6 months ago I recently (regrettably) handed down my trusty MacBook Air 2017 to Mom for the new Intel version of the 2020 in gold color because I had a gold iPhone 11 Pro and gold iPad Air 3 and wanted everything to match, which was not a solid reason to do this. I knew the M1 chip was coming out but didn't want to wait at the time, and in my family (huge apple users of 2 MacBooks, 3 iPhones, 6 iPads, 2 Airpods) we had noticed reduced performance in the gold colored products despite them being prettiest over the silver, space gray, black, and Product Red editions. But enough of that. At first my new Mac was amazing but after a short time the battery now drains within 4-5 hours and it is the most terrible thing. My silver 2017 Air works fine for Mom to watch Netflix and even an iPad and phone lasts much longer. I have charged the battery 81 Times in 6 months (without using it for the first few months because I needed a PC to get LTE when my home data connection wasn't working) and it's around 94% and "Normal" condition (vs 84% & "Good" on the old laptop) but I just do not understand why this computer battery dies so fast. The last time I had a laptop that lasted less than 10 hours of battery life, it was my $200 2007 edition Gateway with 512 MB of RAM! That one used to last 2 hours back then and now I only get 4 with a laptop I paid $1000 for in 2020? What the heck, Apple? Are they doing this just so people will buy M1? My uncle said his M1 in the exact same model but space grey lasts him 3-4 days on one charge. Hmmm?
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MacBook Air 2020 Intel (Gold) massive battery drain glitch
- Thread starter MacOwner3000
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I like the conspiracies, but choose not to believe in those 
As for the battery, try resetting the SMC (it's responsible for charging and battery management).
support.apple.com
As for the battery, try resetting the SMC (it's responsible for charging and battery management).
Reset the SMC of your Mac – Apple Support (UK)
The SMC is responsible for managing power on your Mac. Resetting it can resolve certain uncommon issues related to power or thermal management.
I don't know about that. But I gave up my video collection and reset the whole computer back to Catalina, and now my battery is working so much better. I think it must have been a software update issue, especially since it seemingly started out of the blue after one of the more recent patches. Maybe one of the updates was more catered to M1 than Intel and it just isn't as friendly to my hardware? who knows.I like the conspiracies, but choose not to believe in those
As for the battery, try resetting the SMC (it's responsible for charging and battery management).
Reset the SMC of your Mac – Apple Support (UK)
The SMC is responsible for managing power on your Mac. Resetting it can resolve certain uncommon issues related to power or thermal management.
Just found this. My battery is around 85% now after 2.5 years vs close to the same thing on my old laptop