I've timed my new MBA 13's battery, the results.

[Corax]

I've just finished my time-test.
I've been watching several HD Youtube movie trailers, doing forum stuff, web browsing, installed a few applications, and played a 720p full movie (1hr.41min. BR-Rip, AVI container, with MplayerX), after that some browsing again and through filesharing copied some wallpapers from my iMac, also with 'Preview' I resized 10 wallpapers. Also used Mail now and then.
Brightness was a little more than halfway, audio medium.

Total time doing those stuff until battery shut the Air down: 5hrs.35min.
I think this is not bad at all!

 

[wirelessmacuser]

You might think this is a bit geeky but I have accurately timed the performance of my new Macbook Air 13.3 battery and here are the results

Thank you for this comprehensive report. I found it very educational & interesting. A nice contribution that I'm sure many will find useful.

Cheers...

 

[eyespii]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Is there an app that monitors actual runtime?

 

[Corax]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Is there an app that monitors actual runtime?

System Profiler (is part of Mac OS X)!?
Start it and select 'Software' on the left, to see your uptime on the right.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

Nicely done OP. I don't think I've yet gotten 11+ hours out of use on a single charge, but I'm using all my ports on the MBA every day, often for a few hours at a time.

In particular, I love how detailed you were in your presentation. So many of the "My battery life sucks" or "My battery life is AMAZing" posts don't give you any indication as to real-world usage metrics. Thanks for setting the baselines in place.

As I've said elsewhere, I don't think people realize that the 13" offers more battery life than does the 11" and as such represents a new dimension in "portability" as a result. Not having to find a chair next to an outlet is a great benefit!

 

[alias99]

Got my maxed out 13 today.

I am a first time mac user, and after reading all the posts on here installed click to flash.

However everytime i click to start a video nothing happens. I re installed it a couple of times and still the same??

Any ideas?

 

[Corax]

Got my maxed out 13 today.

I am a first time mac user, and after reading all the posts on here installed click to flash.

However everytime i click to start a video nothing happens. I re installed it a couple of times and still the same??

Any ideas?

Use the extensions AdBlocker and Youtube5 instead.

 

[alias99]

How do i delete click to flash??

I removed it from the library but its still coming up in safari

 

[ntrigue]

FTR, you should have let it die then charged overnight, calibration. Don't bother plugging in unless you're under 80% and try to plug it in before it goes below 20%.

 

[Corax]

How do i delete click to flash??

I removed it from the library but its still coming up in safari

Go to Safari in the upper menu-bar, then select preferences. Then you get a small window with extensions as one of the menu-options.

 

[macbook123]

I've just finished my time-test.
I've been watching several HD Youtube movie trailers, doing forum stuff, web browsing, installed a few applications, and played a 720p full movie (1hr.41min. BR-Rip, AVI container, with MplayerX), after that some browsing again and through filesharing copied some wallpapers from my iMac, also with 'Preview' I resized 10 wallpapers. Also used Mail now and then.
Brightness was a little more than halfway, audio medium.

Total time doing those stuff until battery shut the Air down: 5hrs.35min.
I think this is not bad at all!

I'm wondering how much turning the screen to full brightness diminishes battery life. I need to turn it to full as I work in bright areas. Unfortunately I'm only getting about about 4 hours of battery life doing only light browsing and email. Is this normal? Does bluetooth matter a lot?

 

[Corax]

I'm wondering how much turning the screen to full brightness diminishes battery life. I need to turn it to full as I work in bright areas. Unfortunately I'm only getting about about 4 hours of battery life doing only light browsing and email. Is this normal? Does bluetooth matter a lot?

A lot I don't know, but it does matter. Try it for day, dimmed backlit and Bluetooth off.

 

[gwsat]

I run both AdBlock and FlashBlock as extensions in Goggle Chrome. So far, they are working as advertised. When a page with Flash content comes up, instead of the video starting to play, a FlashBlock icon is displayed, which gives me the option either to keep Flash from loading by not clicking it or loading and playing the hidden material by clicking the icon.

