Macbook Air M2 13 Low Power Mode Battery Life

[ngel22]

Hi all,

For those of you who run their Macbook Air M2 13 with full time low power mode, how many hours of screen on time (50% Brightness, or please state your brightness level) do you get under normal use (normal browsing, watching Youtube)? With that I mean using mainly Firefox, 3-4 tabs open, watching Youtube, I know that Safari is the best browser in terms of power consumption, but Safari is buggy as hell. My average watt consumption is between 3,6w and 4,2w, so I get around 12-13 hours. Not really impressed tbh, and my battery health is at 100%, fairly new battery and original.

 

[Saturn007]

Screen brightness is a big factor in power draw. Try it at 25-35%.

Have you just started using the Mac?! Did you use Migration Assistant? If so, the laptop could be indexing and draining power.

Are there advertising videos or heavy graphics websites running in Firefox? Install an ad blocker.

Try your usage pattern in Safari and see how many hours you get.

What is so buggy about Safari?

Check the Activity Monitor and see what's eating up CPU time and power. Perhaps something's running that you don't need. Are you running some app that hasn't been updated for Apple Silicon?

12-13 hours at 50% brightness, surfing, and playing videos, especially if HD, sounds pretty good to me!

 

[ngel22]

Screen brightness is a big factor in power draw. Try it at 25-35%.

Have you just started using the Mac?! Did you use Migration Assistant? If so, the laptop could be indexing and draining power.

Are there advertising videos or heavy graphics websites running in Firefox? Install an ad blocker.

Try your usage pattern in Safari and see how many hours you get.

What is so buggy about Safari?

Check the Activity Monitor and see what's eating up CPU time and power. Perhaps something's running that you don't need. Are you running some app that hasn't been updated for Apple Silicon?

12-13 hours at 50% brightness, surfing, and playing videos, especially if HD, sounds pretty good to me!

I actually have my brightness at around 45%, can't go less than that as it is too dark for my eyes.

Had it for a bit more than 2 weeks now, I set it up from scratch without migration assistant, indexing is long over.

Ad blocker already installed, besides from YouTube, nothing really heavy running.

Safari is not as smooth as Chrome or Firefox, also lags sometimes.

Nothing really suspicious in activity monitor, laptop runs super cool all the time with no heat at all, not even getting slightly warm.

If you say 12-13 hours are pretty good, then it is alright. Was just curious if some users get more hours with the same settings and usage. Just note that I run it on Low Power Mode!

 

[jdb8167]

Hi all,

For those of you who run their Macbook Air M2 13 with full time low power mode, how many hours of screen on time (50% Brightness, or please state your brightness level) do you get under normal use (normal browsing, watching Youtube)? With that I mean using mainly Firefox, 3-4 tabs open, watching Youtube, I know that Safari is the best browser in terms of power consumption, but Safari is buggy as hell. My average watt consumption is between 3,6w and 4,2w, so I get around 12-13 hours. Not really impressed tbh, and my battery health is at 100%, fairly new battery and original.

How are you measuring power consumption? From my experience if you are consistently above 3.5 W something is eating power. I use the info from ioreg to get the info directly from macOS and get under 3 W most of the time with brightness 1 tick below 50% and I never use Low Power mode.

You’ve identified the most common culprit which is high screen brightness but another candidate is anything plugged into the Thunderbolt ports.

 

[helloapple1]

I keep my 15 inch M2 MacBook Air on low power mode all the time, and it significantly improves the battery life without affecting performance.

 

[ngel22]

How are you measuring power consumption? From my experience if you are consistently above 3.5 W something is eating power. I use the info from ioreg to get the info directly from macOS and get under 3 W most of the time with brightness 1 tick below 50% and I never use Low Power mode.

You’ve identified the most common culprit which is high screen brightness but another candidate is anything plugged into the Thunderbolt ports.

I use AL Dente and the app shows me the power consumption in real time, and it is always around 3,5 W, my brightness is the same as yours, one tick below 50%. One thing to mention is, I use my TV as an external display, so the Mac is connected via an USBC-HDMI Cable (USBC plugged into Mac). Mac OS is Sonoma.

 

[jdb8167]

I use AL Dente and the app shows me the power consumption in real time, and it is always around 3,5 W, my brightness is the same as yours, one tick below 50%. One thing to mention is, I use my TV as an external display, so the Mac is connected via an USBC-HDMI Cable (USBC plugged into Mac). Mac OS is Sonoma.

Yup. That explains the discrepancy. It takes power to use an external display.

Al Dente is almost certainly using data from ioreg to get the current power so it is as accurate as the system can make it.

 

[ngel22]

Yup. That explains the discrepancy. It takes power to use an external display.

Al Dente is almost certainly using data from ioreg to get the current power so it is as accurate as the system can make it.

Good to know, thanks for the explanation. Didnt know that it draws that much power, but at least I can be sure that the power consumption is somewhat normal.

 

[jdb8167]

Good to know, thanks for the explanation. Didnt know that it draws that much power, but at least I can be sure that the power consumption is somewhat normal.

It’s not really that much. Maybe 0.5-0.75 W. I get the same effect when I use my USB-C Ethernet adapter. I still get a whole workday on battery even then.

What would be a problem is if I tried to use my external TB SSD for the whole day. That ups the power draw to over 8 W.

 

[ngel22]

It’s not really that much. Maybe 0.5-0.75 W. I get the same effect when I use my USB-C Ethernet adapter. I still get a whole workday on battery even then.

What would be a problem is if I tried to use my external TB SSD for the whole day. That ups the power draw to over 8 W.

I guess it is around 0,75 W, I checked again and my power consumption is actually mostly around 3,7-3,8W with fluctuations. And that without any apps open except Firefox. With Youtube playing 1080p it is even around 4,1 W and goes up to 4,5 W. Wondering if the power consumption is higher on Sonoma than Ventura, are you using Sonoma? From my experience the newer the OS, the more power hungry.