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I've timed my new MBA 13's battery, the results.
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I use Chrome and my experience so far has pretty much echoed the OP's. Stellar battery life so far.
However, Chrome does come with Flash pre-installed and earlier on I saw a lot of needless CPU usage in the Activity Monitor. I browsed to chrome://plugins and disabled Flash and haven't looked back.
I'm trading in to the 2.13GHz/4GB MBA so it'll be interesting to see if battery life holds up compared to the 1.86. I'm guessing it'll be pretty close in light usage.
I still remember when a friend of mine agrued how stupid of Apple's new unibody laptops and not having a removable battery disturbed him so much. He literaly carries extra laptop batteries with him so he can quickly replace his depleted 2 hour battery for his Compaq laptop. He also brings power cables just in case when he finds a socket to charge them.
What's the point of laptops when you have to be tethered to a wall or swap batteries?
Alas, The MBA and the 10 hour unibody laptops brings the joy of not having to bring power cables and looking for an electrical socket. Free at last.
What's the point of laptops when you have to be tethered to a wall or swap batteries?
Alas, The MBA and the 10 hour unibody laptops brings the joy of not having to bring power cables and looking for an electrical socket. Free at last.
Got my wife a base 13" model two days ago. Fully charged it at first and have been using is ever since off the battery.
Over two days it is still showing about 40% charge left. Time that it has been used is hard to tell, but I know it has been used at least 6 different times all for 45-60 minutes at a time. At 40% charge it is telling me that I have 3:49 hours left.
I have configured itunes to connect to server library, safari, youtube, and messing with finder. No real heavy use. Brightness has been kept at 30% on average.
Over two days it is still showing about 40% charge left. Time that it has been used is hard to tell, but I know it has been used at least 6 different times all for 45-60 minutes at a time. At 40% charge it is telling me that I have 3:49 hours left.
I have configured itunes to connect to server library, safari, youtube, and messing with finder. No real heavy use. Brightness has been kept at 30% on average.
How about posting "Full Charge Capacity" from the system profiler? Is that accurate?
For mine it's 6823 mAh.
For mine it's 6823 mAh.
I have the 2.13/4gb/256 gb storage and so far I am not impressed with the battery life. But I find using the dongle to connect to ethernet uses more power, using the webcam uses more power..etc.. so maybe just simple browsing it will be okay. so far I dont seem to get more than 5 hours out of it.
My 11" has 4641mAh fully charged.
I was tethering to my iphone via bluetooth for about 2 hours using chrome, some light illustrator work and coda. I came home and worked some more on wifi. All in all, I managed to eek out only 4.5 hours from it. So far, I haven't been able to hit that advertised 5 hours... perhaps it's the bluetooth and Illustrator. Will test it more today.
I was tethering to my iphone via bluetooth for about 2 hours using chrome, some light illustrator work and coda. I came home and worked some more on wifi. All in all, I managed to eek out only 4.5 hours from it. So far, I haven't been able to hit that advertised 5 hours... perhaps it's the bluetooth and Illustrator. Will test it more today.
so... the advertised is UP TO... and yes, blue tooth will eat up some power as well as coda... I think your 4.5 is not too far off the mark all things considered.
Well with the same configuration as you I would guess I'm getting the same battery life. I had a 13" 1.86GHz 2GB model for three days before this one and honestly the battery life seemed the same to me. I don't see any way possible I could get 11 hours from it without the screen to minimum and everything else off.
I won't say it's terrible but I would have liked better.
So today, I've been able to use my new MBA for over six hours, using the following apps:
Safari for web browsing (with clicktoflash)
Google Docs for web browsing
Adium for chat
Mail open polling five accounts every five minutes
Skype
Lightroom, developed maybe 40 images
No peripherals except for a bluetooth mouse.
Here's my experience today on an 11" MBA today:
-Unplugged in the morning, used for web browsing and sending e-mails for about an hour during the morning. Screen brightness at 4 bars (I was in a radiology reading room)
-Used again for another full hour during lunch, browsing, e-mail, chat, and Lightroom. Brightness at 8 bars.
-Had it on in the afternoon for 30-45 minutes with googling diseases and watching short video clips online.