 

[XiaoLongBao]

I'm wondering how much turning the screen to full brightness diminishes battery life. I need to turn it to full as I work in bright areas. Unfortunately I'm only getting about about 4 hours of battery life doing only light browsing and email. Is this normal? Does bluetooth matter a lot?

I usually work on the computer throughout the day in 30 minute sessions. Collectively, I think I am getting the same amount as you, 4-5 hours. I just tried turning down the brightness to the minimum with bluetooth off, and while i haven't actually timed the battery life from real usage, the system estimate is only 9 hrs as I'm typing this post. When I start browsing through pages, this estimate drops down to 5 hrs. The only application I am running is Chrome.

Maybe it would be better for me not to look at the estimated time. The time fluctuates wildly for no apparent reason. Even as I'm typing this post, I see the time jump anywhere from 10:15 down to 8:35. I think i will switch to straight percentage and try testing it then. By the way, is there any program that can objectively test the battery capacity?

 

[pfjellman]

I usually work on the computer throughout the day in 30 minute sessions. Collectively, I think I am getting the same amount as you, 4-5 hours. I just tried turning down the brightness to the minimum with bluetooth off, and while i haven't actually timed the battery life from real usage, the system estimate is only 9 hrs as I'm typing this post. When I start browsing through pages, this estimate drops down to 5 hrs. The only application I am running is Chrome.

Maybe it would be better for me not to look at the estimated time. The time fluctuates wildly for no apparent reason. Even as I'm typing this post, I see the time jump anywhere from 10:15 down to 8:35. I think i will switch to straight percentage and try testing it then. By the way, is there any program that can objectively test the battery capacity?

CoconutBattery can show you your battery's capacity.

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

Don't use time remaining for an accurate time frame of usage. It's the same with cars with MPG sensors -- floor it, or go up a steep hill, and the MPG rate drastically reduces, but that's not indicative of overall performance.

With my brightness between 40-60 I get 7 solid hours of use out of my 13" MBA. I can drop the brightness down even more and squeeze 9-10 out of it.

I don't use Chrome, I don't like how it uses so much resources for threading out each tab as a separate process. The "benefits" seem good, but I've never had a rogue page bring down my whole browser before, been using Safari for many years now. It takes a lot less CPU and RAM. Also, be sure ClickToFlash is installed, and YouTube5, so when watching videos online you're saving some CPU cycles.

 

[Pipper99]

Very useful information. I haven't timed my battery, but my MBA lasts so long that I have a real sense freedom from the cord compared to past laptops where I had to keep one eye on the battery indicator and an external power source nearby at all times. The MBA battery is great.

 

[gwsat]

CoconutBattery can show you your battery's capacity.

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

Don't use time remaining for an accurate time frame of usage. It's the same with cars with MPG sensors -- floor it, or go up a steep hill, and the MPG rate drastically reduces, but that's not indicative of overall performance.

With my brightness between 40-60 I get 7 solid hours of use out of my 13" MBA. I can drop the brightness down even more and squeeze 9-10 out of it.

I don't use Chrome, I don't like how it uses so much resources for threading out each tab as a separate process. The "benefits" seem good, but I've never had a rogue page bring down my whole browser before, been using Safari for many years now. It takes a lot less CPU and RAM. Also, be sure ClickToFlash is installed, and YouTube5, so when watching videos online you're saving some CPU cycles.

Although I do use Chrome and routinely have a bunch of tabs open, Chrome doesn't put much strain on my battery except for the rare occasions when it loses its mind and starts to soak up 60 or 70 per cent of my processor's resources. I periodically check for that in iStat and when it happens, I simply close out of Chrome, sometimes via OS X's Force Quit function, and then reopen it. After that, Chrome operates normally again, sometimes for days at a time. Except for that occasional glitch I have loved Chrome and think it is the fastest and most feature rich browser available. I wouldn't recommend it without an iStat installation but the combination has worked well for me. iStat is a free download. Highly, highly, recommended!

So far today I have been pounding on my MBA more or less continuously since about 8:00 AM and still have about 2/3 of the current charge remaining. For on and off use, I can usually count on at least 6 or 7 hours of battery life.

 

[Corax]

I don't use iStat, instead I prefer MenuMeters, totally free.
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/