
Are you serious? There is almost NO WAY to run an iPad's battery down in 7 hours. Maybe maximum brightness and 3D Gaming for 7 hours straight, but even then, it's hard.
The 13" MBP uses the old battery test. On the new one, it would be the equivalent of 7 hours (same as the new 13" MBA).
it was standardized until the latest MBA. they'll probably use the same new testing procedures on any new laptops coming. from what i've seen so far, the new testing procedures have been giving a more accurate battery life time. a lot of users are reporting that they have gotten at least the 5 hour minimum for the 11", if not more
They are. Every Apple notebook released before this new MBA uses the old standard. I would guess that every notebook released from here on out will use the new one. Based on Jobs' claims, the new one is 30% more aggressive. Compared to the new standard, the old MBA will get:
MBA Rev A and Rev B: 3.15 hours
MBA Rev C: 3.5 hours
But Apple end up looking stupid out of this as when they change the MBP testing to the same as the new MBAs its going to make it look as though the MBP has lost battery power, if you follow me.