-When I got home, I was online for another two hours as well as typing up a report. Used a bluetooth mouse.
-When I left for dinner, the battery was at 32% remaining. Since I had the computer on for 4-4.5 hours, this extrapolates to over 6 hours of battery life.
-I've currently used the computer for over an hour since then now, and have crossed the 6 hour mark. I haven't really done anything special except for not had my screen at full brightness (I don't see the need to). So far I'm very impressed!
Safari for web browsing (with clicktoflash)
Google Docs for web browsing
Adium for chat
Mail open polling five accounts every five minutes
Skype
Lightroom, developed maybe 40 images
No peripherals except for a bluetooth mouse.
Here's my experience today on an 11" MBA today:
-Unplugged in the morning, used for web browsing and sending e-mails for about an hour during the morning. Screen brightness at 4 bars (I was in a radiology reading room)
-Used again for another full hour during lunch, browsing, e-mail, chat, and Lightroom. Brightness at 8 bars.
-Had it on in the afternoon for 30-45 minutes with googling diseases and watching short video clips online.
-When I got home, I was online for another two hours as well as typing up a report. Used a bluetooth mouse.
-When I left for dinner, the battery was at 32% remaining. Since I had the computer on for 4-4.5 hours, this extrapolates to over 6 hours of battery life.
-I've currently used the computer for over an hour since then now, and have crossed the 6 hour mark. I haven't really done anything special except for not had my screen at full brightness (I don't see the need to). So far I'm very impressed!
I am very impressed with the battery longevity of my 13 inch 2.13Ghz 4GB MBA. I decided this morning to leave my MBA on battery power for as long today as it would go. I started using it after breakfast this morning at a little after 7:30 AM. I have used it off and on, mostly on, ever since and the red indicator in the battery icon didn't come on until 9:35 PM. I am not saying that the battery has lasted 14 hours because I was away from home for a total of nearly 2 hours during the day and there were other times, albeit brief ones, when I was not using the machine. The big news out of this for me is that it appears that I am going to be able get all day out of a single battery charge if I am not constantly hammering the computer.
I run Windows 7 in Fusion's Unity mode and keep Quicken 2010 open on the OS X desktop all the time. I used Quicken a number of times during the day. At the same time I also keep open on the desktop iCal, Address Book, Mail, and Chrome, all of which I use frequently during the day. Today, I also ran Excel X, and WordPerfect for Windows, and another Windows app, Garmin Training Center.
I keep the display at about 75% but I do use the rather conservative default Energy Saver settings. The Computer is set to sleep after about 12 minutes and the display is set to sleep after 1 minute 45 seconds. Also, I have opted to slightly dim the display when it has not been used for a few seconds and to automatically reduce brightness before the display goes to sleep.
I am very pleased with this performance. I am only now going to reconnect the MBA's power adapter, with the battery at 16%, at 9:55 PM
I run Windows 7 in Fusion's Unity mode and keep Quicken 2010 open on the OS X desktop all the time. I used Quicken a number of times during the day. At the same time I also keep open on the desktop iCal, Address Book, Mail, and Chrome, all of which I use frequently during the day. Today, I also ran Excel X, and WordPerfect for Windows, and another Windows app, Garmin Training Center.
I keep the display at about 75% but I do use the rather conservative default Energy Saver settings. The Computer is set to sleep after about 12 minutes and the display is set to sleep after 1 minute 45 seconds. Also, I have opted to slightly dim the display when it has not been used for a few seconds and to automatically reduce brightness before the display goes to sleep.
I am very pleased with this performance. I am only now going to reconnect the MBA's power adapter, with the battery at 16%, at 9:55 PM
I run Windows 7 in a Fusion VM 24/7 but I have been getting a lot of hours out of each charge. See Post #37.
I was just on Skype for 3.5 hours (full screen video chat) on my 11" MBA with a little charge to spare. I'm very impressed.
13/2.13/4/256: 9hrs 10min
After calibrating, switching from Chrome to Safari, and installing ClickToFlash, I managed to get 9 hours and 10 minutes out of my battery. My test was as follows:
* Turned off power management - no sleeping or dimming allowed.
* Turned off screen saver
* Bluetooth off
* Had Safari with several tabs open (Google Apps, mostly) all day and actively used it most of the day.
