Macbook Air Poll/What is your average battery life?

[kieonsegg]

Just ordered my 1.6ghz 120gb rev "b" i think it is macbook air today refurbsihed. The 1.8 120gb isnt noteably faster right? 1.6 should be good enough for msn,web,itunes?

To the initial topic.
Ive heard some scarry sutff with the battery
What are most of you getting? (charging and battery life, because i hear it takes forever to charge)
If it does end up taking forever to charge, will it be okay to purchase a more powerful charger off eBay??

What is everyones AVerage battery life when say, (normal brightness, bluetooth off, wifi on, 1 safari (2 tabs) itunes (playing music for about 50% of the time at full blast) and typing to word doc's?

Thanks for your input!

 

[ayeying]

The most battery life I've got was 6:03 Hours. But this was an exceptional case because all I had was music running and no screen.

On average, I get ~3:30 Hours with bluetooth and wifi on, screen at 75% brightness or higher and sound at 100%.

On gaming, I get ~1:30-2:00 Hours with bluetooth and wifi on, screen at 100% brightness and sound at 100% also.

Charging times for me seems to be about 2:00 Hours from 10% to 85%, then another 0:30 from 86% to 100% full.

However, how much you use the battery actually affects charging times as I've noticed on an older Rev A system. Over 100 Cycles, the charging times decreased by an hour vs a new battery.

The times are from my Rev. C, 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Snow Leopard and Windows 7. I have over 470 cycles, system was bought June 11, 2009 (Just passed 6 months)

 

[kieonsegg]

The most battery life I've got was 6:03 Hours. But this was an exceptional case because all I had was music running and no screen.

On average, I get ~3:30 Hours with bluetooth and wifi on, screen at 75% brightness or higher and sound at 100%.

On gaming, I get ~1:30-2:00 Hours with bluetooth and wifi on, screen at 100% brightness and sound at 100% also.

Charging times for me seems to be about 2:00 Hours from 10% to 85%, then another 0:30 from 86% to 100% full.

However, how much you use the battery actually affects charging times as I've noticed on an older Rev A system. Over 100 Cycles, the charging times decreased by an hour vs a new battery.

The times are from my Rev. C, 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running Snow Leopard and Windows 7. I have over 470 cycles, system was bought June 11, 2009 (Just passed 6 months)

Thanks for your response.
I know you had the SSD model but how will you compare that to the appilcation start-ups in the HDD i just bought?? Hopefully it continually opens stuff quick through its life, it is a 15 hundred dollar machine..

**off topic** How do i transfer my itunes library across with bluetooth from my pc to my mac. Do i drag over the itunes music folder and what else? The xml library file?? kinda confused, dont wanna loose all my settings and ratings etc

 

[vraxtus]

Thanks for your response.
I know you had the SSD model but how will you compare that to the appilcation start-ups in the HDD i just bought?? Hopefully it continually opens stuff quick through its life, it is a 15 hundred dollar machine..

**off topic** How do i transfer my itunes library across with bluetooth from my pc to my mac. Do i drag over the itunes music folder and what else? The xml library file?? kinda confused, dont wanna loose all my settings and ratings etc

This is exactly why I'm going SSD for my next machine (which will likely be a MBA). My 2006 MBP on a platter drive takes forever to open applications now!

 

[jetoo]

Hi there,

After 1 year, i'm just using it sometimes. It last 3h with bt and wifi deactivated.
I can watch two 1h 1/2 movies, which is pretty good.

 

[iBookG4user]

Rev C 1.86GHz with SSD installed, I get 2.5-3 hours per charge. The battery life is not great, I have to say.

 

[musicpenguy]

It really depends on what I'm doing;

If I turn off everything except preview I can read a book for a good 7-8 hours, given the display is not turned up too much.

I can get an average of 3-4 hours of typical browsing web type usage

I can get 2 hours of video watching

So it really depends on what your doing with the machine

 

[kieonsegg]

thanks for all of your comments.

i think ill love my mba either way

is there not a 3rd party battery made by any maufacturers that give it say 7 hours?

 

[Mactagonist]

Nope. There is a newer revision of the battery that is 40Wh vs 37 (iirc) in the original. But that is a relatively small improvement.

 

[stoconnell]

thanks for all of your comments.

i think ill love my mba either way

is there not a 3rd party battery made by any maufacturers that give it say 7 hours?

There was at least one thread concerning external batteries that can run the MacBook Air via a MagSafe (tm) connection.

 

[coast1ja]

I get right around 4 hours with my Rev. B 1.86 SSD when doing normal stuff (web browsing, office apps, etc.). It does take a while (4-5 hours) to charge from dead when using it. I usually have the brightness almost all the way up, bluetooth off, wifi on.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I get around 4-4:30 of normal usage on my Air. When out and about, I usually have wifi on, bluetooth off, screen 50% and lower, and the keyboard backlight on. It's never taken overly long to charge - seems about the same as any other MacBook. If you find that it's taking too long, feel free to get a cord from an MBP or something - I use the 85W adapter from a friend's MBP occasionally on my Air when I'm stuck in his dorm without a cord and it works just fine.

 

[Abyssgh0st]

I get 2-2.5 hours on my 1.6 Rev B with a RunCore SSD.

If you really want super battery life (and don't mind taking a little extra equipment around) check out Hyper Macs.

http://www.hypershop.com/HyperMac-External-MacBook-Battery-and-Car-Charger-s/91.htm

 

[ayeying]

Thanks for your response.
I know you had the SSD model but how will you compare that to the appilcation start-ups in the HDD i just bought?? Hopefully it continually opens stuff quick through its life, it is a 15 hundred dollar machine..

**off topic** How do i transfer my itunes library across with bluetooth from my pc to my mac. Do i drag over the itunes music folder and what else? The xml library file?? kinda confused, dont wanna loose all my settings and ratings etc

Price does not justify speed. Just something's expensive doesn't mean it'll be fast. Just like for cars, you can have a faster car costing thousands less.

HDD shouldn't be insanely slow. I've found it's about 1/2 the speed of the stock SSD, which isn't fast either.

Personally, my next system will have a hard drive and not an SSD. SSD is just a pain in the ass for me cause of all the Virtual Machines and large amounts of writes done on a daily basis. Bash all you want, but an SSD' speed, no matter how fast, dont work well with virtual machines that does heavy read and write at the same time (in which SSD usually have a problem with, unless you go with SLC and not MLC)

 

[jetoo]

From your comments, what I see is that battery life is not higher with HDD or SSD. Can you confirm?

 

[ayeying]

From your comments, what I see is that battery life is not higher with HDD or SSD. Can you confirm?

Battery life should be more or less the same.