* Click to flash blocked all flash except a couple of necessary bits of it.
* Took a 2-hour lunch but left computer on with Safari open to a google search and refreshing automatically every 2 minutes, to simulate continued usage.
* Used no other apps for most of the day, other than Activity Monitor, which was opened pretty often to glance at usage.
* Less than 10 minutes of flash usage all day
In other words, *very* lightweight usage. This seems like it is probably close to Apple's "wireless web" test, so I suppose I should be happy with 9 hours, but I'm still envious of you guys who are getting more than 10. I think I could get there if I left the computer alone and let it refresh a page automatically, but not if I'm switching tabs and surfing around and using gmail actively. I also don't think I could get there if I was multitasking like some of you claim to be doing.
Am I stuck with a mediocre battery? My Apple rep offered to switch out the device if I'm not happy with it.
After calibrating, switching from Chrome to Safari, and installing ClickToFlash, I managed to get 9 hours and 10 minutes out of my battery. My test was as follows:
* Turned off power management - no sleeping or dimming allowed.
* Turned off screen saver
* Bluetooth off
* Had Safari with several tabs open (Google Apps, mostly) all day and actively used it most of the day.
* Click to flash blocked all flash except a couple of necessary bits of it.
* Took a 2-hour lunch but left computer on with Safari open to a google search and refreshing automatically every 2 minutes, to simulate continued usage.
* Used no other apps for most of the day, other than Activity Monitor, which was opened pretty often to glance at usage.
* Less than 10 minutes of flash usage all day
In other words, *very* lightweight usage. This seems like it is probably close to Apple's "wireless web" test, so I suppose I should be happy with 9 hours, but I'm still envious of you guys who are getting more than 10. I think I could get there if I left the computer alone and let it refresh a page automatically, but not if I'm switching tabs and surfing around and using gmail actively. I also don't think I could get there if I was multitasking like some of you claim to be doing.
Am I stuck with a mediocre battery? My Apple rep offered to switch out the device if I'm not happy with it.
what was your brightness set at? this is similar to my setup and results. i've gotten past the 10 hour mark, but with only 1 or 2 clicks of brightness up towards the end to get that last hour out of 10% or so on the battery.
also if you're not doing anything on the web, your results will skyrocket. the other day when i was doing some on-location development and coding, i didn't even have safari open (and i turned off my airport card) and worked for a solid 3 hours, and the battery indicator still said i had 10 hours 15 minutes or something like that left.
also if you're not doing anything on the web, your results will skyrocket. the other day when i was doing some on-location development and coding, i didn't even have safari open (and i turned off my airport card) and worked for a solid 3 hours, and the battery indicator still said i had 10 hours 15 minutes or something like that left.
clicktoflash or a flashblocker for firefox are absolutely necessary.
Flash kills your battery; it's so obvious that you don't even need a test to realize it. The first time I installed it, I was immediately asking myself why my battery life was so much better?
Flash kills your battery; it's so obvious that you don't even need a test to realize it. The first time I installed it, I was immediately asking myself why my battery life was so much better?
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that: My brightness was at 50% all day.
I also put it to sleep for about an hour when I went home, before finishing it off, and this seemed to take a bit of battery.
Yes with Virtual Machines, the CPU usage can be quite low, if you're not doing anything CPU-intensive on the VM. When running stuff like Outlook, I see negligible impact on battery life. Two points to note:
1. VMware Fusion has given me better battery results than Parallels, in head-to-head testing. However, Fusion delivers much worse graphics performance.
2. Gaming in a VM utterly destroys battery life, but that shouldn't be a surprise! I've seen battery life drop from several hours, to 30 minutes, almost instantly upon opening a game in a VM. Of course, the CPU usage of the VM shot up to 99% at the same time
What brightness is Apple's claimed 7 hours of battery life for the MBA 13" based on? On full brightness, I normally see an estimated time of 4-5 hours. I use my computer for flash-disabled web browsing, email, and reading word documents and pdf's. I use the computer over several 30 minute periods throughout the day, allowing the computer to sleep inbetween those periods, so it's hard for me to know how much battery life I am really getting out of my computer.